In the current issue of MacUser magazine is a two-page spread of developer feedback to the new iPhone/iPod touch screen size, which shifted from the original’s 3:2 to a 16:9 ratio. Within, veteran developer John Pickford said something particularly interesting:

We’ll certainly take the new shape into account on future games, and the fact there are now three shapes to support means we’ll most likely go for an approach that doesn’t depend too heavily on screen shape.

One of the big things about iOS when it first arrived was that the device became the app. Because of the single screen size, you had developers, for better or worse, crafting experiences finely honed for the iPhone’s screen size. As the iPad arrived, developers split into those who continued to craft specifically for both screen ratios and those who took a more flexible approach, akin to responsive web design. In the case of the Pickfords and their game Magnetic Billiards:

We support two screen shapes (iPhone up to 4S and iPad).  The entire backdrop is a single bitmap and we even have different levels on iPad to make good use of the extra resolution and different screen shape. Properly supporting to the new long screen would be a lot of work if we were to take the same approach and redesign all the levels to account for the new shape. We haven’t decided what to do yet, but it’s probably not going to be cost effective to make that change.

Today, PC Advisor and other publications are showcasing the iPad mini. Despite my protestations in the past, even I have to admit this device is almost certainly on the way (although this photo could easily enough be yet another clever fake). What’s not known is what screen such a device would have: 4:3, like the iPad; 16:9, like the new iPhone and iPod touch; something entirely different. Even scaling from an existing ratio would make some apps work better or worse, because interface components would be bigger or smaller, depending on whether the app scaled up from the iPhone or down from the iPad, respectively.

All this is a very long way of saying that we’re going to see a big change in a certain type of iOS app—the one designed for the device. Pickford summed it up by stating his approach would no longer depend heavily on screen shape, and I’ve heard similar from other developers, both of apps and games (although especially the latter). In a sense, this could be a good thing—freeing up iOS from the constraints of specific screen shapes opens up developers to whatever Apple throws at them next and should also make apps simpler to port to competing platforms. But it also impacts heavily on those tightly crafted experiences that were designed just for your iPad or just for your iPhone. Having all the action take place only in the very centre of a screen, because a developer cannot guarantee what device you’re using, or, worse, carving out a viewport and surrounding it with a border, could cheapen iOS games and apps in a big way.

Perhaps I’m being pessimistic, but pre-iPhone 5, indies were already feeling the pinch. With that device and perhaps a new, smaller iPad to contend with, the shift towards more fluid and less device-specific apps seems inevitable.

Further reading: Standards guru and web designer Jeffrey Zeldman responds in Will the last digital canvas please turn out the lights?

Oh, Apple. Every time I think you’ve got your shit together regarding the App Store and not being jerks regarding blocking apps that supposedly ‘confuse’ users, you start being jerks. As reported by TechCrunch, your latest guidelines are worthy of a headdesk:

Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store will be rejected.

Note that this isn’t stopping people advertising apps within their own apps in the annoying way that pisses off users (like those wonderful splash screens for an entirely different app when you launch an app), but instead potentially stopping people providing apps that curate the App Store, in a way that’s actually useful to users.

Recent changes to the App Store have improved things a little on iOS devices, at least in terms of navigation. But Apple still relies heavily on charts (i.e. what’s popular rather than what’s actually worth buying), and those reviews that do lurk within app pages have about as much collective worth as the mutant offspring of Amazon product reviews and YouTube comments.

To be fair, Apple does at least attempt curation itself. Beyond the charts, there are new & noteworthy sections, along with app- and genre-specific collections that might help someone look further afield. But these are often arbitrary (it boggles the mind, for example, that no Llamasoft game has ever been displayed within one of Apple’s retrogaming collections) and, of course, they don’t have the value of third-party objectivity. It’s the equivalent of a music store providing their selection of what is worth buying, rather than a music review site, magazine or app doing the same.

It remains to be seen which apps will be effectively banned by Apple due to this rule, or whether, as AppGratis CEO Simon Dawlat optimistically opines, Apple will just shoot low-end copycats (PocketGamer.biz). But if Apple does simply tear down a sub-section of apps, those that assist users in buying great apps, and those that often drive traffic to indies, that won’t benefit App Store users, nor, in the long run, will it really benefit Apple.

Further reading: Who controls the App store? by Xiotex Studios.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has apologised for Maps. The response to his letter has been varied. Some have said Jobs would never have apologised (they’re wrong), and my Twitter feed was full of people claiming Cook wasn’t really apologising, or that he should have done something more.

