Example, or not, they wrote an application to the API and worked with Google to perfect the application. The Apple-proclaimed reasoning was that doing so allows them to give the user greater control than is possible through the web interface alone.

My experience with the application on the phone bears that out. When you step through the travel instructions, the map zooms out and in as needed (it just seems to get the level of zoom correct at each step without my need to pinch-zoom to adjust it), and it gracefully slides the map around at the same time.

Switching to the list view and back to map didn't require any hit on the edge network, it cached the whole thing first. In a browser, it would hit up the network again.

So I find Apple's claims to be sound, that it needed to be a separate application to deliver the experience.

I expect that Google and Apple will work together when the API for maps changes to avoid breaking it.