On Apple Maps and Vogelstein’s Insider Book ‘Dogfight’

Tech-minded folks with a turkey-filled belly and an easy chair, or just a few extra hours on their hands this weekend, may want to settle in with Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution. Written by Fred Vogelstein, a contributing editor to Wired, the book has been receiving lots of press.

My eye was caught by a piece Dogfight by Nathan Heller in the New Yorker captured me with its first sentence, though here’s Heller’s complete (great) first paragraph:

“One Tuesday in January, 2007, Steve Jobs, the C.E.O. of Apple, sat backstage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center and prepared for the most audacious bluff of his career. The iPhone was about to be unveiled, but the device was not remotely ready for the public eye. Its external casing didn’t always fit together properly. Curious things would happen when you pressed the letter “E.” Jobs had been rehearsing for five days straight, but almost every time something went awry. The unveiling would be broadcast live, a bid for dazzling immediacy which now seemed extremely ill-advised. A few high-ranking Apple engineers and managers had concealed Scotch about their persons, and, as Jobs strode onstage with the phone, they took to drink.”

I read this shortly after a friend relayed a story about some colleagues who last weekend had to escort a group of VIPs to an event they were the stars of. The VIPs were put into two cars and the address, 100 3rd Ave., in Manhattan, was given to two drivers, who punched it into their phones.

The cars wound up at different locations. Google Maps sent one driver to 3rd Ave between E 13th and E 14th Streets. Apple Maps sent the other to what turned out to be W. 3rd Street, below Washington Square.

Some days it seems Apple is still bluffing. Bluffing and winning. Happy reading.