I’d say anyone expecting some kind of grovelling apology combined with no positive spin whatsoever is being naïve, not only from an expectation standpoint regarding what Apple should or would do, but from what any company would do. What we got from Cook was instead a mostly unambiguous statement and apology, with a little added reasoning, and something that I consider a major surprise that few rival corporations would do.

At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.

The main apology. Right to the point, and admitting Apple fell short of the quality you’d expect. This is beyond what many companies would bother with.

We launched Maps initially with the first version of iOS. As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with even better Maps including features such as turn-by-turn directions, voice integration, Flyover and vector-based maps. In order to do this, we had to create a new version of Maps from the ground up.

More or less the “Google wouldn’t give us…” bit, but it outlines and confirms Apple’s reasoning. Fair enough, but I’ll bet Eric Schmidt wasn’t happy with this.

There are already more than 100 million iOS devices using the new Apple Maps, with more and more joining us every day. In just over a week, iOS users with the new Maps have already searched for nearly half a billion locations. The more our customers use our Maps the better it will get and we greatly appreciate all of the feedback we have received from you.

Outlining the fact not everyone thinks Maps is a disaster. From what I’m hearing, the experience isn’t globally awful, just massively inconsistent. So: a bit of positive spin, which you’d expect. What I’d never have expected is this:

While we’re improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app.

Reread that paragraph. There’s Cook, in a public letter, providing information about five rivals. I cannot think of anything similar from other tech giants. (If you can, let me know in the comments.) On Twitter, a couple of people noted Waze is one of the companies providing Apple with data, but I don’t think that’s really relevant. Apple’s essentially saying that if Maps is screwing up your experience, try an alternative. Of course, this in itself is nuanced: “Our platform has such richness that if you don’t like our solution, you can try another.”

One thought: had Google actually had its own Maps app ready at this point, would it have been included in this statement that’s now big news worldwide?

Everything we do at Apple is aimed at making our products the best in the world. We know that you expect that from us, and we will keep working non-stop until Maps lives up to the same incredibly high standard.

Here’s hoping, but I feel a little more optimistic about Maps now. Time will tell if Apple can deliver on this promise

I’ve twice written about iOS 6 Maps. Many people are finding them substandard, something Apple must now be very aware of; perhaps some people at the company even regret essentially saying on stage they were the best maps ever, versus showing a little humility, like the company did with Siri. (Jean-Louis Gassée has a great take on this in his most recent Monday Note.)

My thinking to date on all this has been to cut Apple a little slack, but only in the sense of Apple getting its shit together within the next few months. Maps are hard and they take time to improve, but certain things should be possible to update very quickly, if Apple throws enough people and money at the problem. For example, the UK’s regularly dreadful satellite photography surely isn’t an insurmountable problem that would take years to fix; similarly, cleaning up databases when it comes to POIs; also, sorting out whatever idiot algorithm determines priorities when your directions include a single name. (An oft-used example in the UK: directions to Luton helpfully sending you to Luton in Devon, a town that’s so prominent and important that it gets a two-line write-up in Wikipedia. For reasons unknown, Apple’s new Maps app doesn’t default to Luton in Bedforshire, a town with a population of 255,000, and and also home to an international airport that just a few people might need directions to.)

Shortly after Maps was released, I said we should maybe give it time, but Ian Betteridge argued that would be akin to the grading on a curve that Android often gets away with. He elaborated on his blog:

I’ve seen a few comments out there to the effect that actually people should remember this is the first release, that mapping is hard, that it’s not their fault Google wouldn’t give them maps, and therefore Apple should be cut some slack. To my mind, this is nonsense. It’s effectively grading Apple on a curve, giving them a pass to create something sub-standard because doing good maps is really tough.

His point was the customer doesn’t care about behind-the-scenes problems and Apple ultimately has no excuse for making the experience worse. At the time, I somewhat disagreed with the no-slack argument, but I’m now coming round to it, largely because some pundits and writers appear to have a level of cognitive dissonance that boggles the mind. The latest thing I’m seeing is that, hey, we don’t need Street View in iOS anyway. Why? Because we’ve got Flyover, which is much better.

This is clearly a ‘better’ I’m not familiar with. Flyover is without doubt fun. You can scoot about major cities, spin the map in 3D, and laugh when it all goes a bit wrong. Thing is, Street View wasn’t a gimmick—it was practical. You could use it to plan routes and check landmarks, making walking to or driving to a location easier. Maps are all about planning and directions, and Google Maps succeeds at both.

