Don't Kid Yourself, Steve Jobs Would Have Released Apple Maps and iOS 6

Apple is taking a lot of flak at the moment with the new Maps application. Replacing Google Maps in iOS 6 looks to have backfired if you’re to believe the media. After all, this is a digital wound, and if it bleeds it leads. The moment will pass, and when it does, Apple will be in a far healthier position than if they had renewed their mapping deal with Google.

I want to stress one thing though. In all the coverage, one idea many are voicing is that Steve Jobs would not have released Maps for iOS 6 in the current condition. That’s wrong. Not only would Steve Jobs have released Maps, he would have demanded it.

Let’s be clear, Steve Jobs has made mistakes before with iPhone and iOS. Take the issues around the iPhone 4′s antennae, which if held incorrectly would decrease the effectiveness of the cellular radio. They happened on his watch. That was an issue that should have been caught in quality control. How about MobileMe, which was launched to great fanfare, which it followed up with by failing rather spectacularly.

Both of these issues made it out of Cupertino and into the hands of the consumer. Just as the new Apple powered version of Maps has done.

“You might ask, why should I believe them? They’re the ones that brought me MobileMe… It wasn’t our finest hour, but we learned a lot”. Steve Jobs, June 2011.

Here’s the thing, Steve Jobs missed some showstoppers in his time, but he was also a risk taker who always played to win the long game. Launching iOS Maps now is a risk, but it is a necessary one for Tim Cook to play that long game.

One of Apple’s biggest historical risks, at least in the eyes of the media, was the cancellation of the iPod Mini. It was Apple’s number one product, it was the world’s best-selling MP3 player, and overnight it was taken away. Something was in the wings (the solid-state iPod Nano), but at the time the decision was regarded as a short-term error. In the long-term you have to say it was the right decision.

When the iPhone launched, it was incomplete. Data was only available over GPRS/EDGE competing devices were already using 3G. It lacked basic functionality such as copy and paste, the ability to send and receive MMS’s, and it would not allow third-party apps to run using native code. It would improve over time, but Apple had put everyone on notice, and they started to work on long game. Now, the new iPhone 5 can draw a direct evolutionary path to that original design.

I believe that the principle of launching early and iterating in public is exactly what is driving the decision behind iOS Maps. It’s not perfect at the moment, but keeping the software under wraps would not improve it or make for a better out-the-box experience in six months time. If it was not launched this week, when should it be launched? Apple’s data set will not improve until it is in the hands of the public.

Mapping is not just about presenting the basic data that you can bring in from TomTom, Google, NAVTEQ, or any other geo-data company. It’s about keeping all the data up to date, it’s about taking user data points to correct the existing data. It’s about interfacing the map with location databases, company directories, personal experiences, and moments from social media. It’s about feeding the data set with as much data as you can collect. Data that enriches the entire experience for everyone. Data that is fed back to the users.

The result is a modern and mobile search engine.

That’s the long game right there. It’s less about giving Google a place in the iOS ecosystem, it’s about ensuring that Apple has its own data set that millions of people will search on every day. As we move from desktop to mobile, habits change. The primary search box is not on a web page, the primary search box is on a map. Apple wants to control the search box in their own operating system, and that means taking full and autonomous control of the mapping experience.

That’s why Google had to go. That’s why Apple has decided to build their own mapping environment from the ground up. They want to be in control of one of the key touchstones of modern life. And if there was one mantra that Steve Jobs believed in, it was that Apple had to be in control of their own destiny.

Would Jobs have dumped Google Maps and released Apple’s own Maps application in iOS 6? Even if he knew that the data was incomplete, and the media would have a field day? Knowing that the only way to improve it was through millions of iPhone users working with the Maps application every day?

Yes. Of course he would have released Maps.

It’s just that Steve Jobs might have presented the rough edges a little bit better.