Mark Garrison: Today is Michal Habdank-Kolaczkowski’s birthday. He wasn’t expecting a gift from Tim Cook. Habdank works for Waze, one of the navigation apps Cook recommended. And thanks to Cook’s big apology:

Michal Habdank-Kolaczkowski: It’s gonna be a record-breaking day for us. No question about that.

Waze, and that's W-A-Z-E, already has a five-star rating in the App Store and claims 25 million global users. But a shoutout from the head of Apple, doesn’t hurt.

Habdank-Kolaczkowski: We know that people like us, but to get validated from Tim Cook, that was really cool.

Waze, MapQuest, Bing and others will likely benefit from Apple’s map mishap, says tech analyst Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies. But he’d rather see Apple restore Google’s maps.

Roger Kay: It really should not have taken away something that really worked and given users something that didn’t work. And to just say I’m sorry, you know, here, try these, I don’t think is really enough.

Kay says some customers will switch to Android phones to get Google Maps. Danny Sullivan keeps track of all this as editor of Search Engine Land. Don’t forget, he says, Google Maps was far from perfect when it came out. And it’s going to take Apple time to catch up.

Danny Sullivan: What they’re gonna have to do is just as quickly as possible to improve the mapping quality that’s out there. And unfortunately that’s not gonna be a quick process. It’s gonna take years.

Years that other map providers will spend cashing in while Apple finds its way. In New York, I'm Mark Garrison, for Marketplace.

gettingthere wrote:

fvwazing wrote:This week, Waze is the #1 navigation-map in the AppStore in 28 countries.

So is this going to create yet another round of Waze infrastructure issues?

gettingthere wrote:

fvwazing wrote:This week, Waze is the #1 navigation-map in the AppStore in 28 countries.

So is this going to create yet another round of Waze infrastructure issues?