Tim Cook Calls Apple Maps Launch His 'First Really Big Mistake' as CEO

[nt5672]

I was laughing too. Many islands have no labels and the street names don't move properly when you zoom in to list two problems I keep running into. The street name ends up between two roads, so which one is it?

I'm glad it actually provides street names for you. It does not for me and when I zoom it tends to loose everything that I am interested in.

 

[Radvan]

13 years later, and apple maps are still behind everything else. Mostly focus on US maps, lack of reviews and integration with yelp (who the hell use this outside of America) slow or non existent street view in most countries, no website or anything like this for windows, linux. Maps are absolutely terrible as a whole.

 

[abowlby]

- first biggest mistake: Apple Maps
- second biggest mistake: Main AI feature for selling iPhone 16 which is doesn’t exist even now
- third biggest mistake: Liquid Glass
- greedy biggest mistake: to go from 2 years of model iteration to 3 years of model iterations.
- iPhone AIR: it is just a mistake in the existing configuration.

From innovation company to the regular company which will release Touchscreens MacBook and sloppyFoldable iPhones… From unique products to the based niche products. We need more revenue to lick asses of shareholders - this is now the Apple era…

Ohh wait I forgot to mention this horrible ads. Apple Marketing team might have a reservation in hell!

Wouldn't coveting the material to exist in eternity be more "hell's thing."

 

[macsimcon]

Avoided recalls?!? Apple only avoids recalls because people file class action lawsuits over Apple’s product defects. Remember the Butterfly keyboard? Antennagate?

 

[macsimcon]

Putting ads in Apple Maps will, in retrospect, be hailed as Timmy’s last and biggest mistake. It’s such an unforced error just for greed.

And with no ads to support it, Apple can finally bury Apple Business in a shallow grave.

 

[mk313]

Uh, Tim? Remember Apple Intelligence, that revolutionary new AI that sold so many iPhone 16's as the main feature? Where, exactly, is that? I'd say Apple Maps was nothing compared to not being able to cobble together your own AI that you advertised as though it existed!

to be fair, the said Apple Maps was his first big mistake, not his biggest mistake. Since that took place before the Apple Intelligence Rollout, he's still correct.

 

[justinhunt177]

Forstall was one of the better software people at Apple. The blame should have been Tim’s. That project was impossibly big to achieve and Tim should have given him much longer to produce work for the public to test. When Forstall was in charge of iOS it was less buggy and the UX was more polished and clean. The keyboard, the magnifier, app animations and home screen editing all worked far more reliably than we see today.

Well said. The problem was trying to replace google maps before the apple maps data was ready. I have an iPhone 5 with iOS 6 here right next to my iphone 13 mini. iOS 6 is so superior to current software that I use it whenever I can.

 

[platinumaqua]

Yeah, corroborates with the reports that he pushed Maps out before it's ready despite Forstall's protest. There was one more year in the contract at the time, so they still have time to make it work before the deadline.

 

[I7guy]

- first biggest mistake: Apple Maps
- second biggest mistake: Main AI feature for selling iPhone 16 which is doesn’t exist even now
- third biggest mistake: Liquid Glass
- greedy biggest mistake: to go from 2 years of model iteration to 3 years of model iterations.
- iPhone AIR: it is just a mistake in the existing configuration.

From innovation company to the regular company which will release Touchscreens MacBook and sloppyFoldable iPhones… From unique products to the based niche products. We need more revenue to lick asses of shareholders - this is now the Apple era…

Ohh wait I forgot to mention this horrible ads. Apple Marketing team might have a reservation in hell!

The thing to take away is: in spite of the criticism in this thread, which some is just plain stupid, Apple is on a roll with nothing but (mostly ) good news on the horizon.

 

[Octavius8]

Currently is worse compared to the mediocre Waze…. So, not “the best map app…”

 

[Mac Fly (film)]

Well said. The problem was trying to replace google maps before the apple maps data was ready. I have an iPhone 5 with iOS 6 here right next to my iPhone 13 mini. iOS 6 is so superior to current software that I use it whenever I can.

Far superior. Rearranging icons on the home screen works so much better on iOS. I gave feedback about all of these issues numerous times over the years.

 

[Piggie]

Sorry to disappoint you Tim you have made a lot of mistakes hopefully your replacement has a vision to innovate

Well he did say it was his 1st mistake.

