Tim Cook apologizes to customers over Apple’s Maps controversy, recommends Bing and other alternatives - by aby benedict

Apple just published an open letter from Apple CEO Tim Cook explaining to customers that it “fell short” in delivering the best experience possible with the new Maps app. Within the letter, Cook noted the company is doing everything to improve the app. However, it recommended a number of alternative apps and web apps for users to try in the meantime. Among his recommendations: Bing, MapQuest, Waze, or the Google or Nokia web apps. Links in the letter point customers to the featured section for mapping apps on the App Store and another to the graphic above showing how to install the Google and Nokia web apps. The letter is currently posted through a link displayed prominently on the Apple.com homepage.

To our customers,

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tim Cook
Apple’s CEO

A Detailed Overview Of The Smartphone Market After iPhone 5 Launch [INFOGRAPHIC] - by aby benedict

The infographic, which you can see below, has plenty of other interesting facts and figures that you should definitely check out for yourself:

First iPhone 5 Benchmark Test Reveals Dual Core 1.02GHz A6 CPU, Faster Than Galaxy S III, iPad 3, Nexus 7 - by aby benedict

After AnandTech’s analysis of Apple’s A6 chip, Geekbench has now posted first benchmark test of iPhones 5. The total score result, which shows iPhone 5,2 model sporting a Dual Core 1.02GHz processor, comes in at an impressive 1601, which is faster than a number of high-end devices of today including Apple’s own 3rd-generation iPad, Samsung Galaxy S III, Nexus 7, HTC One X, to name a few.

Last week at the special media event held at the Yerba Buena center in SF, Apple didn’t give any specifics on their A6 chip. It was only yesterday when after deep analysis, a third-party site made known of the 1GB RAM and 1GHz custom Apple-designed ARMv7 processor in iPhone 5. The technical specifications page on the official apple site doesn’t even mention CPU details. This is probably because Apple believes more in overall performance and UX for the end-users.

Geekbench’s benchmark test for iPhone5,2:



In comparison, last year’s iPhone 4S A5 has a score of 630 while this year’s A5X in iPad (3rd generation) has a score of 790. These scores validate Apple’s claim of A6’s performance and graphics being twice as fast as all of the previous iOS devices.



What is more impressive is that according to this report, iPhone 5’s 1.02GHz processor is also faster than all of the top Android devices of today, including Galaxy S III’s Samsung Exynos 4412 1400 MHz (4 cores) which scores 1560, HTC One X’s NVIDIA Tegra 3 T30 1500 MHz (4 cores) which scores 1085, Nexus 7’s NVIDIA Tegra 3 T30L 1300 MHz (4 cores) which scores at 1591 etc. Benchmark scores of other Android devices can be seen in the table below:



Of course once the iPhone 5 ships this coming Friday, we will see many more thoroughly benchmarked and examined tests of iPhone 5 against the competing devices. But until then, it seems like the A6 packs quite a punch. Thoughts?