I'm not sure what Apple is expecting here. 9 women can't make a baby in a month, and a billion dollars can't make a Google maps clone in a year. I think Apple maps is a really good product. But to expect it to be on par with Google maps is crazy.
I feel that this news is a gross violation of Mr. Williamson's privacy.<p>In most companies, firings are very confidential affairs, and nobody ever needs to know that you were fired (usually, companies have a policy that they will only confirm the dates of employment of a former employee and nothing else).<p>I understand that it's public news when a large public corporation fires its CEO or perhaps a C-level executive. But I don't think that someone outside that level needs to relinquish their basic privacy rights over their employment history.
<i>"Cue intends to replace Williamson with an entirely new management team overseeing Maps, the report says."</i><p>This sort of comment always ruins the fantasy for me. Its pretty rare, because it's often ill advised, to replace the "entire management team" unless you're completely changing the direction of the product. However, it is often the fantasy of engineers working on a team that has execution issues that the company would just "fire all the managers and let us get our work done." That fantasy comes from not knowing what the managers actually did, and that usually comes from poor communication.<p>Outside management would not know who was doing what, or how well they were doing it. So replacing all of them is like changing six different things in a misbehaving program and hoping the bug will go away. If it doesn't you wasted time, if it does you have no idea <i>which</i> of the six things fixed it.<p>The solution here is pick one person to <i>lead</i> the effort and manage <i>them.</i> Give them a clear mission, whether its 'ground truth' (accuracy), glitz, or feature parity. Set standards for quality, and then let them get it done.<p>Nothing in my career has been more frustrating than having a senior manager tell me "We want you to solve this problem..." and then when I came back and said "Ok, I need this, this, and this." and gotten push back from them? If the feedback doesn't come back as a discussion, and instead comes back as a simple denial, that is when you realize the problem isn't at your level :-).
Sure, Apple Maps was pretty bad <i>relative</i> to Google Maps, but it added a lot of great features. I think turn-by-turn is a great integration, 3D, among others, and will hopefully create a competition to be the best maps provider. Certainly given time, Apple Maps will be a viable contender.<p>I doubt Williamson was fired specifically for the launch product. Perhaps there has been internal issues since trying to rectify.
'STRING HIM UP', 'STRING HIM UP', the crowd roars.
His managers looks down from their perfect white offices, then one mutters, 'We'd better give the people what they want, he's the one at fault after all. We can't have this imperfection here any longer'
Apple is missing the point of the backlash. Of course customers hate Apple Maps...but they are complaining because they have no alternatives. I would be complaining about my Android Browser if Google Play did not have Dolphin readily available.