One the reasons the Apple Maps fiasco has generated such publicity is that the decision to green light a product so obviously flawed is completely unlike Apple, a company known for its high standards and rigorous quality control.
The most popular theory is that Apple let its desire to snub Google by developing its own mapping software get the better of it, and it's a theory that's only likely to gather support with news that as many as six separate developers warned Apple that its own-brew mapping service was badly flawed back in June.
Speaking to CNET on condition of anonymity, the developers revealed they had voiced their concerns over several aspects of the mapping software almost as soon as the first developer beta was made available in June, but that their warnings had for the most part been ignored.
“During the beta period I filed bug reports with Apple’s Radar system (notorious for being ignored), posted on the forums several times, and e-mailed multiple people within Apple’s MapKit team to voice our concerns,” one developer claimed.
“I posted at least one doomsayer rant after each (developer) beta, and I wasn’t alone,” another developer said to the site.
“The mood amongst the developers seemed to be that the maps were so shockingly bad that reporting individual problems was futile. What was needed wasn’t so much an interface for reporting a single point as incorrect, but for selecting an entire region and saying ‘all of this — it’s wrong'.”
