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Comment by Dinux | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the 'everything was better when it wasn't google' mentality that is so often found in these threads. My dad used to work at TomTom right here in the Netherlands. They used to be a fun and innovative company to work for. When it became apparent they entered a multibillion dollar business it was all about the money.

As someone who used TomTom before other options became available I can honestly say that it was an absolute nightmare. The small handheld devices took ages before loading up, had bad GPS reception and could only live on battery for 1.5 hours or so. Maps needed to be updated quarterly and would often not fit on the SD CARD. TomTom charged something in the order of 75 euro per map update.

When Google Maps became a viable alternative TomTom continued with the same business model, same paid map updates, same shitty bloatware necessary for map updates etc.. I don't understand the HN sentiment. Things were no better 15 years ago. Google Maps works. It works always. It accurate and uptodate. Dont like Google? There are plenty of OSM apps in store.

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Google maps is fantastic. It beats literally everything else I can think of.

But that’s scary. I want a competitor that offers at least roughly similar quality, but Google is so far ahead that it’s no contest.

Google Maps has been a really garbage experience for me lately, so much so that I've been actively looking for alternatives. Sadly, there aren't many.

Some of problems I've had with Google Maps recently:

- Routing gives me weird bypasses that aren't necessary and often actually add time to the trip. I've started to not trust the routing.

- The UX when searching for places is extremely difficult to navigate, especially when trying to use map view instead of list view

- planning a route _without_ asking for directions is near impossible because many street and landmark names are not displayed

- Landmarks are drowned out by the overwhelming clutter of business names (paid ads)

- Maps are sometimes wrong in my area and I have no idea how to get them fixed.

I've started using OsmAnd for most of my mapping needs lately, and it's better in almost every way _as a map_. The only major thing it's lacking for me is traffic-aware navigation.

Google Maps has a few quirks. Here in Germany it always prefers to send you through 30km/h residential zones. Which might be somewhat faster than taking congested main roads but those 30km/h zones are terrible to drive through. There's always cars parked at one side of the street so you have to wait for oncoming traffic. The streets usually are very narrow. So the stress level to the driver is way higher.

I also noticed a quirk where it would send me 2km down a road just to turn back and drive the 2km back to where I came from. First few times I thought I must have added a waypoint but nope - sometimes it just makes you waste time.

Apple Maps might be better but I can't use it as it has a quirk with "Environmental Zones" in Germany. There are 3 kinds of zones: Red, Yellow and Green. Your car has a badge with a color (depends on how environmentaly friendly it is). So a green badge can enter every zone, a yellow badge only yellow and red zones, and a red badge only red zones.

Now whenever Apple Maps encounters such a zone in the route the navigation switches to a waaaay zoomed out view (tends to display the whole route on a map). So you can't really see the next turn, etc.

To get rid of that view Apple Maps expects you to click on OK. Which really sucks while driving.

What's infuriating is that you can't turn off the env zone checking or even just tell Maps that "my car has a green badge so PLEAS FOR F SAKES STOP PESTERING ME EVERY TIME YOU ENCOUNTER A ZONE". (Those zones are very common - every bigger town is a green zone. So Apple Maps becomes _really_ unusable on longer trips).

I'm just annoyed that Google Maps still has no support for displaying speed limits in Germany or most of Europe. TomTom does show them.

That sounds horrible for yellow and red cars. I hope all new cars are green.

Electric cars are all green, gas cars are green if they meet EURO 1, and diesel cars are green if they meet EURO 4 (or EURO 3 + retrofitted particulate filter)[1]. This is pretty loose for passenger cars: any made in the last fifteen years should all qualify [2].

[1] https://www.germanemissionssticker.com

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_emission_standards

I hope cars are mostly forbidden in cities soon.

They are in most European cities anyway. I'm in a - for the US small, for Europe mid sized city with a pop of roughly 400k. City center is banned to cars. You're supposed to park on the outskirts or take public transport into the center. (Or bicycle).

The result is that almost no one goes there anymore. All the inner city shops are closing down - while the mall style shopping centers on the outskirts are flourishing.

