How did Apple screw up the maps app this badly?

I am normally not a complainer, but rather appreciate great technology.

However, I am shocked beyond description about how badly Apple screwed up the maps application in IOS 6.

The maps application is the by far the most frequently used and most useful iphone application for me.

I rely on it all the time. It WAS so incredibly easy to use, and almost always dependable.

Yes, turn-by-turn directions would be nice, but not at the cost of screwing up so many other critical features.

I have now had 2 extremely frustrating experiences.

1. The other night, I was driving home from work and using the maps application to route to a store. I was using the voice instruction mode. There was heavy traffic so I wanted to zoom out / around to look for alternate routes. Well, this is almost impossible to do, and furthermore, there is much less accurate and detailed information about traffic conditions. This would have been a piece of cake with the old maps application.
2. Yesterday, I had to make a trip to Pacific Sales in San Jose.I tried "Pacific" with the mapped zoomed to the general area, and it could not find it.Then I tried "Pacific sales", again no luck. Its an appliance store, so I tried "appliances", and again no luck.

Finally, I had to log into the web, go to google maps, and find it there.

It was slow, but it worked!

1 month ago, I had the highest confidence in Apple due to their track record of deliverying great stuff that works and is easy to use.

I would never have considered an android phone.

However, this problem with the maps app has so shaken my confidence in Apple, that I will go today to look at a Samsung Galaxy III.

Maybe its not going to be my thing, but I hope Apple realizes how big they screwed up.

The Apple of Steve Jobs would never, ever, ever have let this happen.

The old Apple would have stayed with Google Maps for another year, and made this new maps app better, more reliable, and more user friendly than Android BEFORE releasing it. It would have been revolutionarily good and would have surprised us with how good it was.

I really truly love Apple and its products.

But this is a really bad mistake and I am so fearful that its an omen of whats to come in future from Apple.

I would not be surprised if this very deeply damages Apple at a time when the competition is getting tougher & tougher.

Of all the functions on the Apple Iphone, the maps are the heart and soul. Apple is probably right to go its own way eventually, but not like this!

It is just going to drive people into the arms of Android.

I am just curious, did Apple actually test this thing thoroughly before releasing it?

I mean, it took me only a few days to figure out this thing is total crap.

How did Apple not know this (which is a very scary thought), or maybe even more scary, maybe they did know but feel they have enough market power to get away with it? I can't think of any other explanations. So, which is it? Either way, its very bad news for Apple fans.