Upon the launch of the iPhone 5, the Internets began to fill with bloggers “discussing” the “performance” of the Maps “feature.” (It wasn’t quite as bad as these Buzzfeed maps of the USA drawn by British people, but close.) An entire Tumblr sprang up, devoted to the wrongness.) At first Apple tried to vamp like a chorine awaiting a forgotten cue. But as the errors continued to roll in (Bowery Boogie, a blog in my neighborhood, quickly listed a bunch of bizarre mistakes, including the bittersweet fact that CBGB lives on in Apple’s version of reality, and the New York Times pointed out that nine days after launch, the Washington Monument remained on the wrong side of the street), Apple could tap-dance no longer. On Friday, the company bit the bullet and apologized for the pathetic performance of the app. You can read CEO Tim Cook’s apology on Apple’s web site, or here, where I have helpfully annotated it for you.
I’m sorry I haven’t used a graphics program since MacPaint in 1987.
