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Paper map sales are booming

wsj.com

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Re: Paper map sales are booming

#71

Post by petodo »

jmkb wrote: post #12
rr888 wrote: post #4

Went hiking while relying on a phone app. Offline, it cached the map no problems, until a few hours in when the TTL must have been triggered then everything disappeared. Bought a real map soon after.

Use an app that permanently downloads maps -- I like Mapy.cz and Organic Maps. And bring a waterproof phone case, an external battery, and a charging cable. And also bring a waterproof paper map because it's lighter, easier to read, more resilient, and more fun.

+1 for mapy.cz for hikers, they use OSMaps, but have definitely more hiking trails than osmand or maps.me and better readable

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#72

Post by petodo »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #46
rr888 wrote: post #4

Went hiking while relying on a phone app. Offline, it cached the map no problems, until a few hours in when the TTL must have been triggered then everything disappeared. Bought a real map soon after.

Try Osmand ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OsmAnd ).

or even better Mapy.cz, better interface and better curated hiking trail data than osmand/maps.me

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#73

Post by wwweston »

eldaisfish wrote: post #28
kypro wrote: post #20

Something I find really fun when traveling in the car with kids is to give them a paper map and ask them to plan a route a for us to get to our destination. Then when you're driving ask them to follow along and give the directions. Obviously they can't be too young and they're not going to be perfect, but if you have a child around 7-13 they'll probably find this quite fun. Being able to use a map is one of those ski…

an interesting thought experiment is to ponder just how many skills are being lost due to technology. I know how to read a map and how to find rough compass bearings but i was never in a situation where i needed either skill. Could i manage without GPS - probably but i’m not confident. If GPS died tomorrow because of a solar flare, would the younger generations manage?

I think GPS is best thought of as "directions as a service" (demand defaulting to JIT).

What would probably happen is that people would start asking for / giving directions again; my impression is that maps have usually been secondary to this ad hoc social process of informal directions, and it would probably re-emerge.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#74

Post by capekwasright »

Finnucane wrote: post #36
joshstrange wrote: post #2

> His customers, he added, aren’t just looking to maps for directions, but as inspiration for future trips or even as art worth hanging. I think that alone accounts for the vast majority of this increase. The article throws that in as a minor detail but I'd bet money it's the only reason. Of course you don't get as many clicks for "More people are buying maps as art". 2 of the 3 examples of maps they give at the end…

Down the street from my office is a store that sells maps as art. Old maps, new maps, and transit memorabilia. One of the advantages of a digital map is that it always up to date, but that also means it can never be a historical document, the way an old map can be. For myself I have a pile of bike maps, that I admit I don't use as much as I used to (partly because I have all my regular routes in my head now). The nic…

Ward Maps in Cambridge, MA?

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#75

Post by pdntspa »

kypro wrote: post #20

Something I find really fun when traveling in the car with kids is to give them a paper map and ask them to plan a route a for us to get to our destination. Then when you're driving ask them to follow along and give the directions. Obviously they can't be too young and they're not going to be perfect, but if you have a child around 7-13 they'll probably find this quite fun. Being able to use a map is one of those ski…

The flippant attitude that people have towards map-reading today is appalling. Maybe its the eagle scout in me but how can someone NOT want to learn to read a map? It isn't even that hard! What happens if your device fails you?

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#76

Post by davchana »

kypro wrote: post #69
eldaisfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an interesting thought experiment is to ponder just how many skills are being lost due to technology. I know how to read a map and how to find rough compass bearings but i was never in a situation where i needed either skill. Could i manage without GPS - probably but i’m not confident. If GPS died tomorrow because of a solar flare, would the younger generations manage?

My GF has been telling about how there's a lot kids at her school that don't know how to tell the time on analogue clocks anymore. She says it's because kids don't interact with analogue clocks much anymore and Covid lockdowns meant that a lot of kids never learnt it in school either. So apparently there is now a generation of kids who are around 10 - 12 who have no idea how to read the time from an analogue clock.

One of my memory is to learn reading time on analogue watch from my uncle as a kid.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#77

Post by ben7799 »

I'm totally hooked on digital navigation but one thing I've noticed is it takes me longer to learn an area to the point I know my way around if I use digital navigation.

There are times digital navigation is a million times better. I remember getting lost in the boroughs of NYC a few years before smartphones hit the world. It was very difficult to have the right paper maps in your car for a place like NYC.

But in more rural travel it didn't really matter.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#78

Post by MengerSponge »

rr888 wrote: post #4

Went hiking while relying on a phone app. Offline, it cached the map no problems, until a few hours in when the TTL must have been triggered then everything disappeared. Bought a real map soon after.

MapOut for iOS is my favorite hiking map app. Excellent offline maps, and it's easy to import GPX files for new trails.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#79

Post by wyre »

wwweston wrote: post #73
eldaisfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an interesting thought experiment is to ponder just how many skills are being lost due to technology. I know how to read a map and how to find rough compass bearings but i was never in a situation where i needed either skill. Could i manage without GPS - probably but i’m not confident. If GPS died tomorrow because of a solar flare, would the younger generations manage?

I think GPS is best thought of as "directions as a service" (demand defaulting to JIT). What would probably happen is that people would start asking for / giving directions again; my impression is that maps have usually been secondary to this ad hoc social process of informal directions, and it would probably re-emerge.

I don’t know if this is true for older generations, but for myself and many of my zoomer and millennial friends barely know street names making giving or receiving directions much harder.

Personally I rarely rely on turn-by-turn navigation but instead look at the map before hand and take a mental map of the directions to get there.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#80

Post by Shared404 »

pdntspa wrote: post #75
kypro wrote: post #20

Something I find really fun when traveling in the car with kids is to give them a paper map and ask them to plan a route a for us to get to our destination. Then when you're driving ask them to follow along and give the directions. Obviously they can't be too young and they're not going to be perfect, but if you have a child around 7-13 they'll probably find this quite fun. Being able to use a map is one of those ski…

The flippant attitude that people have towards map-reading today is appalling. Maybe its the eagle scout in me but how can someone NOT want to learn to read a map? It isn't even that hard! What happens if your device fails you?

+1.

Not an Eagle Scout, and have mixed feeling on scouting as an org at this point, but I'm very grateful to have learned how to read maps properly.

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