You said:
“It was actually pretty good then, with a few problems in the 3D views, but vastly overblown by Google’s FUD campaign.”
Which is false, the Maps App was not “pretty good” with a few problems with 3D views at its 1.0 release.
The maps app was pretty horrible at 1.0 release, at least 1/3 if not a 1/2 of the time it did not properly find the right location when it was release in my personal experience. Trying to blame a google FUD campaign for the maps apps failings is flat out and fundamentally a lie.
Has it improved since its release yes, but to claim it was “pretty good” at release is just flat out lying to yourself.
Excuse me, I do not lie. To you or to myself.
I used it then exclusively and it steered me wrong only ONCE, which I described and the reason. Others I know use it with no problems. YOU complain, but give no examples. No qualified researcher has come up statistics ANYTHING close to what you claim about misdirection of users. THAT is sheer FUD of the first order. There IS evidence that Google did indeed wage a campaign against Apple's Maps in an attempt to get their Maps app replaced on the iOS platform, contrary to your claims. Google has a bully platform in which placement of news articles on Page One of a Google Search is primary. . . and articles that don't agree with Google's position find themselves relegated to far lower positioning. Google does it regularly on political issues. This happened on the Map issues, the iPhone4 "battery gate" non-issue, and other issues that affect Android. The European Union's equivalent of our FTC has been investigating Google for such information/data throttling practices.
I found Apple Maps to be "pretty good" and it worked for me, and most of the people I talked to, the people who reported in the comments sections of the articles and reviews with a few noted anecdotes of problems. . . but nowhere near the 30-50% failure as YOU claim. There were some areas of the world such as Australia where the rate DID approach those levels and Maps should never have been released in those areas. . . simply because complete data was not available from Tomtom and Yelp for those areas to the level Google had developed and iPhone users were familiar with. Had it that level of failure, there would have been a class action lawsuit to end all class action law suits. There was none.
In the year that Maps was introduced, Apple Maps had only a 3.1% error rate. That is certainly NOT anywhere near your 30-50% error rate you are claiming. Was it too high? Certainly. Google's was only 1.1%.
However, both Apple and Google achieved 100% accuracy when discrete city, street, and road addressing was input into each.
I must admit, I have a tendency to use any mapping system by inputting complete addresses, most times. Lately however, I am starting to input business names. . . for example I may put in the name of one of my banks if I need to make a deposit or withdrawal, and need to find the closest branch. I've been directed to a closed branch once by using that technique. That branch had closed the month before I went looking for it.
Apple's higher rate was attributed by researchers to the errors inherent in Yelp's crowd sourced addressing of business addresses when users put in businesses by name, and also in the rate of businesses still being listed that were no longer in business. That is being corrected. Google's error rate is mostly similar, with the majority being associated with businesses no longer being in business but still being listed.
Also, Google auto-filled the accurate names of businesses because their algorithms had those data. Apple Maps did not during the first year. This ability to fill the search field with the accurate data, increased Google's hit rate on finding the correct location. Yelp's data, using crowd sourcing, often did not have the correct business name, so resolving the name to the address added to the location problem.
This was a problem associated with Yelp not having the resources that Google had to police its database, to clean out the deadwood, and to physically check the data provided by the using public. Errors of putting in a search for a specific restaurant, for example, may not find the newest restaurant that opened three months ago two miles away, but instead on Yelp would return data for the older restaurants 14 and 20 miles away, and include the now closed restaurant that the new restaurant replaced. These are reported as "errors" when the user knows about the new restaurant.
Google, having sold advertising to the restaurant chain, KNOWS about the new restaurant, may often still have to old, closed restaurant still listed, but will offer both, reducing their "error count."
Apple has addressed this issue by incorporating Bing as well as 13 other mapping resources other than Yelp and Tomtom into its search and mapping algorithms.
Even on FreeRepublic, most users posted they were finding it a good application on release. Was it "perfect"? No. Did it improve? Absolutely.