iOS 6 map mess was no big surprise to Apple

After users this week discovered glitches in Apple's update to its mobile operating system -- the first to include the company's mapping technology instead of Google's Maps app -- the conventional wisdom had it that Apple acted in a very un-Apple-like manner by pushing live an obviously defective product.

On the surface, the episode also made for an intriguing story line: With Steve Jobs, the micromanager par excellence, no longer around to obsess over the smallest detail, might this constitute a first small weakening of the Apple juggernaut? In the year since Tim Cook became CEO, Apple watchers have peered closely for any signs of slippage under new leadership, and perhaps this was a harbinger of trouble at America's most highly valued company.

No doubt the images popping up on the Internet of misnamed cities and misplaced landmarks don't comport with the usual narrative surrounding Apple, a company that's enjoyed approving media coverage for metronomelike execution as it's redefined standards of excellence in its smartphone and tablet computing platforms.

Now we're seeing how this iOS 6 map mess is an embarrassment for the company. Was it a surprise out of the blue, and will somebody's butt wind up in a sling as management performs the necessary postmortem?

Since Apple rarely comments about its internal processes, it's tempting to take creative license and speculate on how Apple managed to tolerate the delivery of such an inferior app in iOS 6. But the story is likely quite straightforward.

Apple could have kept Google's more reliable and mature mobile mapping app, but it made a strategic decision about something it needed to own and monetize. Put another way, getting rid of Google Maps was more important than delivering a less-flawed Apple Maps app and dealing with the grumbling.

Make that a lot of grumbling. And ridicule.

But how long is that going to last? Many may remember the heart attacks over "Antennagate," when some owners of the then-new iPhone 4 complained about weak or lost signal strength when they touched an area near the device's antennas. That also was supposed to be the end of the world as we know it. Nowadays it's just a footnote and Apple's shares are hovering near an all-time high.

And just as with Antennagate, Apple knows that it can commit resources to fixing the problems and count on the goodwill of its loyalists. The latest evidence: Across the nation people queued up outside Apple stores on Friday as the iPhone 5 went on sale. Why does anybody really need to do that? They don't, but this is like Woodstock.