I think you're completely right. For me, maps is absolutely the most important feature of my phone, followed by texting, then web, then voice. Bing isn't a bad

I think you're completely right. For me, maps is absolutely the most important feature of my phone, followed by texting, then web, then voice. Bing isn't a bad runner-up to Google in a lot of ways, but it is clearly still a runner up. That last quality hurdle requires a lot of foot soldiers on the ground collecting data. Google has such a small army. Microsoft doesn't--at least not at the scale Google does. Apple's release was a facepalm for several reasons, not least of which was their omission of public transit routing. As an urban planner, I was incensed enough to drop IOS as my last phone upgrade in favor of Android. Moreover, I would have liked for Apple to double down on open map data by creating the software and supporting infrastructure to collect geospatial data from all those portable, network-connected sensors they keep selling. I'd have put up with an inferior Apple map product if I could rationalize it in terms of them helping build OSM up.