14 DAY TRIAL // The infamous Apple Maps application has done it again! As Apple continues to work on the service, a bar in Portland, Oregon is losing thousands of dollars in business. What’s the connection, you ask?
It’s Apple Maps. Customers are using it on their iPhones to get directions to the bar, but the ill-fated cloud service erroneously points them to Southwest Portland instead of Northwest Portland.
Metrovino (bar) owner Todd Steele tells Katu.com that he gets the following question five or six times a day: “Where are you guys located?”
Apple Maps reportedly drops a pin “blocks away” from the bar’s actual location, resulting in lost customers and less profits.
“We’re guessing on the low end $500 to $1,000 a night,” the Metrovino owner said, adding that they’ve calculated their losses at “around $50,000 since mid-September.”
Steele and his mother, who is a partner in the business, even went as far as to tell Apple to fix this particular glitch. The mother actually marched into the Apple headquarters in Cupertino hoping to get some face time with the company’s high-ups, but no cigar.
“It got so bad at one point that my mom, who is a partner in the business, actually walked into Apple headquarters in Cupertino,” Steele said. Sadly, she was turned away.
An upcoming version of iOS (6.1) will allow users to submit bug reports to Apple in a more intuitive manner, enabling the Cupertino giant to respond faster to complaints.
As Apple continues to improve the service internally, numerous iPhone customers have returned to Google Maps.
In a widely reported executive shakeup occurring at Apple late last year, CEO Tim Cook fired the guy who was responsible for the iOS division and iOS Maps, implicitly.
Replacing Scott Forstall is Eddy Cue, Apple’s chief of Internet software and services.