由于iOS 6中新地图应用程序的缺陷和不完整性，苹果一直受到客户的抨击。现在，苹果首席执行官蒂姆•库克（Tim Cook）发表了一封***，承认新应用程序“没有达到”公司的高标准，并承诺公司正在“做一切”。令人难以置信的是，库克在信中还花了很大一部分时间建议使用第三方替代应用程序，客户可以“在我们改进地图的同时”使用这些应用程序——他的建议包括必应（Bing）、Mapquest和Waze的应用程序，以及诺基亚（Nokia）和谷歌（Google）的网络应用程序。当然，“地图”目前建议使用第三方替代方案来替代丢失的公交路线，但这与苹果建议完全替代其新服务的做法有些不同。

“这给我们的客户带来了挫折，对此我们深表歉意。”

库克在信中还指出，苹果正在“竭尽所能让地图变得更好”，他还表示，拥有新地图应用程序的1亿iOS 6用户将有助于改进服务——这与苹果发言人在iOS 6发布后第二天发表的评论如出一辙。

对于一家大公司的首席执行官来说，提出第三方解决方案作为自己服务的替代方案，是一个相当史无前例的举动，而苹果如此迅速地站出来为这样的情况认错，也是很少见的。早在2007年，史蒂夫•乔布斯（Steve Jobs）就曾写过一封***，就iPhone上市不到3个月就降价一事向早期用户致歉，公司还向iphone4的买家提供了免费**壳，这些买家对iphone4备受争议的天线有问题，但这仍然是对ios6首要功能失败的大胆宣告。我们希望这个异常坦率的苹果能够用行动来支持自己的话，并且能够很快将改进后的地图产品推向客户。

库克声明全文如下。

At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.

We launched Maps initially with the first version of iOS. As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with even better Maps including features such as turn-by-turn directi***, voice integration, Flyover and vector-based maps. In order to do this, we had to create a new version of Maps from the ground up.

There are already more than 100 million iOS devices using the new Apple Maps, with more and more joining us every day. In just over a week, iOS users with the new Maps have already searched for nearly half a billion locati***. The more our customers use our Maps the better it will get and we greatly appreciate all of the feedback we have received from you.

While we're improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app.

Everything we do at Apple is aimed at making our products the best in the world. We know that you expect that from us, and we will keep working non-stop until Maps lives up to the same incredibly high standard.

Tim Cook

Apple’s CEO