Stefan Mileschin

It is starting to look like one of the headline features bragged about in the iPhone 5 will not actually work in most of the world.

Apple has been telling the world about the maps in iOS 6 which claim to be a godsend for those who have lost their way. While many saw the Apple product as similar, and therefore an important counter to Google's product, it is turning out that the product is not up to snuff.

In iOS 6, Apple has switched off Google’s traffic, transit, or street view features, switching instead to its own traffic data, and adding turn-by-turn navigation and a 3D Flyover view.

This might work in the US, but in the rest of the world that Apple is trying to peddle its iPhone and iPads this means that most of the features will not work.

Transit information has been removed from 51 countries with 4.9 billion people and traffic information has been taken away from 24 countries. Streetview has been removed from 41 countries.

As The Understatement points out that means 63 countries with a combined population of 5 billion people will be without one or more of these features they previously had.

This means that Apple is delivering a snub to 70 percent of the world's population with the aim of buttering up its US markets with a half baked product.

The biggest losers are Brazil, India, Taiwan, and Thailand which, overnight, will go from being countries with every maps feature to countries with none of those features, nor any of the new features either. In short they would be crazy to upgrade to the latest version of the operating system as they will lose functionality which they have enjoyed since the iPhone came out.

Apple customers - who are probably already queuing for a product that will not deliver what is advertised in their country - should be used to it. This is exactly what Cupertino did when it released the iPhone 4S with its Siri voice activated service, which only worked in the US.

Apple has also fallen foul of regulators in Australia where it has been advertising its products as having 4G functions when these are not available.

http://news.techeye.net/mobile/apple...disappointment