Walkable cities sound great in theory. Until you realize that shopping groceries _really_ sucks when you have to carry full bags for 3 kilometers or have to use over-filled public transport.

yeah, yellow is like very old diesels and red is for cars without a catalytic converter. so most cars (even my RAM 1500) have a green badge

> - planning a route _without_ asking for directions is near impossible because many street and landmark names are not displayed

This drives me absolutely batty. No matter how much I zoom in, I cannot see exit number labels. Sometimes they show up, at random places along the exit ramp, but I haven't figured out the rhyme or reason how.

Real maps clearly label exit numbers of every exit. I don't understand why this is so hard for Google Maps.

Or I'll see a street name I'm looking for, zoom in directly on that name, and it disappears.

Navigating through Romania using Google Maps, I can't see the names of towns.

I have switched to OsmAnd, and the only thing I miss now and then is a good geocoder.

OsmAnd+ is my go-to maps app as well lately. It's fantastic. The only problem I have with it is the rendering for the actual map is super unoptimized, and leads to it having a very low refresh rate. Which, for someone who got a phone with 120 Hz as soon as I possibly could because the smoothness matters so much to me, it's a tad frustrating. Especially when I'm trying to scroll around the map manually. When I leave it in navigation mode while driving, the refresh rate doesn't really matter.

According to the GitHub Issues/Dicussions, this isn't an issue with the iOS implementation. Just the Android one. Hopefully something they can fix.

It drives me INSANE that I carefully align the map UI with the area I want to search, enter my search term, and then bam Google Maps automatically expands to the entire region.

This is NOT what I want ever.

Another thing that bothers me, when using the my phone as the map display I can search for places along my route and go back to normal navigation mode. Then as I drive whatever I am searching for will pop up along the route when we get close to it (say restaurants or gas stations). You can't do this in Android Auto, you have to always select the location or clear the results entirely.

>The only major thing it's lacking for me is traffic-aware navigation."

This. I use mostly OsmAnd, I especially like it when on bike or pedestrian mode. But yes sometime traffic info is a must so I use GM few times per year for this.

I always thought this, but recently I used Mapbox for the first time. I specifically was looking to build a geo-data analysis application, and was running into performance issues with gmaps. Mapbox absolutely knocks it out of the park when it comes to that kind of thing, I was very impressed.

> Google maps is fantastic. It beats literally everything else I can think of.

At least for walking and cycling, OSM has data leagues better than Gmaps. Also for driving actually, but navigation is indeed not as good. Lack of traffic info...

Yeah I use other apps for everything but driving, but until I move to a country where I can get rid of my car I just can't quit Google Maps.

In my experience, Apple Maps is on par with Google Maps (at least in the U.S.), esp with latest improvements in non-car routes (i.e., cycling, though I use Komoot for that anyway). However Google tends to have more POI (they're further ahead in the ad biz).

With so many iPhones and Apple Maps being an smoother experience (Siri/OS integration), it definitely competes heavily with Google (at least in US).

I’ve been using it in the new electric car I got with CarPlay this year, and it’s fantastic. It’s integration with the battery charging is pretty much everything I want: it automatically chooses a charging point for a trip that will need a charge, based on my battery’s current charge level. It even tells me the number of minutes the charging will likely take, since it knows the speed of the chargers it recommends.

Last night I tried thr single button “Share ETA” from CarPlay, too.

Agree Apple Maps is great now. Except the multi-stop support only works for driving... but other than that it works very well. It'd been awhile since I'd actually driven until a couple of weeks ago and I was pleasantly surprised how good the turn-by-turn directions were, announcing things like "go past the next light then turn left".

Second this. I would guess the number of iPhones with Google Maps installed is less than 20% just thinking through people I know. Of course some of those older relatives also don't use online maps so this number might be misleading.

Apple Maps has been noticeably better than Google Maps for directions in the last year or so when I've been testing them both.

I agree that GMaps still reigns supreme, but Apple Maps is now definitely better in some regards, including the actual maps and transit directions for my city.

Probably due to all the OSM data they include, in fairness.

Apples Maps just is not very available globally. It is heavily U.S. oriented, while Google seems to offer similar features everywhere. Maybe some day Apple catches a bit.

Also, not everyone has and Apple device, so it's not really a competitor to Google which is available on almost any device apart from sanctioned Chinese ones and any web browser.