I decided to pluck a location at random, Forbidden Planet‘s Shaftesbury Avenue store in London. This, I figured, would be a fair test of the two systems, given that I already knew iOS 6 Maps had Flyover data for London. (Had I chosen my own home town, the test would have been a tad one-sided. There’s not—nor I imagine will there ever be—Flyover here. But at the time of writing, there also aren’t any remotely usable satellite maps—it appears to zoom in from a shot that’s not even detailed enough to show a nearby motorway.)

So, first up: Google Maps. My iPod’s still on iOS 5, and so I typed ‘179 Shaftesbury Avenue’ into the Maps app and fired up Street View. Helpfully, Google Maps immediately put me on the wrong street—Compton Street runs parallel to Shaftesbury Avenue. Oops. Google Maps isn’t perfect either.

I could have used the arrows to navigate around the corner, but I figured it’d be quicker to go back to the map and drop a pin on the road outside of the place I wanted to see. I could then fire up Street View from that location.

And here’s the view along Shaftesbury Avenue from where the pin was dropped. There’s plenty of detail just from this one shot that would enable me to figure out where I’m going. (Not standing right there in reality would be a good decision, however, unless the plan was to get run over by a taxi.)

Spin round and there it is: a little slice of geek heaven, with a handy crossing right next to it. When walking or driving, these visuals are hugely useful.

So, iOS 6. To the app’s credit, it at least got the location right, with more or less the same precision as Google Maps. I tapped Flyover and zoomed in as far as possible. The resulting view would be fine for planning some kind of invasion from the air of a comic-book store, but at this point I’d question its general usefulness.

Worse, the following image shows what Shaftesbury Avenue looks like. Clearly, the trees confuse Apple’s software, and the result is a street that has buildings with slowly melting roofs that’s infested with Triffids. And unless you own a helicopter and regularly parachute from it to locations in London when shopping, there’s no practicality to be had even if the trees weren’t there. The lack of detail means you simply cannot see landmarks from the point of view you have in a car or when walking.

To my mind, Flyover isn’t anywhere near a straight switch for Street View, and the worrying thing is that Apple probably won’t create something like Google’s solution. Right now, Flyover is merely an amusing toy for armchair tourism of select cities. It’s of little or no practical benefit, and it’s of no use whatsoever in finding your way to anywhere remotely obscure (unlike Google Maps, where you can see what a junction to a road in the middle of nowhere looks like, along with any helpfully odd-looking trees in the vicinity). Any pundits somehow suggesting otherwise either don’t use Maps that often for this kind of navigation or really need to share their helicopters with the rest of us.

1. Half the time when you ask for directions to a town or city, it’ll direct you to something else entirely. Comically, when I earlier tried getting directions to Truro, Maps assumed that I wanted to visit Richmond-based Truro Productions Ltd rather than a nice town in Cornwall. Doing that very American thing of stating a country after a town or city (e.g. ‘London, England’) always seems to work. However, if British people dare utter place names in that way, we’re legally obliged to punch ourselves repeatedly in the face until unconscious. (Excitingly, it also appears Maps’s idiocy is entirely random. Sometimes, it ‘just works’. Sometimes, it’s clearly had an appointment with a lobotomist.)
2. Type in a post code to find out where a building lives and Maps helpfully prunes this part of the address to five characters. So, instead of, say, GU16 7UJ, Maps will amend the address to cut off the last two digits. Occasionally, it’ll also helpfully round up or down the fifth digit, just to further confuse matters. Any guesses which country that rhymes with Invited Plates of Numerica uses post codes that have five digits?
3. Satellite photos of huge swathes of not-USA are akin to you being an idiot and walking right up to a wall in a mid-1990s PC FPS. It’s not so much “I can see my house from here” as “Why the hell has my town turned into a blurry mess of pixels?”

I don’t doubt mapping is hard, but Apple’s previous solution (i.e. using Google data) provided a robust and feature-rich experience for users. At best, Maps for iOS 6 is spotty and, apparently, just a tad US-focussed. For movie sales, that’s fair enough, but for maps it’s simply not good enough. Maps aren’t nice-to-have, but a crucial component of a modern mobile OS. This is worse than a MobileMe moment, and Cook needs to usher his team into a room, ask them what Maps was supposed to do, and then yell something along the lines of: “So why the fuck doesn’t it do that?”