Map Kit currently only has support for reverse geocoding (coordinates to address), not forward geocoding (address to coordinates). I see another SO post mentioned this, and a few people posted their own solutions to the problem, but those answers are over a year old.
Is there still no standard solution to this (either from Apple or a robust, well-maintained library that keeps up with the APIs)? Is the best approach still to roll your own solution using the Google Maps APIs? I’d think this is a common enough problem that there would be something out there…
Unfortunately, that is still the case and the answers you mentioned are still the most relevant. I agree with you that it’s a bit surprising this is the case, despite so-called licensing issues that make adding forward geocoding support to MapKit difficult.
I’m adding this link just in case you might have missed it, however. It’s a good start if you want a nice Objective-C wrapper over Google’s API:
http://blog.sallarp.com/ipad-iphone-forward-geocoding-api-google/