8:51 p.m. | Updated
Apple has fired a manager who oversaw its mobile mapping service, continuing to clean house after a bad stumble.
Eddy Cue, senior vice president for Internet software and services at Apple, fired the manager, Richard Williamson, according to two people briefed on the matter who did not want to be named to avoid Apple’s ire. The firing happened shortly before Thanksgiving, according to one of these people.
Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, declined to comment. Mr. Williamson did not respond to a message sent to him through the business networking site LinkedIn, which as of Tuesday evening still had a profile listing him as Apple’s senior director of iOS platform services.
Apple had been using Google’s mapping service in its mobile software, but in an update released in September it replaced Google’s maps with its own. The new service added some features, like turn-by-turn directions and sharper graphics, but it was widely criticized over incorrect addresses, misplaced landmarks and misleading driving directions.
In a rare move, Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, publicly apologized for the deficiencies of the service and recommended that disappointed customers use mapping services from Apple’s rivals while the company worked out the kinks.
Some early problems with the maps have been fixed. When providing directions for travel from San Francisco to Sausalito, Calif., Apple’s maps used to say the trip required taking a ferry; now it shows a simple drive on the freeway. The Flatiron building in New York and the Washington Monument are no longer a block or two from their rightful homes. But some directions still lead drivers astray, and flaws in the 3-D imagery persist; for example, the London Eye still has no spokes.
The firing of Mr. Williamson, which was first reported by Bloomberg News, follows a management shake-up at Apple in late October, when Mr. Cook fired Scott Forstall, the former head of Apple’s mobile software development. Mr. Cook made the change after months of simmering tensions between Mr. Forstall and other executives, which were exacerbated by the map problems.
As part of that shake-up, Mr. Cook gave Mr. Cue oversight of Apple Maps, along with Siri, the company’s voice-activated assistant technology in the iPhone.
Apple prepared for years to shift to its own mapping system. It acquired three start-ups and formed a partnership with TomTom, a Dutch maker of navigation systems. Tony Costa, a Forrester analyst, said Apple’s move was a necessary one, because iPhone owners were the most active users of mobile maps.
“To leave those people in Google’s hands is just something Apple can’t do,” Mr. Costa said. “Their ability to control and evolve and innovate with maps was limited by their dependence on Google.”
While they wait for Apple’s maps to get better, some Apple customers have also been waiting for Google to release its own maps app for Apple devices. People working on the app say they are seeking to finish it by the end of the year.
Tyler Bell, a product director of Factual, a company that Apple has listed as one of its data providers for business listings, said mapping services had become extremely challenging to produce because smartphone owners demand more from maps than ever before.
Apple, or any company that provides maps, has to collect data from many different vendors and then stitch it together to overlay onto a map, he said. Often there are duplicate entries, or locations are labeled or placed differently depending on the vendor. Along with using computer algorithms to cobble together the data, human testers are needed to smooth things out.
“All these things need to be improved, and it’s a never-ending problem,” Mr. Bell said. He added that he felt Apple had the proper tools in place to quickly improve its database, like a system that allows users to report problems.
But Marc Prioleau, a managing director of Prioleau Advisors, which provides consulting services for mapping companies, said it would take Apple a long time to fix its maps fully because of the scale and complexity of the effort.
Google had a huge head start, he said, because it began doing maps for stationary computers, a less demanding task, and could gradually build on the data as smartphones and tablets emerged.
Bits Blog: Apple Fires a Manager Over Its Misfire on Maps
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Bits Blog: Apple Fires a Manager Over Its Misfire on Maps
