After a hailstorm of bad reviews and press Apple has fired Richard Williamson, the top executive who oversaw the Maps team at the company. Earlier this year, to coincide with the release of the iPhone 5 and the iOS6 launch, Apple swapped out Google Maps for its own mapping application. But the decision proved a wrong one as the company was met with an onslaught of complaints by customers. As Bloomberg News reports:
Richard Williamson was pushed out by Senior Vice President Eddy Cue, said the people, who asked not to be named because the information wasn’t yet public. Cue, who took over last month as part of a management shakeup, is seeking advice from outside mapping-technology experts and prodding digital maps provider TomTom NV (TOM2) to fix landmark and navigation data it shares with Apple. Critics have faulted Apple’s new map software for unreliable landmark searches, routes that get users lost and lack of public transit directions.
“We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make maps better,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement.
[via Bloomberg News]
