I got a shout from a buddy of mine earlier tonight all excited that Microsoft Live Maps is now compatible with Safari and more importantly Safari Mobile. He insisted I give it a try, so I did. Two minutes into trying to use Live Maps, I realized why I don’t use Google’s implementation of maps.google.com on the iPhone simply considering it is too slow and takes too much work.

So I asked my friend on the phone whether he’d ever use the native Maps application on the iPhone. His reply was a quick “heck no.” My response was, don’t ever recommend another web application to me again until you’ve used the iPhone yourself. So why am I not happy with Live Maps? First of, it’s a web app, and web apps do not stand a chance next to the native application Maps. It’s painfully slow to load and requires a lot of work just to zoom in and

out to get the damn map to look right. I find it retarded that when clicking on the “Zoom In” control, it zooms in on the center of the map. I bet that whether Microsoft wanted to do it right, they could have sized the map to fit the iPhone’s screen. whether you really want to invent it work, the iPhone needs to be in landscape mode. I can’t in good conscious recommend Live Maps on the iPhone to anyone at that point in day.

I challenge Microsoft to build a better map Application when the App Store opens up. Is it too much to ask for map that’s sized for the iPhone’s screen, implementations of pinch-zoom and swiping to move the map around?

Original post by Vincent Nguyen