If you’re not paying for it, you are the product; except for with 🍏 and then it’s both.
they did pay 1000$+ phones just to have ads on it.
Just like every Android phone that comes pre-loaded with trash apps you have to delete.
i bought a min OP12R, i had delete a couple apps i dont use on it. A carrier issued phone has even worst bloat. I just disabled most of the google ones, like play, and WALLET because it kept activating tag (fare machine)on public transport, i had to do a work around since there wasnt an easy way to completely eliminate that.
Only in the USA, I think. I’m in the UK and don’t have ‘trash apps’.
Unless you mean Facebook and YouTube, thinking about it, which yeah is annoying.
Fuck I just started using it because of how horribly shit google maps has become
If you don’t need traffic data, CoMaps (uses OpenStreet Map data).
If you do need traffic data (understandable) Magic Earth is what I use. It’s unfortunately not fully open source, only the map data is from OSM, but I find the navigation good 95% of the time, sometimes you have to make your own judgement for if a route might have bad traffic. At least it’s not Google or Apple, and no ads.
I don’t do car play, so I have no idea about how that works.
I wish we had better alternatives
or that cars all exploded and we went to public transport and walkable citiesSupposedly comaps has carplay support as of like 2 months ago, according to a page on their website
Damn I need to try this
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll look into it
I don’t use maps often but what’s been going wrong in Google maps? I know whatever Uber/Lyft was using was having a hard time keeping up with local changes (bridges being shut down for months would stay on every driver’s directions), they’d switch to Google to get an accurate map
It’s still accurate for directions, but search results and map viewing have gone to shit because of google accepting money to highlight certain businesses - taking up huge chunks of the map with their square icons
I uninstalled it when it told me to turn left at the Wendy’s™ instead of a fucking street name. After I missed my turn and got to my destination late, I looked it up and the place it was talking about was visually obscured by another building so I couldn’t have possibly known where to turn. Fuck that noise.
I know this is my own personal experience, but diehard Apple fans in my circle have started to say, “Fuck Apple.” I think they’re PR and goodwill is finally running out.
The thing is, Apple getting worse is coinciding with everything else getting worse, too.
for real, fucking everything sucks now.
Steve Jobs, for all his other problems, knew how to run a company and held to the idea that they needed to make good products. He kept the prices fairly low for what they were, and they even decreased over time for many of their products. He wouldn’t allow unfinished products to be released which is a big reason why I always laughed at Android people who claimed “first” with their buggy, shitty versions of the reliable thing Apple made a couple years later.
But then for some reason he let Tim Cook, who had been an idiot at Apple for a long time and Job’s knew it, take over. Since then prices have sky-rocketed and the company has started releasing stuff that just isn’t up to the standards they held in the past. He even took power away from the guy who had come up with Apple’s iconic aesthetic.
Whether or not people want to admit, Apple made excellent products and the customers aren’t nearly as stupid as people want to believe. So when shit like this happens we understandably get pissed because, surprise, many of us actually have been paying attention.
I have a lot of shot to say about Steve Jobs, but he knew what asthetics he wanted. He would loathe the current trend with phones having a camera bulge. Look at all the iPhones released under him, look at the back of them. If they had a camera it was flush with the back of the phone.
sure, but do you think Jobs be okay with a severely underpowered camera or super thick phone compared to the competition? Neither of those things happened under him either.
It’s not that simple to blame Cook for everything that’s different about iphones now. It was a lot easier to stick to rigid principles in the early days when the market was wide open and the tech rapidly maturing every year. They were making money hand over fist just picking off the low hanging fruit of smartphone evolution. They ran out of obvious upgrades pretty much when Cook took over and have shareholders to answer to. Hence more expensive phones, subscription services, and ads.
severely underpowered camera
Bruh, the first iPhone didn’t have a camera
“What the fuck you gonna do? Use Android?!??! Fuck you and and be happy about it” - Tim Apple, probably
Doesn’t Google Maps have ads?
Kind of.
They’re not in your face. But they make sure their sponsors show up on the maps with custom pins
I don’t know. Probably.
The answer you’re looking for is, “Of course it does!”
Sundar Pichai: “Huh, well I guess we’ll just follow Tim Apple’s lead and start injecting ads in google maps and anyone who uses google maps API too.”
There are already ads in Google Maps, there is nothing for them to follow.
What? Where are they? Maybe it depends on the region…
OpenStreetMap for the win, my peoples.
Specifically OSMAnd.
Works perfectly as long as you already know where you’re going!
And the local community keeps locations up to date
Seen big cities that are great in mapping every flower pot, but have restaurants and shops that don’t exist for over half a decade
Even when they are up to date the search blows.
I tried to find something the other day and just because it’s funny here are the results. The business is called X’s Y but in osm it’s stored as Xs, no apostrophe.
- osmand: no results
- magic earth: finds Xs, fails X’s-- obviously humans recognize this as identical so the current search algo will never reliably find this store regardless of data entry
- comaps: no results, when I added the full real name (X’s Y, it showed me Ya terrace, Y with one letter swapped avenue, etc)
So you tell me, if it can’t find a restaurant for which it has existing data, why is it the users’ fault for not collecting more data?
For me it works perfectly. Try out Organic Maps or one of its forks then?
That’s comaps now that organic is persona non grata
I don’t really know what happened but when your app only works with community support and the community hates you enough to hard fork the app, it’s time to switch.
