311–320 of 374 posts
Meanwhile... MapKit.js has “a free daily limit of 250,000 map views and 25,000 service calls” https://developer.apple.com/maps/mapkitjs/
If I can't use it on the desktop, though, it's not much good to me. Edited to answer daveidol's question due to ridiculous HN rate-limiting: Apple doesn't license Apple Maps for anything other than their own mobile platforms as far as I can tell. It can't be used as a general-purpose Google Maps replacement.
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I think if you tried using gmaps for navigation you’d find it to be a far superior to those devices. Does your TomTom tell you “turn into the driveway after the Vitamin Shop”? Because gmaps does.
I have used google Maps for navigation. It's not all that much better than my Garmin, at least not in my area. Even in downtown Manhattan the Garmin worked flawlessly. And Garmin units have had natural directions like that for four or five years. But I find it more of a hindrance than anything. I would rather hear "Turn right onto Wellington St" than "Turn right at the Starbucks", especially because the Starbucks is…
If flawlessly defined sending one to the closed street and putting one into a two hour long traffic jam because it has no real time data feed, then sure maybe it is flawless. But this is 2019 and not 2009.
Our Google Maps bill went from ~$100k per year to $380k per year as a result of these changes. Needless to say, we're moving over to Mapbox. What Google seems to miss is how this will affect customers' receptiveness to other Google products in the long-term. Having pulled the rug from under us once, there's no way we could consider e.g. a migration to Cloud in case the same happened again (where moving to a different…
Google seems to launch a product, see if it dominates and then monitorises it or drop it like a stone. But offering a free product, advert free, building up customer base for years and then flipping the switch - has become the norm. What they seem to be gearing towards more and more, is offering customers subscription deals to opt out of adverts etc. Pretty genius really from a company/marketing perspective and equal…
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It's not free and installed by default on every android devices ? You mean, I can buy a subscription and not rent the service with my search history ? Where's the sign-up button ?
There are tons of viable competitors to google maps, even on Android, last time I checked. They all have different monetization strategies, and all provide good enough turn by turn directions. I regularly use Here WeGo for its offline support. Sygic is probably still fine. I think Sygic moved to a freemium model, and I get the impression Here is subsidized by luxury car manufacturers. Yelp crushes google maps on sear…
Not even in the same ball park. Yelp's search for example does not understand that there's a RIVER between Brooklyn and Manhattan. So when I'm in Greenpoint it says there's something right there, in Manhattan when I want something local.
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FYI, if you are using an android, you can try google maps go which is designed to run on devices with limited memory [0]. [0]: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/7566112?hl=en
Thanks, I remember seeing this before but assumed it was a junk copy-cat app. The list of features it doesn't support is exactly the same list of things I don't care about. Nice! I just installed, and it seems to be a minimal app using a chrome wrapper. So it's basically a webpage... I will have to see how its navigation works.
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"Pay for no ads" has failed with almost every attempt. Even Google has made products to do this that haven't succeeded.
It sure works well with YouTube.
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Ugh. In it's core Maps.me might be a good app. But it's sooo full of tracking stuff [1]. And I'm not even sure exodus catches all of them :-/. There's a fork on F-Droid just called Maps, which removes all those trackers and works really well. [2] Unfortunately there's currently an issue with downloading the maps data, which makes the app currently unusable without manual workarounds. [3] The other option would be OSM…
Off-topic, but this was my first time hearing about Exodus and I spent quite a bit of time on there. How is it possible that Facebook has zero trackers? https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/71538/
For those other apps, they leak the tracking to 3rd party services. That's what those trackers are.
I can't stress enough how much of a bad idea this is. I was stunned when a few days ago I was looking up something on Google Maps and started seeing advertised locations/suggestions. Even though I love the product and have been a fan of Google products for the longest time, their current strategy of monetizing everything they can is very off putting. The direction Chrome is taking is also concerning. Don't know what…
Why should they offer a free maps service? They are a business with shareholder responsibilities, not a charity, and maps must cost them a ton of money to operate.
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I’d strongly recommended putting future efforts into Open Streetmap instead - they have a fantastic set of data and tools and are usually (in my experience) more accurate and updated more quickly than Google.
Open Streetmap doesn’t build laser scanning drones, or fleets of connected 360 camera vehicles, or the tech and infrastructure to do the mapping. SOMEONE has to build all of that. It can’t be free. If it’s govt funded, then there WILL be corruption, scams, and it’ll be run as well as the DMV.