Apple's Maps Tilt in Strange Directions  —  Last week, I used Apple's new Maps app on my iPhone to guide me to a speaking engagement.  —  The GPS navigation screen was clean, bold and distraction-free.  The voice instructions spoke the actual street names.  The prompts gave me just the right amount of time to prepare for each turn.

On the Timing of Apple's Map Switch  —  Let's assume the timeframes being reported about Apple and Google's maps license are accurate.  The various reports coming out yesterday and today are in general agreement in this regard, and my own sources (who in this case are, as they say, directly familiar with the matter) back this up:

Apple's A6 CPU actually clocked at around 1.3GHz, per new Geekbench report  —  As the initial wave of iPhone 5 reviews hit, it looked as if Apple's dual-core A6 processor was sporting a clock speed of around 1GHz.  We saw reports (and confirmed with our own handset) ranging between 1.00 and 1.02GHz …