Apple Maps is also working well for me in Delhi NCR, India. Apple seems to have partnered with local mapping company called MapMyIndia. The traffic information and navigations are also quite useable and the ETAs also seem accurate.

I always check both Apple and Google Maps, but use Apple maps on my iphone because its way more battery efficient.

Is Apple Maps cross platform or only exclusive to Apple devices?

It has a well hidden web version. The easiest way to access the web version is via duckduckgo - just do a search for anything and click the map tab. the actual map tiles and data all come from apples servers.

Only Apple devices

Per the other comment here, Duckduckgo uses Apple data.

https://venturebeat.com/business/duckduckgo-ducks-google-to-...

Oh, that's neat. It doesn't seem to have turn-by-turn navigation though. The most it can do is list the steps on the website.

> I want a competitor that offers at least roughly similar quality

How will that happen realistically? The truth is it's impossible to compete with ad-funded tech giants in the current state of affairs.

For that to change two things are needed:

1 . government intervention to break up Google ads from their maps and other businesses, leveling the playing field for their competitors who aren't making money via ads (not really gonna happen in the US, but maybe ... wink wink EU)

2. consumers now being OK with having to pay market prices for subscriptions to essential services like maps, email, etc. that they got used to getting for free through their personal data monetization (also not really gonna happen because people don't like paying for stuff they used to get for free and also many people can't afford to pay)

What warrants this adversarial tone? This is one person’s justification of the “everything was better when everything wasn’t google” sentiment. Are you trying to talk somebody out of how they feel because you feel that an alternative is not realistic, for the very reason that they find it scary in the first place? We all know why Google is unstoppable until the ad money runs dry.

Is it? I've used openstreetmap exclusively for the past 5 years and it's almost never let me down, for both day to day and trips abroad.

Why doesn’t the open source community organize around projects that are just as far? Chrome and Safari were based on open source projects like Konqueror, Webkit, Chromium and Blink. They do 90% of the heavy lifting.

Want an open source facebook / twitter? Here you go: https://qbix.com/platform

The quality of Google Map is better than others because it has more users, and thus better input data. And that's the real problem - competitors cannot improve improve their product without better data, and so users find it inferior and avoid their product / service and turn back to Google Maps (which allows Google to improve their product further and take a lead). Note though that Google has another edge over its competitors - (1) Android OS has been collecting geo-location data even if you don't use Google Maps and (2) Google also gets their competitors data if a user uses a competing map app on Android OS.

Google search is also in a similar position - the vast amount of users means its competitors just cannot improve their product because users become disappointed with the quality and stop using it, thus denying them a chance to improve their product.

The old solution to prevent anti-competitive behaviour and foster healthy capitalism was to break them up. But for more modern problems like this, I think a different approach is also needed - we need to force such monopolies to also share their data with the competitors, till the competitors become large enough to compete with them on their own.

(For those seeking a decent alternatives to Google Maps, I recommend Here - https://wego.here.com/ - it was owned by Nokia before they sold it to a consortium of European automobile manufacturers and is quite good).

+1 Here maps are pretty outstanding. Offline maps in the apps are great!

check mapy.cz for even more precise and better looking maps

Google's business model makes it really hard for competition.

For a maps company the map is the service they offer, for Google is just a data gathering service

I use Apple Maps because Google Maps is littered with ads. And I assume Google apps use more battery than Apple apps.

I must agree. I do not remember a very pleasant experience using the GPS dash units. I would move often with the Navy and would use the GPS unit for a couple weeks but challenge myself as soon as possible to learn to get around without it. Now when I am going somewhere over 30 minutes away I throw it into GMaps even if I know how to get there, as there could be a number of events that could've caused a reroute since the last time I took that route.

My commute to work is very predictable, but the commute home is not. I always use Google maps driving home, even though it is only 27 miles, because Gmaps will direct me to alternate routes if there is a traffic tie up on my usual route home. This has saved me literally days of time over my years of commuting.

