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Kent mistakes on new iPhone maps update

00:01, 25 September 2012

New iPhone map of Medway
New iPhone map of Medway

by Alan McGuinness

Rochester Cathedral is over the bridge in Strood, the white cliffs of Dover are inland and Sittingbourne's been wiped off the map!

Well, that’s according to the iPhone’s new mapping software anyway.

In fact, places around Kent have had a geographical shake-up under Apple's latest software.

The amusing and baffling mistakes have come to light as iPhone users around the world updated their phones with the latest version of Apple’s iOS6 software.

The application also comes with the iPhone 5, the company’s latest smartphone, which was released last week.

Apple has developed its own software after ditching Google Maps, using data from a variety of different firms, including TomTom.

But users have complained the application is riddled with inaccuracies.

We tested the software to see how good a job it does mapping the county's key locations and landmarks, and there are numerous errors.

The iconic white cliffs of Dover have undergone somewhat of a transformation - now coming to rest several hundred metres inland - behind some houses!

And Sittingbourne is no more. Where it used to lie on the map is the borough of Murston.

White cliffs are moved inland according to iPhone maps.
White cliffs are moved inland according to iPhone maps.

The small village of Shipbourne appears to have headed south for the winter!

Meanwhile, in Medway, the Central Theatre in Chatham has been placed among trees in a Strood car park.

Allhallows golf club has also been given a name change, and is now known as "Allhollows golf club".

The council’s offices at Gun Wharf in Dock Road, Chatham, don’t exist according to the application.

Apple has said it is working to improve the software.

Spokeswoman Trudy Muller said: "We are continuously improving it, and as Maps is a cloud-based [web-based] solution, the more people use it, the better it will get.

"We appreciate all of the customer feedback and are working hard to make the customer experience even better."

TomTom said last week it "stood by the quality" of the maps, and was "more than willing" to help Apple improve the application.

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