So maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel, as the data they have access to is fundamentally ok. They have just made a complete mess of the way they are using it.
That's certainly one of the problems. It's hard to tell exactly what they're using from each provider - and where.
They certainly don't seem to be using the actual road layers from OSM.
There's a lot that goes into the maps:
-Basic road vectors (the location and layout of roads)
-Road rules (e.g. one-way, no right turn etc.)
-Road Names/Numbers/Classification
-House Numbers
-Search
-Postal Code Lookup/Geocoding
-Geographical features (rivers, lakes, forests etc.)
-Human features (man-made equivalents of the above - parks and so on)
-POIs
-Satellite Imagery
-3D Images (where appropriate)
-Traffic
It might be that Apple is only getting Traffic data from Waze and nothing else. OpenStreetMap might be used for POIs in some places but nothing else.
Licencing Satellite images from Tele Atlas/TomTom might be affordable, but buying the rights to use their road maps for turn by turn navigation might not be.
You also have to consider what developers can do with the Maps. Something like Find My Friends would require a more expensive licence because you're tracking things.
