
Why Apple took the risk with Maps - iProject
http://gigaom.com/2012/09/30/why-apple-took-the-risk-with-maps/
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spinchange
_Seen from the outside, the “downgrade” from Google Maps to Apple’s own maps
might seem like a dumb move. But it’s, in fact, evidence of Apple’s long-term
bet on service platforms as strategic control points. In order to secure its
own long-term prosperous future, Apple chose to risk alienating users with
some imperfect maps in iOS 6, a decision it has publically acknowledged with
an apology from CEO Tim Cook._

Getting your users lost so you can find/secure some future market dominance is
strategy tax pure and simple. Nothing about it is good for anyone except the
largest corporation on earth who is simultaneously trying to reduce
competition in the smart phone market by suing their most successful
competitors for billions over look and feel.

The proper question is why or when did Apple decide that its long term
corporate strategy was more important than delivering finished or remotely
complete products. When did they start shipping iStrategyTax instead?

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fleitz
Because switching later is worse, apple will still launch the same product but
a year from now google maps will be that much better.

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snogglethorpe
This article seems to answer the wrong question.

I think the reasons that Apple wants its own maps are fairly well understood,
so "Why is Apple creating its own mapping infrastructure?" isn't a question
that needs to be answered.

The question that needs to be answered is: "Why did Apple flip the switch
_now_ , when their infrastructure is in such a poor state?"

[Some people have attempted to answer this by saying "Because they need
massive numbers of users to help them develop maps further," but I think that
isn't really true: there's ample room for improvement to Apple's maps with no
user feedback at all. I don't think they're anywhere _near_ the point where
user feedback is necessary to help point out problem areas.]

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adnrw
_The question that needs to be answered is: "Why did Apple flip the switch
now, when their infrastructure is in such a poor state?"_

I think John Gruber answered this question pretty well in his piece last week
[1].

His answer is essentially that there's no great time to force a change like
this, and time was running out for a variety of reasons. It was crunch time,
and Apple needed to either jump off the Google Maps ship or try and broker a
temporary deal until their solution was baked a bit more. They jumped.

For what it's worth, I think they made the right decision there, but the wrong
decision in the way they sold it to the public.

They seem to be recanting as much as possible - see Cook's apology, their
rewording of the iOS 6 Maps marketing message and the App Store section for
other maps apps and so on.

I think in the long run they'll be fine, just like with all the other -gate
uproars, but for the moment they've given a lot of fodder to tech journalists
and bloggers that probably could have been avoided.

[1]:
[http://daringfireball.net/2012/09/timing_of_apples_map_switc...](http://daringfireball.net/2012/09/timing_of_apples_map_switch)

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snogglethorpe
> _His answer is essentially that there's no great time to force a change like
> this_

Maybe there's no "great" time, but there are certainly _poor_ times to do it,
and it looks very much like they chose one.

jsz0's guess seems much more plausible: they took the decision a while ago
because they _thought_ they'd be in better shape by now, but they misjudged
badly.

Had they realized the state things would be in, they would have lost little by
continuing to use Google maps for another year—and doing so, they could still
easily achieve their long-term goals while avoiding a great deal of egg on
their face (and the associated hit to their reputation as "the company that
does things right").

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ddw
tl;dr, but isn't the bulleted list a list of what Google Now does?

