Could Apple have actually known about the deficiencies in the new iOS 6 Maps app well ahead of its launch? That's what six developers are claiming in a new report detailing how faults in Maps were called out months before its release.

Cnet reported on Tuesday that six developers whose apps rely on built-in iOS Maps claim they have been complaining to Apple about the problem since the initial beta was released back in June -- but those bug requests, emails to Apple employees and developer message board posts went ignored.

"I posted at least one doomsayer rant after each (developer) beta, and I wasn't alone," one developer with a trio of apps in the App Store recanted. "The mood amongst the developers seemed to be that the maps were so shockingly bad that reporting individual problems was futile. What was needed wasn't so much an interface for reporting a single point as incorrect, but for selecting an entire region and saying 'all of this -- it's wrong.'"

The story is the same for five other developers contacted by Cnet, who claim their valuable input on the situation fell on deaf ears at Apple.

"During the beta period I filed bug reports with Apple's Radar system (notorious for being ignored), posted on the forums several times, and e-mailed multiple people within Apple's MapKit team to voice our concerns," a second developer added.

Perhaps more damning, this second developer actually did receive a reply from an Apple employee, who claimed their issue was "well understood" and confirmed that they were following the correct procedures for filing complaints -- but that there were no updates on the situation.

"This has been a frustrating experience for us and we don't care where the imagery comes from, we just would like our customers to be able to have the same experience within our app when they update from iOS 5 to iOS 6," the developer concluded. "Instead, the OS upgrade broke some of the features we built within our application despite being told that only the imagery would be swapped out."

Apple CEO Tim Cook promised improvements to iOS 6 Maps were forthcoming almost two weeks ago, but mapping experts have already gone on record claiming there is "no easy fix" for the situation Cupertino has created.

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