I’ve done this with waze as well as Apple Maps since construction or accidents can cause undesirable but necessary rerouting

In my experience, here in the UK, openstreetmap.org is more accurate and more up-to-date than Google Maps, though I still use Google Maps as a way to access Google Earth or Google Street View, which tend to at least be accurate. (I wonder if they've thought about using an AI to guess what the countryside and streets might look like. Could be cheaper than using real photos? :-)

there is a better option, public data from guvernamental entities, data available to open street map, google maps or tom tom, that could be able to enrich it as they wish, but the base should be open.

wishful thinking, I know.

Here in the Czech Republic, plenty of government geodata is open (not all for now), but merging datasets is hard, so OSM contributors only do occasional manual imports. It serves as a valuable base and could be used as an OSM alternative on its own, but when you've already got OSM, which is generally more detailed and sometimes even more up-to-date, why bother?

Better for some. That means we all have to foot the bill for the infrastructure/maintenance. Paying a private company voluntarily would be preferable.

The government is already tasked with managing roads and traffic.

I rest my case.

This works for the consumer who wants to get from a to b. And doesn't mind being advertised to or tracked via Google.

But companies, uber, lyft, carmakers, location intelligence firms etc need commercial mapping and location tech. What TomTom offers exists more for these people than the end consumer these days.

We use maps extensively in our products and Mapbox has been a belessing eversince we started using it. I would argue Mapbox is far better suited for development and product integration than Google Maps is. It is developer and user friendly, offers a wide range of mapping and layering products. It easy to use and affordable small and medium sized businesses.

Given how very little the TomTom announcement actually says, I've read it as a (desperate?) attempt to pivot into the mapbox market. In any case, nice to see OSM eating the mapping world.

>In other cases, the world is changing in ways that place growing demands on maps and location data. Nowadays, all social media has a location component so we can geotag our digital lives, and fitness and exercise apps, like Strava, augment how we interact with the world with virtual leaderboards based on GPS trace data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20734665

DonHopkins on Aug 19, 2019 | parent | next [–]

When I was at TomTom, they ran a contest for employees to come up with fun ways to gamify their internet-connected GPS Personal Navigation Devices.

Some wise guy came up with the brilliant idea of maintaining a real-time "Top 10 Speeders" leaderboard for every single road on the entire map. Kinda like Foursquare for speeding on local roads. No matter where you were driving in the world, you could instantly see the top ten speeds of other TomTom users who drove down that same stretch of road, and put the pedal to the metal to claim or defend your own spot on the leaderboard!

That one went over like a lead balloon with the legal department.

The only thing worse would be a chat app for texting while driving above the speed limit with other Leaderboard members along the same stretch of road.

They also didn't appreciate my proposal for TomTomagotchi: a simulated personality on your PND that relentlessly begs you to drive it all around town to various interesting places it wants to visit, to improve its mood and satisfy its cravings. (Kind of like having virtual kids!) I'm sure there's a revenue model having drive through Burger Kings and car washes pay for placements.

Google Maps works for certain, pretty common, use cases. That doesn't mean it works for everyone or for every business. Monopolies are bad, near monopolies slightly less bad. And especially when it comes to a platform that significantly influences how millions of people perceive the world around them.

(Source: making web maps is my career. I don't touch Google Maps professionally but use it a lot personally.)

> Monopolies are bad, near monopolies slightly less bad

Natural monopolies (such as the one acquired by Google) are not bad as long as government retains the monopoly of B2 bombers.

It's not really a monopoly when it can be ended at a moment's notice

Can you describe a monopoly that isn't "natural"? I see what you mean but struggle to think of a traditional monopolistic company that doesn't have a "we started with the industry" defense.

The ISP in your area could be an unnatural monopoly. In my experience these companies have lobbied out local providers and bought all the competition to make them the only offerers in some areas. It happens more in rural US. The issue also crops up with gas stations in towns and then again with dollar stores as well, in this case they are replacing grocery stores. Traditionally the federal government would crack down on unnatural monopolies so that's why you don't typically see them, but look at the regional level and you can spot them.

Balance of probability, maybe rephrase as "anti-consumer behavior is bad" or "noticing how monopolies are inherently self serving is a lot like a frog noticing the water around it is getting a bit hot"

The power of an app to route people down an old farm road rather than taking the pike to me, is enough. I feel bad for those who live there because its about 30 seconds faster to on the highway

Yes, there really should be some regulation around this. Apps sending traffic down quiet residential roads because the main road is overcrowded is a terrible practice.