So we'll have to wait till he admits what all the others were 😀

 

[MilaM]

I will never forget how a friend of mine landed in a ditch with his car because he used an early version of Apple Maps 😂. Nowadays, I even prefer to use Apple Maps over other free apps.

 

[FlyingTexan]

Now do Siri

 

[SuperSimp]

Uh, Tim? Remember Apple Intelligence, that revolutionary new AI that sold so many iPhone 16's as the main feature? Where, exactly, is that? I'd say Apple Maps was nothing compared to not being able to cobble together your own AI that you advertised as though it existed!

That's nothing like Apple Maps, Maps was way worse if you were around for it.

Replacing a then-good Google Maps with the then horrific Apple Maps was a big deal.

Nobody cares about AI. Seriously, did it stunt iPhone sales? ...

 

[SuperSimp]

Actually it was his first big win.

Forstall was a legend. He made a [major] bad decision and perhaps deserved to be dismissed. But one cannot argue his impact especially on iPhone OS at the time.

 

[zenmacx]

It’s pretty good and has some better features than Google Maps. One of those features is privacy.

As the old saying goes, repeat something often enough and people believe it…

 

[MEMSMaster]

I'd say the mistake is saying the launch of Apple Maps was a mistake ;-) It coulda shouda been better at launch, and more $$ should have been focused on improving it faster, but its launch kept Google from a 100.0000000% monopoly on mapping and the associated data-on-location-of-stuff.

 

[coolkid93]

Vision Pro can get added to this

 

[ThomasJL]

I didn’t nor did many others. He is a lot like Jobs, he’s hard to work for but he demanded excellence just like Steve, he was very opinionated like Steve, and he wanted it done right. He was setup by Mr Crook for certain. And Scott has more soul than Mr Crook, as he cares more about the users than Crook for sure; to put Ive in as the OS designer is what led to an iPhone that wasn’t nearly as intuitive to use and that led to older or non-tech users who really couldn’t or can’t get the hang of things. I think Forstall wouldn’t have let that happen.

Amen to every word of that!

Tim Cook is too clueless and mediocre to know that although the 2012 initial release of Apple Maps was buggy, Scott Forstall’s work on the operating system that Apple Maps launched together with, which was iOS 6, more than made up for it. iOS 6 was the most stable, user-friendly, and visually beautiful smartphone operating system in history. And that is due to Forstall’s leadership.

Cook’s so-called “apology” is not an actual apology, but rather a poor attempt at trying to justify his unjustifiable colossally stupid and irresponsible decision to fire Forstall. That so-called “apology” shows how passive-aggressive and petty Cook is.

The real reason Cook fired Forstall in 2012 was probably because Cook was scared of someday in the future being replaced sooner than he preferred due to how many people at the time had been saying that Forstall would be the next Apple CEO. Forstall was famously dubbed the “CEO-in-waiting” by author Adam Lashinsky in his 2012 book Inside Apple.

 

[I7guy]

As the old saying goes, repeat something often enough and people believe it…

Another old saying is “when it’s free you’re the product”.

 

[Kevin2055]

How about AVP and Apple Car

 

[mk313]

I will never forget how a friend of mine landed in a ditch with his car because he used an early version of Apple Maps 😂. Nowadays, I even prefer to use Apple Maps over other free apps.

Hope that was a joke. If someone landed in a ditch, that's not the fault of any mapping software. That involves careless driving or at least not paying attention to the road conditions.

 

[Skwoodge]

Interesting that ads in Apple Maps might be his last really big mistake as CEO.

That was the first thing I thought of ... lol.

Hope that was a joke. If someone landed in a ditch, that's not the fault of any mapping software. That involves careless driving or at least not paying attention to the road conditions.

That is 100% user error. I've had Google Maps ... even today ... try and direct me to make illegal U-turns or make a left turn on a one way road going in the opposite direction. Maps are convenient, but they still require even the tiniest iota of self-awareness.

 

[abdullamac77]

I still see Apple Maps as inferior to Google Maps for ONE single reason. Turn-by-Turn navigation is working in less countries compared to Google Maps. Here I am in Bahrain and it doesn't work. You can see for yourself here the countries it supports : https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/#maps-turn-by-turn-navigation .. Google Maps in the other hand works and it's been working for years.