It's very easy to be racist amongst all this and say, 'well what do you expect from a maps-app made in a nation where purportedly 1/5th of its adult citizens can't find their own country on a map of the globe'. But not only is that racist and over-stereotypical, it ignores the fact that Google is also American and imo they did a great job.
In Apple's defence, I think a major contributing issue is that Google has had years to refine and improve its maps software. I do still remember the non-descript blurry images from the early days of Google Maps and Google Earth, and I remember that in the UK, only the main cities were rendered as anything but indecipherable blobs. The pressure Apple was under, in order to be seen as successful, is that right from the start their maps software had to be seen to be at least as good as what Google already had. And obviously, it wasn’t going to be, as has been proved to be the case. But surely Apple must have known the risks.