"Although #ios6 may say differently, we can assure you that the Tacoma Narrows Bridges have not melted," the Washington State transportation Department tweeted along with a picture of its hugely distorted spans on Apple Maps.
Those Amazing iOS 6 Maps
Many of the map miscues were highlighted on social media sites, including a Tumblr page titled "The Amazing iOS 6 Maps."
"Palace of Justice in Vienna is labeled Palace of Justice Nurnberg (which is in Germany, over 500km away)," one contributor wrote in a caption for an Apple Maps image.
"Sweden's second largest city, Gothenburg seems to have vanished," another caption read.
The maps disaster marred the image of a company which seemed to have the Midas touch for hugely successful new products like the iPhone and iPad.
"Apple is taking a painful public beating right now on its new mapping app," said Greg Sterling, a consultant with Sterling Market Intelligence, on the Search Engine Land blog, adding that it might cause some people to hold off upgrading their software or buying the new iPhone.
"It's curious that the product is so glitch-ridden. One would have assumed that the company had some indication of these problems from developers who've had the new OS for several months."
Sterling said Apple should have been able to avoid the problem "if it had positioned Maps as a beta product and solicited crowd-sourced feedback accordingly. In the absence of such messaging, everyone had inflated expectations."
