>We built our own [map app] because we didn't want to depend on another company for a critical application.
I believe, in retrospect, Apple's Maps.app will be considered in the same league as Safari. It may have had a rougher start than Safari, but I think it's a great program.
But it's different for maps, it's not the programming that was at fault, it's the cartographic data.
And to continue the parallel, it would have probably been better for apple and everyone else if apple had just used the gecko engine for their browser.
> And to continue the parallel, it would have probably been better for apple and everyone else if apple had just used the gecko engine for their browser.
In what way?
WebKit seems to have enjoyed some success since then... since Chrome toppled both Internet Explorer and Firefox.
It might have been better at the time to use gecko, but apparently building a new rendering engine had enough advantages that Apple decided it was worth it. In hindsight, WebKit was the right call. It's powerful enough to run advanced desktop browsers, yet lightweight enough to power (almost) the entire mobile web.
