By core, I mean that it's critical to have control of them for success/viability of the device (ie. strategic components). I certainly do think that maps are i

By core, I mean that it's critical to have control of them for success/viability of the device (ie. strategic components). I certainly do think that maps are important, but I don't think it would matter which mapping application is used on a device or think that it's critical for Apple to control that application. The UI, settings, notifications, phone app, SMS app [maybe], location services seem like just about the only core bits. Treating a giant, very complicated application built by another company as core means that you're probably signing up to build that functionality in the future. As Apple is doing... In hindsight, I suspect Apple would have been happier had they launched with Google Maps, then had gotten Garmin, MapQuest, Bing Maps, Yahoo Maps, etc to build great mapping applications. I don't know how building a mapping infrastructure is a good idea for Apple [but perhaps I just haven't thought about it enough yet].