iOS is by no means feature-complete. But it’s getting harder to identify the low-hanging fruit — the things you just know Apple has to be working on, not just the stuff you hope they are. The biggest one left is mapping. Today brings a report from 9to5Mac that Apple is set to switch the back-end data in iOS’s Maps app from Google to its own mapping services; John Paczkowski confirms it, quoting a source who claims the new Maps will “blow your head off”.

I’d camp for it. Easy. I feel like it’s a space that could be much improved–even over Android Maps, which are phenomenal.

I have come to the conclusion that what has made Apple so different is that instead of having a profit motive at its core, it has something else entirely. Many big companies like to pretend this is the case — “we put our customers first” — but very few truly live by that mantra. When the pressure is on and the CEO of a big public company has to choose between doing what’s best for the customer or making the quarter’s numbers… most CEOs will choose the numbers.

Apple never has.

As paradoxical as it is that the pursuit of profit is what causes the long-term failure of companies, I believe that Apple’s lack of focus on profitability has actually made it one of the most successful companies in the history of capitalism.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Schmidt’s argument—a highly cogent and persuasive piece of propaganda—is dead-on: In the narrative arc of Google’s story, Siri is indeed a significant development. In fact, Siri is arguably the most significant development in Google’s story since, well, the advent of Google.

Sure, this story includes Facebook, the social web juggernaut that Google failed to see charging towards it on the distant horizon, and the Bing/Yahoo nexus that Microsoft assembled at magnificent cost. But in the retrospective view of of 3-5 years from now, these developments—while major—will likely pale in comparison to that fateful April day when Apple acquired Siri.

This is because Siri transforms computers from “passive” participants in the search process to “active” ones and in so doing urinates all over Google’s model. Instead of taking queries and then passively spitting out 10 blue links—which you then have to mine for the correct information—Siri actively goes and gets the correct information, herself.

Well, I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it does seem logical. Very interesting.