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Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

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Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#141

Post by noir_lord »

bobbyi_settv wrote: post #140
noir_lord wrote: post #59

I was trying to find out how much it costs to use Google Maps in a business product (SaaS) I literally could not find a price without the "give us your details and our sales team will be in touch" which to me translates as "We need to work out exactly where to stick the hose to suck out the money". Compare that with this https://www.mapbox.com/plans/ . I know who will be getting my money in the near future.

Have you looked at OpenStreetMap? Is there anything in particular that it lacks compared to Mapbox?

Commercial backing.

I know that sounds somewhat daft but I like been a paying customer as it means I can get some support plus the documentation for mapbox is lovely as well.

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#142

Post by nailer »

Google knows:

- Home is in London

- Work is in London

- My most recent restaurant reviews are in London

- My IP address is in London

- My location, if you ask my browser, is in London

Stop showing me a map of the US when I open Maps.

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#143

Post by [deleted] »

Silhouette wrote: post #138
sanderjd wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a large monitor, but I have no idea what you mean by "push a web browser hard". Chrome's UI is great because it recognizes that what is important in a browser UI is the content area, not the, well ... chrome. I have no concept of what you could possibly be doing with the menu so often that it bugs you. A little more on topic: one person's "crappy hipster redesign" is another person's "wow this is so much bette…

Chrome's UI is great because it recognizes that what is important in a browser UI is the content area, not the, well ... chrome. Sure it is, as long as you only want to look at one page above the fold. But sometimes I want to navigate between pages, and at that point I do want my bookmarks bar displayed. Sometimes I want to scroll a page, and at that point I do want scrollbars that work the way my system is setup ins…

[deleted]

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#144

Post by markbnj »

eropple wrote: post #135
bluecalm wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google somehow manages to make UI's worse and worse as the time progresses. Gtalk was nice, was turned into unusable mess which is Hangouts. Youtube got worse with comments and annoying force feeding of real name policy. Maps got way worse after the recent upgrade for reasons you described. GMail as well made some anti-user changes (like for example being unable to log-in from different account if there is a cookie f…

What's unusable about Hangouts? I think it's a better experience on both mobile and web. And Adium still works just fine with it for person-to-person IM.

I find it a mess, personally, at least on the desktop. I have no real complaints about the mobile version.

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#145

Post by tolmasky »

Pacabel wrote: post #27
joel_perl_prog wrote: post #6

Is this where we get to complain about how horrible Google Maps suddenly is? Because wow. I can speak about this. It's terrible. First and foremost, and they have their "reasons" of course, but my Samsung Rant (yeah just a feature phone) always had great maps. Just a simple Java app, built on the maps API. Well that doesn't work anymore. Like, nothing. Google basically says "Get an Android phone, sucker." F U Google.…

What you're saying is absolutely correct. I actually had to use Bing Maps today to look up some directions because the new version of Google Maps was pretty much unusable. As for why UX disasters like this can happen, I think it generally comes down to one thing these days: "hipsters". Those of us who've been in industry for a long time have no doubt seen this happen before. A relatively well-established product has…

This comment also servers as a short history of the development of iOS 7.

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#146

Post by shyn3 »

kevrone wrote: post #97
joel_perl_prog wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I hear ya. Whoever guided this Titanic into the iceberg...well he ain't no Steve Jobs. That's for sure. It's hard to overstate how just plain awful Google Maps is now. It's amazing, in a way. I literally cannot understand how so many smart people can, all together, fail to observe the obvious. Manifestly obviously just shit awful. To observe this one only needs a few seconds with Google Maps. A few minutes cemen…

I've been bitching and moaning about the new g-maps for so long! And this thread makes me feel...vindicated? I guess? Too bad I'm still stuck with it. The funny thing is that it's possible the UI could have been screwed while keeping the search stable, but as the article points out, the search is killing me. It's Apple Maps-ish in a way. I mean, if I'm zoomed in to a particular level and I do a search, there's a good…

Click on the ? at the bottom right, then select Return to old Google maps lastly click on the classic yellow ribbon which appears at the top asking to remember your preference.

6 more months of classic maps then they will probably phase it out, sadly.

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#147

Post by bluecalm »

eropple wrote: post #135
bluecalm wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google somehow manages to make UI's worse and worse as the time progresses. Gtalk was nice, was turned into unusable mess which is Hangouts. Youtube got worse with comments and annoying force feeding of real name policy. Maps got way worse after the recent upgrade for reasons you described. GMail as well made some anti-user changes (like for example being unable to log-in from different account if there is a cookie f…

What's unusable about Hangouts? I think it's a better experience on both mobile and web. And Adium still works just fine with it for person-to-person IM.

It loses messages all the time. It also sometimes pastes fragments of old messages in the middle of the conversatation Two things GTalk never got wrong which are pretty crucial for messaging service. The UI.. it was a total mess when they introduced it (lack of statutes, difficult to see who is available etc.) but those I have to admit improved recently.

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#149

Post by growt »

eropple wrote: post #135
bluecalm wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google somehow manages to make UI's worse and worse as the time progresses. Gtalk was nice, was turned into unusable mess which is Hangouts. Youtube got worse with comments and annoying force feeding of real name policy. Maps got way worse after the recent upgrade for reasons you described. GMail as well made some anti-user changes (like for example being unable to log-in from different account if there is a cookie f…

What's unusable about Hangouts? I think it's a better experience on both mobile and web. And Adium still works just fine with it for person-to-person IM.

For me it's the fact that my android phone notifies me about a new chat 5-10 minutes after I finished(!) the conversation on my desktop (gmail, webclient). It's really annoying. My phone beeps, I think: "Oh a new chat", look at the phone, "oh, it's just that thing from 10 minutes ago".

Re: Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

#150

Post by nextstep »

I'm glad tha Apple maps is steadily improving. There needs to be competition so that free services will compete for users by improving the user experience.

I think iOS 8 will include major updates to Apple maps that will integrate transit directions. Apple recently bought the mapping company Embark along with a few other transit-related acquisitions.

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