iOS 6 launched yesterday, with one very notable absence: Google Maps. As part of its fallout with Google, Apple ditched the big G’s mapping service in favour of its own homecooked version.

But the new service isn’t going down well with people who’ve tried it.

Apple’s Maps app is a hotchpotch, with info provided by TomTom NV and OpenStreetMap. And people are complaining it feels like a rush job.

“Apple believes that they can deliver a better experience for customers than Google,” Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research, told Bloomberg. “But in the short term, Google has a better mapping application, and iPhone customers will suffer.”

Ian Betteridge, ex-editor of MacUser, goes one step further, calling it “the most half-cooked piece of software that Apple has released”. Once outside the M25, satellite images become “blurry, pixellated, useless nonsense”. In some cases, the data are 15 years out of date.

It’s all the worse because of how reliant we’ve become on using our phones to find places.

Maps does give you Flyover, which lets you adjust the degree of 3D-ness. It’s a pretty nifty way of finding your way around. But what you gain in fancy 3D skills you lose in usability: Google Streetview is gone, as is its Traffic and Transit functions. So if you’re using public transport, you’ll have to rely on the timetables.

Quite an oversight. Or is it actually a canny move by Apple? A few months ago Gizmodo speculated Apple could be leaving out public transport info in order to encourage app makers to get on the case. The more apps are out there, the more Apple will coin it. So while Maps might not be too polished at the moment, it could all fit in with Apple’s master plan.

How have you been getting on with Maps? Let us know in the comments below.

Amazon’s Appstore (motto: “No space! You can’t touch us!”) has been grating on our nerves since March last year by just sort of sitting there offering amazing free apps and exclusive game launches that we can’t get our hands on in the UK without some very underhand business involving proxy servers and black magic.

Worse, the lack of an Amazon Appstore meant that the necessary infrastructure for the Kindle Fire wasn’t in place, so Amazon’s wildly popular iPad alternative couldn’t get a UK or EU release either.

At least one of these things is about to change as All Things D reports that Amazon is planning to launch the Appstore in Europe later this Summer. No dates have been announced, but the Book/CD/Everything shop is said to be talking to developers about getting their apps listed on the EU version of the store.

Once the Appstore launches with a library of Android apps, the stage should be set for Amazon to release the Kindle Fire with the necessary approved Android apps and access to Amazon’s media library and storefront. The tablet has proven hugely popular in the US, where it has been a solid competitor to Apple’s iPad and is far and away the most popular Android tablet – even if it one that Google has nothing to do with.

[source: All Things D]

The official, free ad-supported National Rail Enquiries app for iPhone and Android 2.2 and up finally patches a glaring hole in National Rail’s service, and we’re relieved to report it does it rather well (Before you ask: no, the popular UK Train Times app that’s been out for years on iPhone wasn’t official, it just used National Rail’s logo until February this year, when the Association of Train Operating Companies asked it to stop).

Further reading:

• The best Android apps of all time: Top 100
• The best iPhone apps of all time: Top 100
• The best Windows Phone apps of all time: Top 100 

From the app, you can check departure boards and plan journeys (even offline), set favourite routes, get disruption updates and even receive push alerts if something’s gone horribly wrong on your commute (You can set the parameters for this in the settings).

Those fond of a kip can also set an alarm to go off when you reach your stop, while route planning in the capital also takes into account Zone 1 Underground stations and the Docklands Light Railway.

We’ve given it a quick test on Android, and it’s a snappy, clearly designed app which does just about everything you’d need it to. The app’s design is consistent across both platforms (which does mean the back and search buttons on Android phones do nothing), and adverts are unobtrusive. Admittedly, this does make us wonder who’d choose to upgrade to remove them for the exorbitant price of £4.99, but hey, your loss.

Windows Phone and BlackBerry users, sadly, are left out in the cold with this one, but fret not: against all the odds, National Rail’s mobile site is actually rather good, and efficient, and free. Who’d have thought?

Spotify’s CEO and Founder Daniel Ek hosted the conference in New York to announce that third party apps from the likes of The Guardian, Rolling Stone, PitchFork and Last.fm, will be entering Spotify Software via a bespoke app store.

Apps will be made using JavaScript and run within Spotify via HTML 5. Once downloaded, they’ll appear tucked away in the left panel in line with your playlists, maximising to fill the middle space when in use. It’s up to developers as to what they can do with this tech, but apps at launch revolve around reviews and ticket buying, as well as an app dishing up song lyrics to accompany tracks from TuneWiki.

