By grafting its own Maps product into the nervous system of its mobile OS, Apple accomplishes two important things. First, the company’s primary mobile competitor is exorcised from the main body. This outcome might be viewed as the remedy to an ailment that never should have occurred. Safari is arguably a worse browser than Chrome, but tech pundits are not shaming Apple for failing to put Google into the operating system as the default browser. Second, Apple positions itself to harvest future local ad revenue. Apple Maps, despite its spatial confusions, has 25 percent more business listings (100 million of them) than Google does.

In some ways, people seems to react the same way they did when the iPhone came out in 2007. The only difference here is that people compare to Google’s Maps trash Apple’s efforts. This time, Apple will be able to update its software and the data quality by constant updates. These cannot come fast enough in people’s hands. 

I’m not just talking about the most recent releases of everything, or the last couple of months — I’ve noticed this trend for about 2–3 years. As Apple’s software has grown to address larger feature sets, hard-to-solve problems such as sync and online services, shorter release cycles, increasingly strong competition, and Apple’s own immense scale, quality has slipped.