Clif Notes:Do We Need a Teacher for the Apple?
Well, Apple has done it again. Once again the company demonstrates that what is good for Apple is more important than what is good for their customers. The last time that they ticked me off was when they released the iPhone 4 with its faulty antenna design. And when the reports of disconnects started piling up, their excuses went through the entire range of bad to ridiculous, starting with, "No it doesn't," all the way to Steve Jobs arrogant reply to a user, "You're holding it wrong." The ensuing fiasco became known as "antenna gate."
Now we have the fiasco surrounding the release of IOS 6 for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Specifically, the Maps application. Up until this release, IOS has included the map application written and supported by Google. It was included with IOS until IOS 6. It was an absolutely outstanding application. I used it extensively, not just when traveling, but locally. When I relocated to a different part of the country last year, I would spend an enjoyable Sunday afternoon out driving using Google Maps along with my iPhone's GPS capability to explore not only the cities and towns but also the countryside surrounding my new home. It was so reliable even on cross-country drives across the Southwestern deserts — where you can drive for hours between towns through terrain that is basically little more than kitty litter — that I gave up my old reliable AAA Club roadmaps and depended exclusively on my iPhone.
So when I updated to IOS 6, one of the first things I looked at was the new Maps application that Apple wrote to replace the Google application.
It totally sux.
The first thing I noticed was that it doesn't know where I live. It displays my house address as being two streets away from where I actually am. The road that I live on has one name until it reaches the intersection just past me, at which point the road changes names. Maps says that it changes names two intersections in the opposite direction. So according to it, the road I live on is not the one that runs in front of my house. To make matters worse, the road that it intersects with, where mine actually does change names, that road is completely misnamed. Scanning around town, I find other things that are just flat wrong, such as streets shown as being dead ends that are actually through streets, none of the buildings, facilities, or businesses are shown, and streets not shown where streets have existed for years.
Now you might ask what I would expect? After all, I live in a small, rural town. Well, I would expect to see exactly the same thing that I used to see with Google Maps — properly named streets properly drawn, the banks, businesses, police station, etc. clearly marked, and so forth. So I completely reject the, "You can't expect it to work outside of a large and heavily populated city; you're out in the sticks." Well, Google Maps did, does, and I do. But I decided to give Apple Maps another try. That weekend I took it and went for a drive.
I got lost.
In my opinion this alone basically makes the application worthless. What good is a map application that is wrong? And no, it isn't just in the rural areas. Reports have been coming in of people in large metropolitan cities asking for the location of a business and being taken to a street map showing one in an entirely different state. Or of being told that a particular address does not exist when they are standing right in front of it looking at it. If the lack of accuracy weren't bad enough, there is the incredibly bad user interface.
Apple says that prides itself on the "user experience." I guess this means that post Jobs they have all become sadists, because this user experience is downright painful. I only use the map view. Where Google Maps showed everything clearly and well labeled, Apple Maps look like they were drawn by a grade school student. They also have this 3-D view thing. Some reports I've seen referred to the bizarre results as Dali-esque. Not exactly the kind of thing that you would want while trying to find yourself through a strange city after your plane landed at nine o'clock at night, and you're driving in a pouring rainstorm.
Now Apple has known about these problems all along, as reported by beta testers and users of their pre-release developer builds. So why did they do it? Simple. They wanted to put the screws to Google. I'm an independent businessman and a free-market advocate. So I understand competition. In general, I think it's a good thing. But in this case, they purposely did something that they knew would be a detriment to their users. I for one would like to see the free market give them a spanking that would cause Tim Cook to have to attend board meetings standing up for the next two fiscal quarters.
Of course, it's not just Apple. It's Google being caught being "evil." Microsoft releases things that it knows don't work. You can find many examples of companies that release flawed products. And that includes MultiValue companies. We have all seen releases of MultiValue products that couldn't possibly have made it through testing without the developing company knowing full well that it flat didn't work as advertised. Why do they do it? Because they can.
Which is another way of saying because we allow them to; nay, we encourage them to. The new iPhone 5 continues to fly off the shelf as fast as they can be produced. In the weeks leading up to the product release, a friend and I were laughing about how as the date got closer and closer, the less and less you saw anything in the press about users staging an Apple boycott because of labor practices at Foxconn, Apple dropping out of various agreements for "green" products, and so forth. People want what they want when they want it.
So who's to blame? The producers or the consumers? The big box stores were the people who hate them insist on shopping at them? Should the producers go to the time and expense of trying to create superior products simply because it's the "right thing to do" for the users? (I know several that do.) Or should consumers (users) hold them accountable by refusing to buy flawed products? (Figure the odds.)
I don't think Tim Cook has to lose a whole lot of sleep worrying about the state of his buttocks.
(You can replace Tim Cook with the name of the vendor you rail against but continue to buy from.)