Ek said that he’s wanted “Spotify to be like water: available everywhere, seamlessly,” but that just being ubiquitous isn’t enough; by becoming a platform it can offer users much more in terms of music discovery.

We’re not sure if altering Spotify from a background app to a platform itself is entirely necessary, but it’ll be interesting to see which apps will change our mind on that one. Will you use Spotify apps? Or is the big green music machine trying too hard to echo the likes of Apple and Facebook?

First off, you’ll need Google Chrome – at this stage YouTube’s new look is only available on its parent company’s browser, as you might expect. Got Chrome? Navigate to www.youtube.com and do the following.

• Click View > Developer > JavaScript Console
• The console should enter at the bottom of the screen
• Paste this into the console: document.cookie = “VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE = ST1Ti53r4fU”
• Press enter
• Reload YouTube
• Close the console

As you should be able to see from our gallery, it’s a fairly easy process to coerce YouTube into its new look. The redesign integrates social sharing with Facebook and Google+, as well as generally tightening up the look to fit more in line with Google’s recent aesthetic shift.

Let us know what you think of the new look YouTube below.

The enterprising chaps at XDA Developers have just released an APK of the Android Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard, which requires no root, and should run on any Android phone running 2.2 or up.

We’ve just given it a whirl on a Google Nexus S, and it seems a great improvement on the already excellent Android 2.3 keyboard. The keys look ever so slightly larger, noticeably less laggy, and you can now long press on the auto-suggestion words to see many more instead of having to drag across right.

Check out the best Android keyboard apps of all time here

It’s too early to say, but perhaps one of the biggest improvements can be found in the settings: the Android Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard bases its auto-corrections and suggestions based on the previous words you type: it’s context sensitive, in other words.

While this is an unofficial app, there’s only one caveat we can see: the microphone button is missing, presumably since only Ice Cream Sandwich phones can make use of the new realtime voice dictation it offers. You can download it now at the link below: just turn it on under Language & Keyboard in settings.

(Android Market via XDA Developers)

It’s localised for whatever country you’re in, so you’ll see prices in pound sterling. Microsoft has kept schtum on the details but we’ve been playing around with it  this morning. There are no real shocks: nice clean design, screenshots and reviews, though no indication of download numbers as provided on market.android.com, or videos of apps.

Perhaps more of a surprise is that several high profile launch partner apps are already available for download: if you’ve got Windows Phone Mango (coming soon!), you can download WhatsApp and the Guardian news app, which offers each editorial section as its own live tile with scrolling headlines, right now.

Let us know how you get on in the comments.

Out Now | £free | Microsoft

Remember that porn bunker we told you about yesterday? The one set to keep the internet awash with smut even after the prophesied 2012 apocalypse? We’ve just been passed the blueprints for it. These guys are taking the end of the world very seriously indeed.

We’d already been told to expect a fully stocked bar and performance stages. What we didn’t expect were hydroponics, gun racks, or wall-mounted disaster monitor screens. Less surprising, we’ll admit, are the co-ed glass showers, rotating stage with “emergency pole access” and access to “private fertility chambers”.

Pink Visual, the adult studio behind the forward-thinking leering lair, hope to break ground soon, and complete underground construction by September 2012. Their grand plan is that “the bunker will be fully operational well before the end of the “Great Cycle” tracked by the Mayan Calendar Stone.”

Get a good look at the blueprints below. Just don’t ask us how you book yourself a room there…

However, what’s slightly strange – and potentially a lot scarier – is the fact that, according to the crowd, David Cameron is one of the lucky few who is considered preferable to the Führer. Still, only just…

Have a go here, or click through our gallery for a couple of surprise ones you might not have guessed. Wave goodbye to getting any work done today!

BREAKING: Sure, Apple’s AirPlay is an easy way to stream music from your iPhone to your speaker system. But can it let you turn your lights on and off, adjust your heating and scan CDs with NFC? No? Google’s new Android ecosystem extension, Android At Home, can. Ladies and gentlemen, you are going to like this.

Demoed at Google’s I/O conference in California today, Android At Home is a new concept, letting you control devices in your home from your smartphone, akin to various apps and gadgets we’ve seen over the last few years . The first light bulbs which will support it will be made available from Lighting Science later this year.

But it goes one further: in a tech demo the company calls Project Tungsten, Google showed how you can stream to supported stereos from within the Google Music app, akin to how AirPlay works on iOS devices. The company also showed how the speakers could scan a chipped CD and instantly add that disc’s songs to your Google Muisc account and start playing in seconds.

There’s no word on when this technology will roll out, but we’re very, very excited by the possibilities, so we’ll be following this one closely for you.

Out TBC | £TBC | Google