I recently installed iOS 6 on my iPAD and was impressed with the speed, battery life improvements and the upgrades. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed to find that Google Maps and YouTube were no longer available because I use them often. This blog describes what I did to address those missing apps.

The Apple sanctioned replacement for Google Maps (Maps) was unusable for me. The traffic congestion reporting, the street name reporting and the inaccurate directions were the key problems. On the positive side, the 3D view was nice.

I worked around the Maps problem by switching from Safari to Chrome and using Google Maps as a web app. I had not used Chrome on the iPAD before and was impressed with it’s speed. I also liked the combined URL/search bar. I am now using it for all of my browsing.

Unfortunately there are no Apple sanctioned replacement apps for YouTube. I worked around that by installing the Jasmine app. It works perfectly well. I can also access YouTube in Chrome with reasonable performance.

I really hope that Apple makes Google Maps and YouTube available again as native apps for those of us that really like iOS, Google Maps and YouTube.

In some ways this may be a cautionary note to Apple. Not only did I find workarounds but I chose not use Apple Maps and actually stopped using Safari as a result of this upgrade.

If you have other suggestions or ideas for workarounds, please send comments.