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I'm 180 degrees out from Gizmodo on their opinion of the two map systems... I vastly prefer the clean look of Apple's maps in those screenshots.

And Kutcher actually does bear a vague resemblance to the early pictures of Jobs, back in his younger days before he doffed his jeans and t-shirt in favor of a more professional image... but does anyone else find it at least a little bit disturbing that Google image searches for Steve Jobs also bring up bunches of images of Kutcher now?

zarmanto, on 15 June 2012 - 05:18 AM, said:

The clean look might be nice, but informationally it's pretty useless which is the important thing with a map. The Apple map only shows street names for what I suppose it considers the "major" roads, which really isn't very helpful when you're trying to figure out where you. And the Apple indicator for one-way streets is pretty easy to miss; I actually had to go look at the screenshots again to see if Apple was even indicating one-way streets. One tiny blue arrow on a street that might span the entire height of the screen? They really think that's a good idea? Form over function is a terrible map design philosophy. Despite the amount of data being displayed, the Google map still manages to avoid feeling cluttered, whereas the Apple map leaves me wondering how I turn on the rest of the information so I can really use it.

George76, on 16 June 2012 - 04:46 AM, said:

I suppose our expectations are different. I hated the Google Maps app on my iPhone, because of all the very basic navigation features it was missing -- and it was made all the more egregious by the fact that Google included those features on the Android version of their map app. I went in search of other options, and have been happily using Waze for quite some time now. It's not perfect, but it at least has the most important functionality that I wanted.

That's my baseline, and here is what goes on in my head when I look at this new iPhone Maps app from that point of view: Waze is similarly spartan, and I've had no problem with that, because Waze adds detail to the map as you zoom in -- and it also auto-zooms when you slow down while driving, so the added detail is there when I need it, and absent when it would otherwise only clutter up the screen. (I totally disagree with you about those Google Map screenshots not being cluttered, by the way.) So my expectation is that these still image screen shots of the new Maps app are leaving out that part of the story.

As an aside: I'm also curious about what Google's next move is going to be, after iOS 6 is released. Are they just going to let Apple walk away from the table... or are they going to release a separate version of their iOS app, to try to compete with Apple for our eyes?

In any event, we'll find out all of these details for certain after iOS 6 is released, won't we?

zarmanto, on 16 June 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:

It's not really Google's Maps app on iOS, it's Apple's Maps app using Google's map data. So Google has no control over whether it did or didn't have more navigation options.

Maybe the new and improved Maps app will have all of those features you love about Waze (I doubt it), but until it's demonstrated that it does, I'm left hoping Google is busy working on a standalone Google Maps for iOS. I don't want an empty map that makes navigation harder.