231–240 of 476 posts
The only thing I use Google Maps for at this point is checking peak times (for the gym) and, rarely, if I have to give someone else public transit route information
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed - I'm curious how they are able to globally deploy so quickly where others (apple / tom tom) take FOREVER to update. Do they just have someone ground truth with satellite and street view? They do have that data for most of the corrections I make (which are frankly rare).
Waze has volunteer local editors - I've hit "report map issue" and gotten messages from them with questions about what I was reporting. I wonder if Google leverages them internally.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know that got me thinking, biking rules vary far more than for cars. Depending on your location, pedestrian traffic, streets, street traffic, etc. It might be best for you to be on the sidewalk. Or maybe you should instead be on the road since the road is only 25mph and there's pedestrians on the sidewalk. Maybe there's a bike lane, maybe there isn't. Maybe a town has a law saying you HAVE to bike on the road. Ar…
Well, I'm quite happy with Openstreetmap's directions for biking (I mostly use OSMand, but there are other apps/routers). They have elevation, private/public roads, road surface, bike lanes, etc, and routers can take it into account. Of course, that doesn't really take into account varying laws, but that might be reflected in the maps themselves (private/public places, bikes allowed/disallowed, etc). See also https:/…
They use the designations “town” and “city” as a way of ranking places in terms of importance.
Here in the UK that designation is almost arbitrary.
There are several large towns with greater population and navigational importance than surrounding smaller cities.
All the commercial map providers, including Apple Maps, grok that. Only opensteetmap seems still rigidly to the town < city thing. Would be much better if they could use population instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google maps near me is riddled with advertisements now. Promoted pins or whatever they call it. Of course, it’s for stores that I won’t ever have a need to visit.
The final straw that got me to ditch android was Google sending me push notifications asking me to review places I've been to, via maps. If you want reviews, pay secret shoppers. And if you want me to use your app, don't make it painfully obvious you're spying on exactly where I go and when to do what.
I've had the location history disabled since it was possible to disable it, but I've since disabled all the notifications.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the user has an easy choice. Monopolies are not a problem in themselves, it’s when that monopoly is leveraged to crush competitors out of the overall market.
I seriously don’t understand why this sentiment(not yours) is so prevalent on HN. If we want competition in the tech sector, it seems to me that government enforcement of modulization would only hinder such competition. Why should a large corp’s web dev team care about mobile safari if they can just write on their page, “it seems you are using safari on mobile, we recommend downloading mobile chrome(AppStore hyperlin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's worse for consumers in the end though? One profession missing in the parent comment are the researchers innovating on differential privacy. Apple has taken great pains to figure out ways to improve their maps without storing massive amounts of private user data, to the extent that they split routes in half, fuzz addresses, and analyze the start and end of trips independently. There's an argument that Google ha…
Google didn’t try and raise the price, they demanded user data in exchange for access.
I'd been using Waze for a couple of years, and initially it was far superior to Apple Maps. But a few months back, I got really frustrated with it because it led me down some closed roads & ended up doubling my commute time home from work that day. I'd also been noting how off it was on its estimates on when I'd get to my destination. And I was also perturbed by it not knowing the back street entrance to my work site…
The problem is that having the speed traps and radar sites on there is just too crucial to give up. I've never found a replacement that does that.
I'd been using Waze for a couple of years, and initially it was far superior to Apple Maps. But a few months back, I got really frustrated with it because it led me down some closed roads & ended up doubling my commute time home from work that day. I'd also been noting how off it was on its estimates on when I'd get to my destination. And I was also perturbed by it not knowing the back street entrance to my work site…
I seem to remember someone posting their results of testing Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze for ETA accuracy, and what you describe was also what they found: Apple Maps was the most accurate, Google Maps was optimistic, but accurate, Waze basically reported the best case scenario. Edit: found the original [0] I've long thought that Waze creates the illusion of saving massive amounts of time, when its benefits are m…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't that kind of self-defeating, though? Like the ACA without the individual mandate? The only way this works is if people use the apps on the iPhone. There's nothing stopping you from using Google Maps on an iPhone but, in order for the tech to improve while remaining strong with privacy, is for Apple to utilize their existing technology. Also, I disagree that it's anti-competitive. Users are always allowed and ab…
"Users are always allowed and able to switch to another device/ecosystem." Google would like you to have a discussion with the EU on their behalf.
I'd been using Waze for a couple of years, and initially it was far superior to Apple Maps. But a few months back, I got really frustrated with it because it led me down some closed roads & ended up doubling my commute time home from work that day. I'd also been noting how off it was on its estimates on when I'd get to my destination. And I was also perturbed by it not knowing the back street entrance to my work site…