Apple kept Google from adding navigation? I heard it was the other way around. Link, please.

PS. Maps is hardly a "disaster". It launched three days ago and much of the information is going to be user-sourced. Shit, the iPhone 5 just launched yesterday. Big projects often come with big bugs. If this is still a problem six months down the road, then Apple has a serious issue on their hands but when a company is launching a massive project that consists largely of user-sourced information, they need USERS to iron out the bugs and make the system work. And those USERS are going to need to spend a few months telling Apple where they've screwed up and they'll start farming data to change locations, names, addresses, etc. in the Maps application. I predict that in a year, no one is even going to care about this supposed "disaster". How do you think Google Maps became so refined? By Google hiring people to walk around and knock on doors? No, it's been millions of users sending them data over the past 8-10 years. Give Apple more than 72 freakin' hours to catch up.

edit: After searching around, I've only found speculation about the lack of navigation in Maps but all evidence points toward Google blocking the feature, not Apple. Google does not release API information for navigation in Maps. That would make it virtually impossible for Apple to add navigation without dropping Google Maps entirely. Unless you have evidence that Google (out of the goodness of their heart) created a Maps application with navigation and Apple blocked it from releasing in the App Store, I'm going to have to call bullshit on your statement.

Apple kept Google from adding navigation? I heard it was the other way around. Link, please.

PS. Maps is hardly a "disaster". It launched three days ago and much of the information is going to be user-sourced. Shit, the iPhone 5 just launched yesterday. Big projects often come with big bugs. If this is still a problem six months down the road, then Apple has a serious issue on their hands but when a company is launching a massive project that consists largely of user-sourced information, they need USERS to iron out the bugs and make the system work. And those USERS are going to need to spend a few months telling Apple where they've screwed up and they'll start farming data to change locations, names, addresses, etc. in the Maps application. I predict that in a year, no one is even going to care about this supposed "disaster". How do you think Google Maps became so refined? By Google hiring people to walk around and knock on doors? No, it's been millions of users sending them data over the past 8-10 years. Give Apple more than 72 freakin' hours to catch up.

edit: After searching around, I've only found speculation about the lack of navigation in Maps but all evidence points toward Google blocking the feature, not Apple. Google does not release API information for navigation in Maps. That would make it virtually impossible for Apple to add navigation without dropping Google Maps entirely. Unless you have evidence that Google (out of the goodness of their heart) created a Maps application with navigation and Apple blocked it from releasing in the App Store, I'm going to have to call bullshit on your statement.

That's not much of an excuse. The point is they had a decent map app and they've replaced it with an inferior product. Whichever way you look at it, it's bad, especially considering Apple's reputation of releasing superior products when this is obviously inferior to the competition. If anyone regularly used the maps app on iOS5 and has recently upgraded, they're essentially screwed for a few months whilst Apple play catch up with user data; data they should have gathered themselves or at least in a user beta test.

I don't see how you think that's not much of an excuse. User-sourced data requires users. That's all there is to it.

And A LOT of this is being overblown. I've been using the app for a few days now and it hasn't led me wrong yet. If 1 out of 100 (or even 1,000) searches is screwed up, most people aren't even going to notice a problem. The Internet has a habit of taking shit like this and blowing it wayyyyyy out of proportion.

I don't see how you think that's not much of an excuse. User-sourced data requires users. That's all there is to it.

And A LOT of this is being overblown. I've been using the app for a few days now and it hasn't led me wrong yet. If 1 out of 100 (or even 1,000) searches is screwed up, most people aren't even going to notice a problem. The Internet has a habit of taking shit like this and blowing it wayyyyyy out of proportion.

Is this a good situation? Absolutely not. It's an ugly situation that is happening because two companies can't get along with one another. But in the grand scheme of things, I don't think it's going to matter in the long run. Apple will go their own direction with a Maps application that has the bugs ironed out of it (with navigation and whatnot) and Google will continue plodding along with their own software. At the end of the day, I suppose the question you need to ask yourself is "Am I happier with *temporarily* buggy software WITH navigation or was I happier with bug-free software WITHOUT navigation?" Either answer can be the right one depending on perspective.