If it's a farm road, there's always the option my neighbour used to do: he took his sweet time when he let the cattle cross the road. It's always fun when impatient idiots have to wait a few minutes because 50 cows are walking to their meadows across the road :)

This kind of thing happened in the days before app maps/directions, but it is arguably worse now.

My friends' street is the slightest bit of a shortcut. Like, it might save 30 seconds or a minute but it avoids a really annoying stoplight-controlled intersection. It is also a quiet, purely residential street. For 20+ years, people who live on that street park way out from the curb on both sides so that the street is nearly impassable for most of the day unless you drive quite slowly (like at a crawling pace). People still use it as a shortcut, but at least speeding down that low-speed-limit road where lots of kids play in the neighborhood is not so common anymore.

The best solution to a situation like that would be to block the road on one side (or in the middle) so you can't drive through it. Minor inconvenience for people who live there, but also a major quality of live improvement if you have no through traffic at all.

But thats not whats happening. Google Maps, Waze, Apple Maps etc all prefer certain paths over others. I can take a shortcut home which saved me about 5 minutes and potential traffic jams, and Google Maps will never suggest it, unless I deliberately drive down that road.

In my place (Geneva, Switzerland), Google Maps stubbornly keeps suggesting for years the fastest route form my side of the town to the other through one of few bridges that is actually absolute no-go for public traffic, with tons of warning signs (sometimes some of them are obscured by buses but still hard to miss).

Needless to say, there is often some sucker going through there, and I have to admit I ended up there once too exactly because of Google Maps. No effort to correct it over the years, in one of the wealthiest and most important power/finance centers globally.

What you and parent describe happened to me too, maps are absolute blessing compared to what was there before but they are sometimes not that great ie in cities with a lot of traffic. Its easy to get used to something just working and start demanding perfection, when we are maybe 96% there.

The problem is not only, that things are Google. The problem is, that more and more stuff being Google means fewer alternatives, which in turn means more and more websites and other things start relying on Google, which in turn causes the users to be at Google's mercy.

I don't want Google to know all websites I visit. I don't want it to know all websites I visit, which have a map widget on them. I don't want Google to have knowledge about where I am going and when I am going anywhere. Websites for example using Google maps will indirectly enable Google to actually know these things. For example if I want to book a hotel and I want to know, how I get there from the next public transport station (or if I had a car, how I drive there). If it is a Google maps widget, data about what location I am viewing will be available to Google. Google being Google, I have no doubt, that they will try to use that for profiling people.

Relying on a becoming a monopoly does not help with freedom. The fact, that uninformed developers introduce dependencies to Google products without a second thought, makes them uninformed indirect helpers of a spying company, whose profit is based on profiling people and tracking people online, to show them pesky ads. It exposes us to the whims of a capitalistically motivated tech giant, which does not have our best interest at heart. That is, why we need alternatives. That is why at least initially any alternative based on non-Google things, is a good thing. The fewer people make use of Google (dis)services the better for all of us, because they wont have the same power over our lives.

So the whole "before Google it was better" thing, is actually a "before evil tech giant monopoly" thing.

I have a TomTom PND and I swear by it. It's much better than the navigation systems built into cars (unless they're TomTom, several brands have them built-in).

Also, I refuse to use Google Maps as I am loath to let Google know my travel history. I am, however, somewhat concerned that TomTom uploads my travel history to their servers, since my device has LTE/3G capability. This was used to fetch congestion information and to offer a smarter / faster route, but since I don't have a subscription the service stopped after a free trial period.

If I google "why is it bad for google to track you", I can find a hundred articles breathlessly telling you all the ways google is tracking you, and a hundred more on how to stop it - but none answering the question.

Can someone explain to me why it's a problem? (I make the assumption that even if google doesn't do it, your carrier does, so it doesn't add anything additional to "government's ability to repress/harass".)

It's never problem if it's just about small number of people.

When they track half of humanity, they can see all kinds of patterns that they, and other people can exploit.

Let's turn your question around. If all this information is that useless and harmless why are all corporations and governments spending tens of billions of dollars acquiring and keeping?

