In London Apple Maps on iOS 6 beta are nowhere near beta level. From my Twitter feed today, many including screenshots:
- Streets are shown as numbers, American style. 'A405' rather than Old Kent Rd. Nobody in the UK uses these numbers for directions, or knows what the numbers are beyond 2 or 3 main highways. Nobody will ever say A405 in conversation. The numbers are useless, and the names aren't shown.
- No tube stations are shown
- The water is missing from parts of the Thames
- Searching for 'Bank Tube' takes you to Bank, Azerbaijan.
This is exactly what I was afraid of. To me maps are one of those critical smart phone features, and if maps in iOS 6 suck as much as you are describing, it's reason enough for me to switch to Android.
Apple is really trying to alienate their long term customers. I liked them better when Google were friends and when they made computers software developers and creative pros would use.
This is exactly the same issue I had with Bing Maps. Bing Maps is very superior in many ways to Google Maps except when it comes to what a Londoner actually care about: getting around town, and quickly finding things with a certain degree of fuzziness.
Unless Apple's offering is a direct superset of G maps I will never use it. 3d buildings? Pfft. Cute, but useless.
- Streets are shown as numbers, American style. 'A405' rather than Old Kent Rd. Nobody in the UK uses these numbers for directions, or knows what the numbers are beyond 2 or 3 main highways. Nobody will ever say A405 in conversation. The numbers are useless, and the names aren't shown.
- No tube stations are shown
- The water is missing from parts of the Thames
- Searching for 'Bank Tube' takes you to Bank, Azerbaijan.