Drivers in Australia were stranded in a national park in Victoria state for a day without food and water after being led astray by Apple’s iPhone mapping application, according to police.
Maps on iPhones with the iOS 6 operating system list the northwestern Victorian city of Mildura in the middle of the Murray Sunset National Park about 70km away, state police said today in a statement.
In some cases, motorists were stuck for as long as a day and walked long distances to get phone reception, police said.
“Police are extremely concerned as there is no water supply within the park and temperatures can reach as high as 46 degrees, making this a potentially life-threatening issue," according to the statement.
E-mails seeking comment from Apple were not immediately returned.
Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook apologised in September for the map software that has been criticized for flaws including misrouted directions and inaccurately located landmarks. Google's maps were on previous iPhone models.
When launched in September, Apple’s maps placed a standard airport map symbol on the spot of Airfield in Dublin, a 35-acre site that is home to a city farm, gardens and a café, while Apple also managed to move Dublin Zoo to Temple Bar.
"We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better," Mr Cook said at the time.
Apple fired the manager responsible for its mapping software seeking to win back the trust of users.
Eddy Cue, who took charge of map software, is racing to turn around the troubled service. He is seeking advice from outside map-technology experts and prodding maps provider TomTom NV to fix landmark and navigation data it shares with Apple.
Apple has been working to fix the mapping mistakes, focusing first on some of the most glaring flaws. The satellite imagery over the UK has been improved and labels for popular US landmarks such as the Washington Monument have been corrected.
The new version of Apple's iOS mobile software removed Google's maps app, which had been built into iOS since the iPhone's introduction in 2007, in favour of its own. Apple's programme added new features such as turn-by-turn navigation and fly-over views of landscapes. IOS software runs iPhones and iPads, which compete with smartphones and tablets that run Google's Android operating system.
Bloomberg