Apple hasn’t had the best luck in Australia when it comes to its Maps solution. The company and its program was castigated in December by a local police force in the country, which warned motorists to avoid using the app software after it led some drivers into what it deemed a “potentially life-threatening” situation — many drivers ended up in an isolated section of Murray-Sunset National Park rather than the city of Mildura 70km away.
Now, the Country Fire Authority (CFA) in Victoria is lashing Apple for persisting inaccuracies in Maps that it claims have caused some “dangerous” errors to arise in its FireReady brush fire awareness app, apparently due to many towns being listed in inaccurate locations in the software.
“Users report that towns are located on their maps at the center of the district rather than on the actual township itself,” an Authority spokesperson told the Sydney Morning Herald.
CFA said it had contacted Apple Australia “a number of times”, but the company “has not provided a solution” and has instead advised users to report inaccuracies via the Maps app, a solution that the CFA finds insufficient.
“CFA will continue to raise its concerns with Apple Australia, and so should users experiencing this issue,” the CFA spokesman said. “We would advise FireReady app users with iOS6 installed on their devices to disregard Apple Maps township locations and instead focus on street names and the location of incidents & warnings in relation to their GPS location.”
Of course, if all else fails, the app could always be replaced with Google Maps.