Enlarge / Devices running the iOS 10 beta. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Public betas are now a given for major and minor iOS and macOS releases for Apple, but that wasn’t the case just a couple of years ago. The reason? Apple Maps, according to a Fast Company piece with quotes from Apple CEO Tim Cook, Software Engineering SVP Craig Federighi, and Internet Software and Services SVP Eddy Cue.

To recap, the Maps app in iOS switched from using Google’s data to Apple’s in iOS 6 back in 2012. The transition did not go well; the reception from the press and the public was bad enough that it prompted a rare apology and led to the departure of longtime iOS software head Scott Forstall.

“We made significant changes to all of our development processes because of [Maps],” Cue told Fast Company. “To all of us living in Cupertino, the maps for here were pretty darn good. Right? So [the problem] wasn’t obvious to us. We were never able to take it out to a large number of users to get that feedback. Now we do.”