Microsoft is killing offline maps in the Maps app | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft is killing offline maps in the Maps app

arstechnica.com

48 pointsPopAlongKid22 comments

I still have a copy of MS Streets & Trips for which support ended in 2013. Fortunately, streets and geography don't change very rapidly. I've installed my licensed copy of S&T on several computers purchased since 2013, but I wonder when they will stop providing a verification service for my license.

It's time for me to prepare for internet outages with hard copies, not only of maps but all important reference material.

I bought some books of maps of the entire continent I’m on and put them in our cars. Seems like a reasonable emergency thing to do. I’m under no illusion that if some catastrophe happens that takes down the internet and or GPS that we will necessarily survive but would hate to die knowing I could have spent an extra $20-40 bucks and lived.

I do the same also. Local maps books in my area have a lot more roads and very specific off road/service road Information that online maps don't have which is also handy in emergencys. Being evacuated due to forest fires a few times these maps were very helpful to me.

If GPS ever goes down, getting lost will be the least of your worries.

> streets ... don't change very rapidly

In many parts of the world, it does.

My entire neighbourhood was mostly an empty field at that point.

Organic maps will install under linux and is fantastic. I like using a larger screen for planning stuff ahead.

Oh well. OsmAnd is much better anyway.

Microsoft has a maps app?

Yes, and if you want to know a tragic fact, when they started the UWP to WinUI 3.0/WinAppSDK migration, that wasn't part of the initial efforts.

So as MAUI decided to have their Windows backend built on top of WinUI 3.0/WinAppSDK, their Maps component on Windows is actually a Web widget wrapping Bing maps instead of the OS provided Maps component.

This shows how well the GUI civil wars are going in Redmond.

Yeah and the arial imagery is ancient, like many years old, even in popularly viewed areas like NYC. Even Microsoft forgot about this product.

Microsoft has a maps app?

They want you be online at all times so they can harvest your data, to built that sweet scary ai that will destroy the world any time soon now.

Time to go back to an appliance gps in the car then?

Ms Maps? Who in the world uses anything else than Google Maps and Waze for navigation?

> Ms Maps? Who in the world uses anything else than Google Maps and Waze for navigation?

In the last at least 5 years I never used Google Maps or Waze for navigation.

Go on then, state what you use

A lot of people. Google maps was not offline and Waze was not.

well, goodbye Microsoft Maps. I use you exclusively in offline mode as I as often in areas with no connection. Time to find another solution. From my point of view if find it very hard to come up with any valid reasons why to remove this feature. Maybe its just a change for the sake of changing, which is stupid

It’s interesting to see that Apple has just introduced offline maps in Apple Maps this year.

But it’s not like PMs in FAANG are effectively making random decisions, nooo, don’t replace them with a LLM nononon

Another useful feature killed off.

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