It's not really jumping on the bandwagon when the product clearly isn't very good. I am glad you find it works well though. Maybe there is hope for the rest of us.
What I liked about the way this article was written was that they acknowledged that the old iOS app powered by Google was never a true navigation app. It was just a map. Most of the articles out there simply ignore this fact.
There was NEVER a built in turn by turn voice navigation app in iOS. If you wanted voice navi for driving you had to go with a third party app.
This is why I didn't use the old Maps app and why I spent $$ for the Navigon iOS app on my iPhone 4. The old Maps app was USELESS as a standalone navigation tool. Sure you could plot out a course before you leave and study the map but if the directions were going to be that simple one wouldn't need a navi anyway!
Certainly texting and driving is dangerous, but how much more dangerous is it to have to keep glancing down and scrolling in the old Maps app while driving?!? Perhaps a larger 8.5x11" map printout with the route traced with yellow highlighter would be safer than having to keep looking down and refocusing on the tiny written instructions at the bottom of the screen on the old Maps app...
Now with the new iOS6 Maps app powered by TomTom there is finally FREE voice turn-by-turn navi in iOS.
Is it better than the voice navi Google Maps App on Android? No. But again iOS never had THAT app. This is precisely what most of the other articles neglect. The writers probably dont realize this because they never used the old Maps app!
Comparing the old iOS maps app to the new app is like comparing an old AAA Triptik flip book (remember those?) to a TomTom GPS.
And for those who were lamenting the loss of the old iOS Maps app Street View functionality, starting this week you can get it on the web version of the Google Maps (maps.google.com on your iPhone's browser).
As far as POI's are concerned I've entered literally 50-60 POIs around my area into the new iOS6 app on my iPhone 5 and the old iOS5 app on my iPad. The only inaccuracies I've seen in my area with the new iOS6 app are:
1) Shops in a mall where the pin is dropped in the parking lot or on the edge of the street where the physical address indicates rather than the actual store inside the mall.
2) Two pins adjacent to one another for a single business listing. One for the actual front entrance and the other for the business' parking lot down the block.
Actually while doing my comparison testing I found a significant mapping error on the old Google powered iOS app where it pinned my Country Club as being in a forested area adjacent to the golf course and plotting out driving directions into a neighborhood BEHIND the course. This route would bring me closest to this forest but nowhere in the viscinity of the actual Clubhouse or parking lot.
Meanwhile the new iOS6 app correctly pinned the clubhouse and gave directions right to the parking lot. This club has been at this location for well over 20 years.
(Or perhaps the Google maps was predicting the future and was showing me where my sliced tee shot was going to end up!)
