This is a thoughtful, non-judgmental analysis of the design of Apple Maps and Google Maps, running on iOS.

Millions of people have done 3rd party application design. If you expand the pool to people who have sketched out app ideas, the number is probably closer to tens of millions. But how many people have designed 1st party apps? Ones that come on the device rather than being a download? I’d wager the number is less than a thousand.

To count this number, you count Google, Apple, Microsoft, plus companies like Blackberry and Samsung, each with their own design teams. And even at large companies, the design teams aren’t very large. No where near as large as the engineer corps. There’s just not that many of us. And as someone who’s been in this tiny club, let me tell you, it’s absolutely nuts.

See, as a first party designer, you don’t get to do whatever you want. Because everything you do is imitated (whether explicitly or implicitly) by potentially millions of other designers and developers. And you need apps on your platform to be coherent and follow certain rules of the road.

Fantastic read.