vaughan, the 'it'll be better next time' is no excuse. They put a product out there that is clearly untested and an absolute disaster. It's nothing but a farce.
It was tested, but they had to ship anyway. After all, Maps is only a small part of iOS.
Remember how unfinished OS X 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4 were? Remember how unfinished the first OS for iPhone was -- not even copy and paste?
I understand what you are saying, but it's happened before and it'll happen again. Apple ships.
The tech blogs have been ablaze for a couple of days about Apple advertising for map developers: Apple are already hiring new expertise.
The good news is that once a fix is done the iPhone and iPad customers will have it INSTANTLY and for FREE. Unlike devices using Android.
As someone that used Apple computers up until 10 years ago (the first computer we had was a Macintosh Plus), Apple has gone from being a genuinely innovative company and become a bloated mess more interested in trying to stop competitors from releasing products than focusing on staying on top as a premier tech company. Apple has, sadly, become the Microsoft of the new century.
Interesting you say that... Apple's solid determination to develop and control both its own software AND hardware is now it's greatest commercial advantage. They control the entire user end-to-end experience of their devices from initial purchase of the phone, including the retail space it is purchased in, to the interface of the operating system and the on-line app and music store while using the device (and make money every step of the way).
Macs, by the way, account for a small and decreasing fraction of Apple's revenues now. More Macs are being sold and Mac's slice of the market is increasing, but Apple is making so much more money from iPhone, iPad and iTunes.
In order to compete with Apple's end-to-end quality, Microsoft has been forced to release their own tablet hardware, the Surface tablet. The other tablet hardware manufacturers are very unhappy, but Microsoft has had no choice because there has been no table innovation worth mentioning. Google bought the Motorola Mobile division and are developing their own hardware for the same reason. Any company that only provides a part of the use-experience chain -- like HP, Nokia, Sony, Acer or Microsoft -- are at a huge disadvantage compared to Apple and have a decade of work or more to catch up, because it's not just the operating system, it's the entire application and music ecosystem that accompanies it. For instance, Nokia recently released their new phone (and lied about the video camera performance) which runs Windows 8 -- who wants an Win8 phone, there are no apps. If they had released it as an Android phone, then it's competing with every other Android phone particularly Samsung. And if they released their own OS? RIM, the maker of Blackberry, was THE smart phone leader but is now dead in the water. They have their own OS.
Note that Microsoft's history in releasing their own hardware has not been good apart from the Xbox. Remember the Zune? Did you know Microsoft also released a mobile phone: the KIN. It was released in May 2010 in the US and was withdrawn from sale after just 6 weeks on the market. HP had a similar success with their TouchPad in 2011. It's also worth reading up about HP's MUSE marketing campaign from 2010, it's quite embarrassing.
Despite what you think, Apple have done it right. Their iPhone and iPad business now makes more profit than the WHOLE of Microsoft. Read that again, slowly: Apple makes more profit from iPhones and iPads than Microsoft's total operation. Remember that the iPhone was released in 2007, just 5 years ago.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/28/apple-microsoft-profit/
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/21/apple-is-a-100-billion-company/
By the time the iPhone 5 gets out to the masses it'll be better, and in a couple of weeks it'll be ok.
