131–140 of 201 posts
On google maps I can never find what I want. I thought it was because I've been using OpenStreetMap, and had gotten used to a different display style. Seeing a place once in OSM anywhere in the world, and zooming out from it to continent view, I can almost always find it again later. On Google Maps I always got lost. Now I finally get what the problem is.
Anyone done a comparison with Apple Maps?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For driving Google Maps getting quite bad. See this screenshoot: http://imgur.com/uPO8QJh This kind of crowded display is fairly common now. I use Here Maps now which is much better + I like supporting a second option to avoid one service getting 2 monopolistic. My theory of why google maps is getting worse is there must be designers dedicated to this that need to constantly look for 'new' things to add even if its t…
Maybe they are taking notes from Waze. Waze by default is so crowded your entire map is just icons of random stuff you don't care about. Then every once in a while half your screen is filled by an add that you need to dismiss, while driving, to see where you are going.
Google Maps, like several other google products (like Groups, even Search), has seen a constant degrade in user experience since 2005 or so. Maybe people forgot, but google maps was /blazing fast/ in the beginning. Nowdays, it brings my browser down to a crawl even before the images are shown. Maybe people are just stuck with this "google is the best" mentality, but this has stopped being universally true since many…
There's a broad trend of tech companies disrupting traditional industries and then making rookie mistakes and generally not living up to the standards of the tradition. Google, hire cartographers. Amazon, hire librarians and typesetters. Spotify, hire musicologists.
Why do you think they haven't?
I'm confused by the replies saying that more dense labels would somehow harm usability for driving or navigation. When you're driving, you know where you're going, the map knows where you're going, and it's easy to see the route you need to take. When you're not on a route, denser labels help you to orient yourself with the map and to know when to zoom into a particular location. That said, I also think the focus on…
I've noticed when purely following GPS directions that I can't remember how to get there, even after a few times following it. Knowing the area helps you take your own informed alternate routes, know what things are on the way that you might want to detour (oh, I needed to go to the post office anyway), recognize if the GPS is going to the wrong destination because of user error, etc.
I'm surprised the author didn't mention the main difference between paper maps and google maps. That is, google maps is interactive. With a paper map what you see is what you get. You had to cram as much information as it would allow. But this is not the case with google maps. You can zoom in, out, and anywhere in between. You can't compare the two based on the level of information displayed at one fixed zoom level b…
Interactivity is a failure state of software that could have predicted what the user wants from context and past behavior, and tailored the display and presented it to them without being asked.
"Further, the user might prefer to learn information while using her hands for other purposes, such as writing or eating or stroking a cat [or driving the car]. Each time software demands the user’s hands, this activity must be interrupted [at the risk of causing an accident]. Finally, the growing prevalence of computer-related repetitive stress injuries [and using smartphones while driving] suggests that indiscriminate interactivity may be considerably harmful in a literal, physical sense."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Finally I have an explanation to why GMaps have been annoying me so much. Especially driving country roads and having to zoom in to kite level in order to see the medium sized villages is ridiculous. Anyone know if Bing Maps is better?
I've been trying to form a habit of using OpenStreetMap recently (though not because of the article's subject), you could give it a try.
- OpenStreetMap / OsmAnd for general use (about 75% of the time);
- Google Maps for traffic info, street view and businesses (about 20% of the time); and
- Bing Maps for areal imagery (about 5-10% of the time).
Google Maps is always extremely slow, but their business listings are very comprehensive due to their extensive marketing, and traffic info and street view are also expensive things open source cannot really rival.
Bing Maps runs at the speed of light when zooming and panning around the map. So much better than Google Maps, but the map's quality is not great so I just use it for areal imagery (another thing OSM does not have).
OpenStreetMap is as fast as Bing Maps and its map quality is better than both google and microsoft if you disregard business listings (at least in western Europe and the middle of nowhere[1]).