Your carrier can not track you nearly as detailed as google can. Your carrier doesn't know which sites you visit (only the IPs) and they especially don't know how long you look at what, what you're buying, etc. Their location tracking is only exact to a few hundred meters whereas google can locate you with very high accuracy.

Personally, I have two reasons to avoid Google and other tech monopolies: 1. I don't want the government to be able to subpoena my data 2. I don't want to be cut off from my digital life just because some employee clicks a button. That means I'm self hosting as much as possible.

Tracking isn’t bad per se. The bad part is that all the information acquired from tracking is used to build an oversimplified profile of each user, that in turn distorts the information that Google searches return for that user.

This often reflects and amplifies societal biases. For example, users that Google identifies as female are less likely to be shown ads for high paying jobs [0]. This creates a feedback loop: if a certain user demographic is less likely to be shown a given result, they are less likely to view it, which in turn makes them even less likely to be shown it in the first place.

[0] https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/women-less-likely-to-be-shown-...

If you don't have any problem with your daily itenary beinf tracked, then no explanation will be good enough for you. Just respect the fact that people don't want their daily activities available to 3rd parties

But that's exactly what I'm trying to understand. What is the problem people have with it? Maybe if you tell me, I'll feel the same way!

It is not only you. The more people are OK with this, the higher the danger for other people, who are not OK with this, because data adds up and usually becomes more information than the sum of its parts. Tracking and spying are a danger to people, whose work requires them to not be tracked and found. People like journalists in oppressive regimes. While people run around merily sacrificing their privacy for the reason, that they are uninformed about these issues, they indirectly play into the hands of those, who want to make journalists shut up and disappear.

Privacy is vital for a functioning society. If not for you personally, then for others. By adding yourself to the mass of people, who do not care, you are helping in creating an environment, where privacy is not valued. Seen as something "only a few radicals want". Quickly abolished by governments in the name of "but think of the children!" or "but think of the terrorists!" and similar nonsense.

Fantastic way to put things, well done.

The solution to this complete transparency for all, but that is also a pipe dream.

OK, that's a great argument. Thank you.

I have lots of things to hide.

For me, it's simple. Google is using this data to cement it's monopoly, to extort businesses and to pressure governments.

From your comment, it seems like your main concern is that governments can access your data. But what if beyond&above those governments, there is a single entity that's far more powerful? Would you be willingly hand the data to them? Because that is what Google is. Or is becoming. Or, if you're very sceptical: can easily become.

If Google's tracking data became available to the right people, you can imagine why that would be bad for you if the married FAA official in charge of approving the 737 MAX was tracked to his mistress' apartment.

You'll find out when it's too late.

I wasn't suggesting we'd all be using Google Maps. The point I was making is that TomTom had a large role to play in their own demise. They went for the quick buck, employing dark patterns, necessary device upgrades etc. And yes car manufacturers are guilty of much the same.

> I am, however, somewhat concerned that TomTom uploads my travel history to their servers, since my device has LTE/3G capability.

They do, or at least they used to before the GDPR came into action. Not sure what the situation is like now.

A classic monopolist move is to use monopoly power from one business unit (such as rented computers) and offer an unrelated service at well below market rates in another market (perhaps online retail).

The incumbents don't have the crutch of the other business unit and can't price match, and go out of business.

Then the monopolist raises prices and there's no competition and no alternative.

It's fine, though google maps has gotten pretty bad; I'll just switch back to Waze.

Google owns Waze

This mirrors my experience directly. Before smart phones, I found TomTom to be more user friendly than competitors, but they were slow to boot up, the battery was only useful for providing clean power vs the car electrical system. I tried using my TomTom for walking Navigation. The battery lasted long enough to reach my destination, but luckily I remembered my way back to the parking lot after, because the battery did not make it.

Google Maps on my phone works fine, and on my current Pixel 5A, I can navigate off battery for a three or four hours. Plenty of walking time to hit multiple points in a day of walking.

Maybe some day the TomTom app will be competitive with Google maps, but for now, Google maps is the reference by which all other mapping will be judged.

How do you compete against someone who has a diversified portfolio of products and can let you use one for "free"

How do you compete against "free" from companies that are able to build monopolies with the help of institutions?