Might be worth looking deeper into it though, in why the forkers hate the dev.
The only difference between these maps and their data is the effort by the community to update it. Google doesn’t pay people to update places, they entice them with points and advertising. Google and Apple maps would be no different from OSM if no one updated them
sure. doesn’t change the problem, though
(if more people used Street Complete, it would make the problem a lot better)
Google maps only ever knew where you were going because Ingress players and Google “local guides” filled in all the data for them.
Update the out of date data. Its not hard and the more people use it the more accurate the places data will be.
You can complain about why google works better if you want to, but it still does.
Your response also ignores the fundamental problem: even when the data is in open street maps, the search still sucks. No, I didn’t mean any of 20 things in Italy, I meant the Italian restaurant a mile away.
I use OSMAnd and the search is a lot better, not sure what client you are using.
Oh I’m running osmand~ and comaps and magic earth.
And by running I mean I occasionally confirm its still not good enough yet
It is a trade off though.
I may not be able to see the “nearest restaurants with reviews of 4 stars that are open now with no wait times” BUT I have been so many places where google or apple had not updated the map yet and only OSM got me where I was going.
So maybe it is fine to open a commercial map or local review site, or blog, or web page, that is not tracking you for store discovery, then put the address in OSM to actually get there.
And take the time to use street complete when you can, it is really easy and fills in things like hours open, accessibility, etc.
StreetComplete to help fill in the gaps. GeoShare to translate google/apple maps locations to geocoordinates for OSM, and then adding the place in OSMAnd if you login with the OpenStreetMaps editor plugin. This is how those of us who adopted Google Maps early added so much of their data…
So much for the “Apple is all about privacy whereas Google monetizes you” schtick.
Everything is shitty! 🎶
Organic Maps or OsmAnd is out there, just saying.
Wanting to mention CoMaps and that it was forked from Organic Maps.
The projects aren’t very diverged yet so you can still migrate your pins with an easy export/import
Organic Maps is so fucking good, I keep so much of it downloaded as a backup for when I’m offline, because it just works. That said, I still use Google maps due to the reviews of businesses and traffic data when navigating normally, but it’s good to know a great alternative is out there.
Sadly, finding businesses and traffic data are 99% of the reason I open google maps. I have organic installed, but I’ve since found out that “I want to go somewhere I don’t know the way to but have found out the street address some other way, and I don’t care about the traffic in between” simply doesn’t happen.
It happens for me when I’m offline and the stupid Google Maps downloads didn’t work. I don’t even bother with downloading Google Maps any more, I just use CoMaps instead.
You might want to switch to CoMaps. Most developers fled there after the owners of Organic Maps showed shady behaviour regarding donations and the future of the project
I’ll check it out. Any links to articles on the shady behavior?
Edit: CoMaps is like Organic Maps but better, regardless of the development practices, neato.
This is a good place to start reading :)
Wow, interesting stuff. Huge thanks for the tip off about CoMaps.
Are they CarPlay enabled?
Yes Organic Maps and CoMaps (its open community fork) both support Car Play
OsmAnd does have a CarPlay option. Dunno about Organic Maps and its forks.
I’m reportedly getting ready to move to CoMaps.
I just need to contribute to a few more towns in Openstreetmap and Apple Maps is gone from my phone.
OK, so if I’m on Apple hardware, for now, what’s the best alternative to “Apple Maps”?
OsmAnd Maps, Organic Maps, and Co Maps are all worth looking at.
People actually use Apple Maps?
Switch a while ago from Google Maps. It’s pretty damn great.
Here in Cali I’ve noticed it’s actually better. Google Maps has been ass for the last 4 years for me. Wrong data, it takes me randomly off the freeway only to loop my back and put me right back where I got off. It has completely wrong traffic data, and it has road closures it thinks are still open. When I travel around the bay for work I mostly use Apple Maps.
I experienced the same glitches that everyone else did when it first launched but it’s been perfectly fine for years. My gf’s android Google Maps will routinely have us make several turns just to end up on the same road we were already traveling on so navigation is done on my phone and the playlist on hers.
Yeah, the first time it happened on Google Maps I thought it was just an issue with like that small section of bridge/overpass, but then it did it again and I was just stuck in the same traffic but now even further behind. It was incredibly odd. By like the 4th time I was like “ok, if I don’t stop using you then it’s on me for being so frustrated.”
Apple Maps had a rough few months at its start, but it’s never let me down since — I’ve used it to drive across country (many times, many directions) and across town. Combined with CarPlay, it’s the only digital screen I’d ever want in my car’s dashboard.
Ads would destroy the only thing I’ve enjoyed about newer cars in decades.
I do because it currently doesn’t have ads
yes my ex does, why i dunno lol
Between this and android phones with ads on lockscreens, I’m ready for someone to finally release a good Linux phone.
or at least something I can install on a Google pixel
graphene with no play store.
Aren’t there privacy friendly OSes you can already install on your Google Pixel?
yes
People use Apple Maps? 🤔
It’s come a long way to finally being good. This ain’t your grandpa’s orchard variety map.
It still forces you to use yelp app for everything. Gonna be a no from me dawg.
That’s probably my biggest gripe with the app right now. Fingers crossed that they decouple next year.
Well, I mean, it kinda is now.
Yes. I find it easily as good as the alternatives.
It was miles ahead of the other one because it wasn’t full of stupid ads. That was its one feature. Was.
I’m sure that will really annoy all seven people that use it…
