So the Waze deal seems like BS for now, but it also seems like Apple will have to make some acquisitions in the space going forward to better compete with Google here, no?

It's far easier for Google, Facebook, and Amazon to buy apps, designers, and developers (Sparrow, Sofa, etc.) than it is for Apple to buy/develop modern, robust, scalable services architecture.

Maps already has data sources, but Apple couldn't compile, clean, and verify them all into a great, customer facing Maps product. Likewise, Letterpress took down Game Center, Siri is still network bound and non-predictive, and iMessage and iCloud still feel like they go down more than they should. Add the aging WebObjects technology, and it seems like Apple's backend isn't getting the same forward-thinking attention their hardware an software are getting.

And that problem will be tough to fix, even with acquisitions.

This feels like Apple is chasing a red herring here while dragging along quite a sizeable albatross, if you'll allow me to mix my idioms for a moment. Even if Apple could snap its fingers and sign this acquisition tomorrow the integration of Waze's services would take an age while the competition continues to motor on over the horizon with new advancements in the location space.

I feel like Apple would be best served by writing a big check to license Navteq data to solve its short-term woes, which would let it shrug off that albatross and get on with the business of thinking long-term about making a smart acquisition or just building something internally. Yes, that's still helping a competitor (Nokia) but that's better than Google, yeah?

I agree re:Navteq Tim. Seems obvious, wonder why that wasn't step one given the fiasco level (public apology, etc).

Would Navteq data help at this point? They already have TomTom/Tele Atlas, Waze, and others. They may not be lacking for data, just lacking the skillset to transform raw data into a customer facing maps product.

Throwing more data at it could just result in worse aggregation, cleansing, and verification.

Like buying Waze or even TomTom, licensing Navteq would only work if they stopped doing the intermediation themselves and simply presented already processed data (like they used to do with the Google-fed maps).

But they seem to want to do the processing themselves.

I don't think Waze would have helped more than their Apple licensed data already does, except in terms of man power and skill to clean up data (like Rene is discussing).

I also don't find Turn-by-turn the more prominent issue in Maps. It's more so the lack of many POIs, lack of transit, and their mostly terrible satellite view. I think that Foursquare could help (in some regions) on the POI side.

Though I think a real investment should come in terms of acquiring or heavily licensing sufficient transit data.

Everything else is just cleaning up and making fixes to the general maps data. There's a point where throwing money at something won't help, and I think the lack of acquisitions means that Apple recognizes that.