181–190 of 326 posts
I’ve pretty much ditched Apple Maps and use the compass in my car and landmarks to navigate lol. It’s a lot of fun for me, using maps just ruins the fun of exploration.
Maybe it's just me, but I thought the point of having a nav app open was to tell you about traffic/detours, not because you need directions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a lot of ways, electronic maps are still inferior to the Triptik. Even the Rand McNally showed highway rest areas and picnic areas. The Triptik also showed gas stations. Electronic maps often lack this entirely, at least in easy form. The Triptik shows what you need to know while on a long motor trip. The electronic map emphasizes details I don't need. At a glance the paper map tells me whether a road is free limi…
Those two types of maps are targeting different groups -- paper maps targeting the somewhat advanced users who know the basic navigation and have little need to consult the legend. The electronic maps target much wider audience and can be dumbed down since people can interact with the map. Sure, the electronic maps probably can stuff more info to be shown at a glance, but my impression is that they chose not to.
Making the call on what is a “scenic route” isn’t something you can just pull directly from highway department data.
Anybody remember Triptiks from AAA? You'd go to a AAA office or call them on the phone, tell them where you were going, and in return you'd get a printed spiral top-bound pad with your trip broken down in to multiple legs, the roads/routes pre-highlighted, gas stops and prices estimated in, a list of sites for stopping off at, etc. All human curated and human annotated (the roads on your route were literally gone ove…
Anybody remember Triptiks from AAA? You'd go to a AAA office or call them on the phone, tell them where you were going, and in return you'd get a printed spiral top-bound pad with your trip broken down in to multiple legs, the roads/routes pre-highlighted, gas stops and prices estimated in, a list of sites for stopping off at, etc. All human curated and human annotated (the roads on your route were literally gone ove…
In a lot of ways, electronic maps are still inferior to the Triptik. Even the Rand McNally showed highway rest areas and picnic areas. The Triptik also showed gas stations. Electronic maps often lack this entirely, at least in easy form. The Triptik shows what you need to know while on a long motor trip. The electronic map emphasizes details I don't need. At a glance the paper map tells me whether a road is free limi…
Yeah, google is always going to be trash for anything that doesn’t align well with advertising. Better to show a Starbucks than a rest area, etc.
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OsmAnd is very good. You download maps for it. And OSM data in general is a great deal better at hiking trails than google maps. And it's good/useful to know that you can always try to use GPS even in airplane mode. Just GPS is recieve-only so it's passive (but the location service uses multiple sources of information apart from just GPS or GPS-like if it can.)
And Osmand does walking routes while offline which Google Maps does not.
Anybody remember Triptiks from AAA? You'd go to a AAA office or call them on the phone, tell them where you were going, and in return you'd get a printed spiral top-bound pad with your trip broken down in to multiple legs, the roads/routes pre-highlighted, gas stops and prices estimated in, a list of sites for stopping off at, etc. All human curated and human annotated (the roads on your route were literally gone ove…
Yes. I remember going into the AAA office with my dad before family vacations to pick them up. They gave you a whole pre-trip briefing too on current construction, tips and any issues you might encounter. While apps like Waze do a great job of getting you from A-Z they completely lack the contextual information about where you’re going, things to see along the way and other details. One really had to pay a lot more a…
Of course, that modern ability lacks the anticipation, excitement and celebration of the annual family trip experience that you talk about, and yes, a personalized physical map that not just aids your navigation to your holiday/vacation destination but later becomes a memory artifact/artefact when said road trip is fondly remembered and re-imagined.
We invent electronic replacements for things and processes without giving much thought to the positive aspects of the experience that we may wish to retain (or better: re-create) before replacing them. Naturally, the first iterations of the substitute will be lacking. Later refinements will be evaluated relative to previous versions of the electronic replacement, not the original experience, which is soon forgotten. That's why many electronic/automatic replacements are lacking: examples include manual maps versus car navigation systems, human layout creation versus DTP publishing, traditional printing versus print on demand, traditional slide photography and development versus digital photography. The new is not just a replacement of the old, it is different. But the new often renders the old uneconomical and makes it disappear, like it or not, even when they tell us that the new thing is "complementary" to the old. For better or worse, free market economy does not have a place for something _and_ its substitute, only the cheaper one of the two.
I would pay for a nicely printed and bound, personalized street map of a planned family holiday/vacation if the price was appropriate, and they did not ask me for the date and time of departure... ;-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a lot of ways, electronic maps are still inferior to the Triptik. Even the Rand McNally showed highway rest areas and picnic areas. The Triptik also showed gas stations. Electronic maps often lack this entirely, at least in easy form. The Triptik shows what you need to know while on a long motor trip. The electronic map emphasizes details I don't need. At a glance the paper map tells me whether a road is free limi…
>Mostly I'm surprised the electronic maps don't have these things after all these years. Maybe Apple will get them eventually. Google is busy stuffing ads into its maps. Yeah, google is always going to be trash for anything that doesn’t align well with advertising. Better to show a Starbucks than a rest area, etc.
Anybody remember Triptiks from AAA? You'd go to a AAA office or call them on the phone, tell them where you were going, and in return you'd get a printed spiral top-bound pad with your trip broken down in to multiple legs, the roads/routes pre-highlighted, gas stops and prices estimated in, a list of sites for stopping off at, etc. All human curated and human annotated (the roads on your route were literally gone ove…
Oh, yes! My Dad used to have these made for our summer road trips. I used to love pouring over the maps before the trip to get hyped up. Then, in the car, following along as we drove. I forgot about that till your comment reminded me. Thanks for the nostalgia!
Traditional paper maps or charts are not booming at all. The biggest producer of physical nautical charts has had to withdraw from the market as they have become unprofitable. The increased availability of good open geospatial data along with amazing free open source tooling has made making beautiful maps easier than ever. Tools like QGIS and blender are world class Maybe contentious but is it really a map if it's hu…
Map sales aren't booming any more than point-and-shoot camera sales. I would bet a month's salary that this is a submarine article: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Anybody remember Triptiks from AAA? You'd go to a AAA office or call them on the phone, tell them where you were going, and in return you'd get a printed spiral top-bound pad with your trip broken down in to multiple legs, the roads/routes pre-highlighted, gas stops and prices estimated in, a list of sites for stopping off at, etc. All human curated and human annotated (the roads on your route were literally gone ove…
In a lot of ways, electronic maps are still inferior to the Triptik. Even the Rand McNally showed highway rest areas and picnic areas. The Triptik also showed gas stations. Electronic maps often lack this entirely, at least in easy form. The Triptik shows what you need to know while on a long motor trip. The electronic map emphasizes details I don't need. At a glance the paper map tells me whether a road is free limi…
- What road am I on? What town am I in?
- and other flavors of "where the hell am I, anyway?"
- This is especially annoying when on the phone and the person is asking where you are, and the best you can answer is "Google says I'm X minutes away"
- instead it puts the name halfway along the road, which is out of view...
- Some of the true nav systems (Garmin, etc) do this better.