8 ms·
Once you've kicked the car-driving habit, kicking Google Maps is easy...
by Doctor_Fegg 7y ago
Once you've kicked the car-driving habit, kicking Google Maps is easy...
- mc32 7y agoPeople need wayfinding regardless of how you get around.
- Grue3 7y agoYeah, Google Maps is surprisingly good when you are on a foreign trip and need to find which bus you need to take to get somewhere. There are probably better country-specific apps to do the same, but GM works in all sorts of countries like Hungary or Japan.
- fock 7y agonot so well in bulgaria, just not im serbia
- yyyk 7y agoMoovit (for example) has coverage of public transit in both of these countries. So even in that area there are alternatives for Google.
- Grue3 7y agoIt does have some cities from these countries, but the coverage is not total enough. I have used Google maps to catch buses in obscure places like Iwaki and Balatonfüred.
- RealStickman 7y agoThere's also OpenStreetmaps
- arunmib 7y agoThere is Mapquest (based on mapbox) it is surprisingly good.
- squeaky-clean 7y agoOpenStreetmaps is a good database with which to build navigation apps, but IMO it's very bad for actually getting directions and finding locations. It's kind of like saying you can use Wikipedia for subway navigation. On OpenStreetMaps.org, zooming over my area (NYC) and searching for "pizza" brings up the first 3 results in Tuscany Italy.
- Doctor_Fegg 7y agoI presume the parent commenter was referring to OSM-based apps rather than openstreetmap.org (NB singular, not plural).
- ken 7y agoWhy? We did just fine without it up until a couple years ago.
- dewey 7y agoPeople also only used to stay in their villages or neighbourhood and don't travel as much as they do these days. It's a different world and just because we got by with sailing the oceans and using star navigation doesn't mean we can't use modern technology to improve our lives.
- Qwertystop 7y agoYou've skipped a rather large period of time in which people would travel, and would bring a map with them or buy one when they got there. You think road trips only got to be a thing after Mapquest?
- dewey 7y agoIt was obviously an exaggeration but maps are just an iterative improvement until we landed (for now) GPS enabled devices, in the future we'll maybe have it embedded in our glasses, eyes or brain. I didn't say that we could only start traveling or doing road trips once we invented smartphones.
- Qwertystop 7y agoGPS-enabled devices are the first such improvement to have a novel downside: you can now be tracked, whether you want to be or not.
- dredmorbius 7y agoIt's getting harder (though not fully impossible) to find maps. Where you used to find a stand with local maps in most fueling stations, you don't. I'm looking at AAA's Map Gallery page trying to figure out if they offer paper maps any more. What's on offer are PDFs for online viewing or printing. I'm someone who's got several atlases, globes, and piles of paper maps, as well as highway atlases and other paper-based navigational aids. I know how to use them. I prefer them. They're simply not availabe as they were a decade ago (and for decades before that). And may well not exist in another ten years, except through extraordinary effort. The "it's just an option" argument works until it doesn't. At which point it's not only not helpful, but not true.
- Doctor_Fegg 7y agoOSM-based apps are better for cycling and walking directions than Google. Citymapper is great for urban public transport. Google Maps has a compelling advantage in car directions, but not so much in other ways of getting round.
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y agoI wouldn't consider that a "habit" for most people.
- naasking 7y agoNot really. Google maps was invaluable in navigating the NYC subway when I visited.