Hacker News Reader

Pretty crazy that 5 years ago, many cars went with an offline first approach to maps. You had to manually update the map database every year. I don’t even see that business model ever returning. Companies have figured out there’s way more money in running a map service. Ftr, teslas stream map tiles and if your car loses connectivity, you’re not going to see anything

View on HN

> You had to manually update the map database every year.

Now you have the added bonus of gambling on whether or not the maps are actually updated. My SO wanted to update the maps in their Jeep since all the exit numbers around us had changed. Not only did the install take hours, the exit numbers were still the old ones. Hooray!

Jeep just threw up their hands because the license key had been used; total racket.

If you go into data-less areas, you pretty quickly learn to use downloaded maps (from Google Maps or most any other)

But the point is, this is something that used to work out of the box (nav systems came with preloaded offline maps) and now needs extra steps, or doesn’t work at all.

The new online way of doing things is mostly better for most people, but it’s not universally better.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com