I knew this wouldn't turn out well. Apple is one of the most closed companies and they've never "gotten" Internet services or been able to maintain one for more than a few years without shuttering it and starting over (except for the iTunes Store). There's a long string of failures. They didn't even get that something like iDisk was a cloud service people expect to exist indefinitely. I've not even heard of smaller companies shuttering a service and making customers download information they were paying for a company to store for them, let alone the world's biggest tech company.
Google is a company that will go out and work with anyone. They will do whatever it takes to make something work. They make partners and friends. They're like a really big university. Apple is like a historic, very small liberal arts college that decided to open a medical school in a tiny historic building with 5 foot ceilings and no indoor lighting or plumbing and wants to leave it that way to preserve the character of the building. I don't know how else to say it. They've never gotten Internet services. Their offerings have been unreliable, awkward, and slow. And the only really interesting part is that they thought they could do a mapping system.
But their vision again is so small. They didn't even want to do an mapping system the world could use. It's only on some of their devicesnot even all of their devices, let alone anyone else's. It's not even a web-service, so it doesn't even work with their own apps like Contacts for example on the Mac. A company that is serious about making a mapping system would have it available in a browser, available in beta for a long time for everyone. Right now it's an *exclusive* to people who buy their newest devices, but it turned out to be an exclusive that people wish they could switch to the old system. In fact it was supposed to be one of the main features of their new products.
The other funny thing besides Apple thinking it could do maps is that other people take Apple seriously with mapping. I am fairly certain that Google Maps will be around in 20 years. I am fairly certain that Apple Maps will not be around in 20 years. Apple gives up on this stuff all the time. I don't get why Apple thought they could do it, and I don't get why other people thought they could either.
Does Apple really want to be a mapping company indefinitely? Or was this just an act of hubris? It's not what they're good at. It's not in their "DNA" to borrow an over-used phrase!
This is an area where they need to partner.