Apple Maps - Would Steve Jobs have let it happen?

It's easy to throw stones when we all sit in glass houses but even the biggest of Apple fans (that would be me) has to admit that the launch of Apple Maps has been less then perfect.

There are already websites dedicating themselves to all of the mistakes in Apple's new maps, for instance here in Perth, Australia our suburb of Subiaco has now moved from an inner city suburb the home of AFL to a waterfront property ??

The thing is though, that doing Maps is hard, very hard and Google maps has had the best part of a decade with their data in the real world being corrected by user feedback.

I think even if Steve Jobs had of been at the helm, we still would of seen Apple launch maps with iOS, it was time for someone to take on Google's monopoly of mapping in the world and we know that Steve was ready to go "Thermonuclear" on Google over their blatant coping of iOS in their Android system.

Let us also not forget that Steve oversaw some less than perfect product launches himself - Does MobileMe or the Power Mac G4 Cube ring a bell?

Apple's maps can only get better (Thank God) but that will happen quickly, very quickly. Apple has apparently locked down their maps division until it is improved.

But the main reason is that they need user feedback to get it right, just like Google has had for decade.