It's easy to say "it was shit before google", when innovations weren't available

> When Google Maps became a viable alternative TomTom continued with the same business model, same paid map updates, same shitty bloatware necessary for map updates etc..

I agree with that one, they didn't adapt

Because they don't like Google therefore they hate the products

Google maps used to work much better, IMHO, in speed and directions. Their insertion of POI and advertisements into the applications and the website slowed down the chrome a lot.

The nostalgia fantasy rears its head yet again

I use TomTom’s API services in conjunction with google maps API because it is way more cost effective.

I use google maps sdk on mobile because generally the data is much better quality for POI than Apple Maps, but doing geocoding is a lot more expensive so that’s where I use TomTom. Seems to work fine for me so far.

The "bad GPS reception" part doesn't reflect my experience. I have had a lot more "GPS signal lost" messages in Google Maps on various Android phones than I ever remember having with dedicated GPS units. I suspect the GPS antennas are bigger in dedicated units as well.

My last TomTom device was from a few years ago and it wasn't that great. Slow, low resolution display and updates took hours to apply.

I now use the TomTom Android app and it's better than any other app or device I have used. Good maps, with clear instructions and great traffic information.

Sure maybe it sucked, but could anyone else have James Earl Jones giving you turn by turn directions? https://youtu.be/o9Oso7199WE

maybe for the consumer google maps could be better, but for a business, using google maps is shooting yourself on the feet. Just take a look to the mapsplatform pricing and start searching for an alternative.

Last year I shelled out 700 Euros for a Garmin Overlander off road navigation unit. I wish I didn't. The hardware is very nice - essentially a rugged Android tablet with a well thought out mounting mechanism.

But the software side ... oh boy. The "Garmin Explore" service this device is intended to work with looks like something from 2004. I mean not a finished product from 2004. But a proof of concept or minimal viable product from 2004. Usability is terrible. Planing trips/routes on the device is torture. Using the web interface isn't much better. (I'd link a screenshot but the service seems to be down ... again lol).

Sync breaks all the time. It's triggered by "bad" filenames for the .gpx files. Some special chars seem to break syncing so bad that the device won't sync at all until you delete the offending file in the cloud - but there's no error message. One day you just wonder why your recent route you planned in the browser isn't on the device. So you go to the sync tab and there's a message like "Last sync: 3_weeks_ago". Have fun fixing this as a normal person. (This bug also comes up when a route has a wrong count of waypoints ... it's not too many waypoints, it seems to be a number between too few and too many). I only figured this out by accident. Garmin support told me to reset the device and make a new account. (Which meant I lost all my tracks).

Now if Garmin did work on the software and provided updates I wouldn't be so salty. But there has been 0 improvements to the software side of things since the device was released like 3 years ago. ZERO. All you get is map updates which are for the street navigation side of things. The "overlanding" part? Forget it. There has been 0 bug fixes, 0 new features, nothing.

I guess you're supposed to buy the new (more expensive) Garmin device that recently came out. As if I would give Garmin one more Euro.

It's not even incompetence. It's maliciousness. They have a line up of wireless cameras (which you mount to your vehicle's bumper, etc). The cams connect via WiFi to the navigation device. Recently Garmin released a new camera - one which I'de find rather useful as it's small and works completely via battery and you can clip to the license plate. So you don't have to wire anything and can take it easily off when you don't need it.

But guess what - not compatible with my 700 Euro Android Tablet that could be made totally compatible via a software update if Garmin just wanted to. If you want to use the new cam: Buy the new 1200 Euro navi model. Oh, btw. some of the the older cameras won't work with the new device ... so you better buy a new set of new cameras.

I hope Garmin goes bankrupt. Sincerely.

/edit: I switched to the Gaia GPS app running on an iPad mini. Waaaay better experience.

You seem to be completely ignoring that TomTom has been available as a mobile app (like Google Maps) for years now which excludes most of your bad experiences? It supports CarPlay / Android Auto integration so it's a seamless replacement for G/Apple Maps in cars if that's what people want to use.

And it works. It works always (even more than GMaps because it's offline first). It's also accurate. And up to date.

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