Apple Quietly Fixes “Potentially Life-Threatening” Maps Glitch In Australia

By

Screen Shot 2012-12-10 at 6.02.04 PM

Apple’s Maps struck again this morning when it was reported that multiple drivers were being guided into the wilderness when searching for the city of Mildura. The local police deemed the glitch in Maps a “potentially life-threatnening issue” because the Australian wilderness is not exactly a safe place to get lost in. The temperature gets really hot and there’s no water.

Since the fiasco started circulating in the media this morning, Apple has quietly fixed the inaccuracy in Maps and started pointing users in the correct direction.

The Guardian reports:

The iPhone maker updated the given location on Monday following widespread coverage of the problem. A search for Mildura now points to the middle of the town in the state of Victoria. At the time of writing it also showed an incorrect location near the edge of the park called Mildura – but that does not show up in searches.

While Maps is still buggy in many other parts of the world, this particular example became a huge issue when a man was stranded for 24 hours in up to 46 degree Celsius temperatures. Several other drivers have been led off into Murray-Sunset National Park instead of Mildura. The park happens to be located more than 70 kilometers away from Mildura, and Apple has apparently just figured that out.

Apple can silently update its iOS 6 mapping database in the background, and the company has presumably been using all of its user-submitted complaints to make Maps better. The people who got a nice tour of Australia’s second largest national park would probably say that Apple isn’t doing enough to get Maps up to snuff.

In a recent interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook admitted that Maps was a screw up, noting that “we are putting the weight of the company behind correcting it.”

Source: The Guardian

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.