One user’s experiences with Apple’s new iOS 6 Maps app have led him to claim that local search is “broken.” After installing the seemingly final Gold Master of iOS 6, Josh Carr discovered point of interest database limitations attributed to Apple’s use of Yelp for business searches.
Now that Google is no longer associated with Apple’s Maps application, Carr reports users can search for businesses in one of three ways: business name, address, and Yelp category.
Numerous searches revealed major issues, Carr claims, including a search for “iPhone repair” that only returned two results; both were companies that “illegally use the trademarked term ‘iPhone’ in the name of their company on their Yelp record,” even if the term wasn’t actually in their business names. Additionally, Yelp’s database isn’t as large as Google’s, and searches must now be more exact in their wording to yield proper results.
Despite the addition of major new features such as turn-by-turn driving directions, Siri integration, and some 3-D mapping capabilities, Carr concludes that iOS 6 Maps is “a tremendous step backwards,” particularly for local point of interest searching. [via TUAW]
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