There's no question that Apple's attempt to become a full-fledged mapping company started off poorly. However, since that rocky launch, Apple has been making improvements and is now doing some hiring to keep things moving forward. According to a job posting on Apple's site, the company is looking to hire "ground truth managers" all over the world. These people would be tasked with testing new releases of Apple's Maps code around their specific regions, collecting ground truth data to analyze changes and make sure it corresponds with reality, and evaluating competing mapping products against Apple's own solution.

This worldwide ground truth hiring move comes about a month after Apple first announced a ground truth manager position open in Australia. This type of job is fairly typical for major mapping companies, so we're not surprised to see Apple hiring for these positions. It's doing what any good mapping company should — we just wish that Apple had made these hires a year ago when it was building Maps for iOS 6. The company could have saved some major face if it had some testing crews dedicated to catching the mistakes we saw last fall.