I’ve held off on this inevitable rant in part because there has been more than sufficient coverage of Apple’s problems with the new version of iOS for phones, pads, and music players. However, today Tim Cook released an apology regarding the flawed Apple maps app and I feel it did not go far enough. I have been using the new iOS for over a week now and I cannot find one improvement that justifies its release. Two of the marquee features, maps and passbook, are inadequate and diminish the user experience to unacceptable levels.

With maps, the turn-by-turn functionality was so long overdue that other more credible apps have already negated the need for Apple to provide this in it’s built in program. Beyond the full featured GPS apps from big navigation firms, even the simple Mapquest app already provides free, voice-guided, turn-by-turn functionality on the iPhone. Apple is just simply too late to this party. What I would like to have seen was a basic improvement of the existing Google Maps that had been integrated with all prior versions of iOS. The search functionality and street views from the Google were great, but the mobile app on iPhone never harnessed the deep potential of being connected to Google on the web. At my desk computer I can reroute suggested routes to fit my own knowledge of back roads and save these customized routes to my maps. I can later share these with relatives looking to avoid going through the “bad part of town” that simply does not register with any automated routing algorithms. I also have customized maps for my own road trips that hit points of interests my wife and I have found in New England wondering and would like to be able to bring these up on the app version of Google maps for later reference. To this end it would have been helpful if Apple had worked more closely with Google to make their mapping app capable of real time geo-tagging. Marking a spot on a map and referencing it later opens up all kinds of social potential. Whereas the existing integrated app focused on “where am I now”, it could have expanded to” where have I been and where am I going”. This extra dynamic would have fulfilled more of the potential of having our maps in our pockets.

The second major flaw in iOS 6 is passbook, which I can honestly say is the most ill-conceived app ever released. Open it up and it does nothing. Zipo! Instead of providing even a single example pass or coupon, this app directs you to the app store to download yet even more apps from which the options are currently dull and uninteresting. Once you choose from the small handful of compatible apps, these still do not integrate directly with passbook, but instead install as separate icons on the device. But wait, you are still not done! Open the extra app and try to figure out how to get this to appear in pass book and you will find multiple additional steps including signup and other options. Why is this not tied into the Apple ID? Why am I not already in passbook? Anyway, if you have not given up out of frustration already you can then perhaps view a Target coupon in passbook. Want more passbook apps? Well that may be a problem. Now that you do have that one app in passbook, the convenient link to the hidden App store section for more passbook compatible apps is no longer visible. Honestly, it may no longer be available either since I have yet to find it. Check the general iPhone settings and looks for any passbook specific options… nada. Go to the App store directly and either search on “passbook” or look for a category and you also find nothing! At this point getting more than a coupon seems impossible, or at the very least way more effort than I am willing to spend on an app that was supposedly designed to simplify my tracking of these sorts of items.

With this all said maps is perhaps far worse than passbook as a feature on iOS 6. I believe the rancor regarding passbook has only been silenced by the deluge of complaints on maps because at least as a non-functional add on to the iOS experience nothing has been lost by having this vestigial limb hanging around. The map app is clearly a bigger issue not because of its own inherent flaws but because it replaced what had been a solid feature available on all our devices when we purchased them. If Apple wants delve into its own mapping app that is fine, but it is a great and inappropriate disservice to remove functionality that was paid for. I find it ironic that Apple has gone out of its way to track all of my music and app purchases so that I might forever download them from the cloud on demand, but it will not make available for download the integrated apps it has despotically removed from my device. Apology not sufficient and not accepted. Bring back Google maps now.