Maybe Apple should have slapped beta — the label it reserves for unpolished technologies like Siri — on its new maps application.
After the maps in its new iOS 6 mobile operating system were greeted with widespread criticism after its release on Wednesday, the company issued a statement Thursday saying that it is working hard to improve the technology.
“We launched this new map service knowing that it is a major initiative and we are just getting started with it,” said Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman. “We are continuously improving it, and as Maps is a cloud-based solution, the more people use it, the better it will get. We’re also working with developers to integrate some of the amazing transit apps in the App Store into iOS Maps. We appreciate all of the customer feedback and are working hard to make the customer experience even better.”
The response to Apple’s mapping service has been unusually harsh for a company that typically puts far more care into delivering polished products. But Apple has a checkered history when it comes to delivering services that rely heavily on the Internet.
Siri, its voice-activated virtual assistant, has been criticized since it came out last year for both outages and its frequent misunderstandings of user commands. At least Apple signaled that Siri was a work-in-progress by describing it as being in beta.
The maps service carries no such disclaimer and is likely being viewed even more critically than Siri because maps have become such an essential tool for smartphone users. The service was blasted for everything from inaccuracies in its location data for businesses to the sometimes distorted imagery of landmarks.
Some of the criticisms were tongue-in-cheek. The Washington State Department of Transportation issued a tweet saying that the Tacoma Narrows Bridges had not melted half way through its span, even though the distorted aerial photograph of the structures in Apple’s map service suggested that it had.
Someone else posted a more comprehensive chronicle of the shortcoming of Apple maps on a Tumblr site called “The Amazing iOS6 Maps.” It shows an aerial image of Louisiana State University on Google and Apple maps, with far more detail, including the names of campus buildings, shown on the former. Other images show botched driving directions and out-of-date names for businesses and landmarks on Apple maps.