New iPhone 5 maps failing healthcare seekers

Not all business decisions turn out as well as it seems they might.

It seemed to make sense for Apple to part ways with embedded technology from Google, an erstwhile ally who's now a chief competitor in the smartphone market. So, with the release of its new iOS 6 operating system, the iPhone and the iPad have jettisoned Google Maps in favor of Apple's own, self-developed mapping software. (The YouTube app is also gone from the new iPhone 5.)

As you've probably heard, the experiment has not gone very well. The homegrown software, developed in part using TomTom GPS navigation data, is riddled with errors and shortcomings.

It got so bad that Apple CEO Tim Cook felt compelled to offer a letter expressing abject regret: "We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers, and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better."

John Paczkowski, writing on the technology website All Things D, cataloged some of its failings thusly: "It offers no information about public transportation; searches for an in-town destination sometimes return results for an entirely different city; it occasionally mistakes farms for airports; some of its Dali-esque flyover imagery is lousy; and it places gas stations in utterly untenable locations."