I must disagree with you on maps. Google maps is a fantastic geographic aware search.
It is a horrific map. On any given screen there is an 80% chance that the major road I'm interested in is not labeled. Finding the name of a relevant cross street is a nightmare.
I feel like it used to be better. Way better. I think the map aspect has been dropped entirely as a real feature now that they supply directions (search) primarily instead.
I have OSM and Google maps installed. If I'm trying to navigate to a specific town or street, I'll use OSM because it's "just a map" that isn't trying to sell me shit. But if I'm looking for a business (restaurant, shop etc) I'll always use Google Maps because they're trying to sell me shit, and because OSM is absolutely pitiful in this regard.
I have tried to help out here by adding business in my area but the process of slow. Not sure who is in charge of approvals. Google, on the other hand, almost defaults businesses to being on the map even when they don't want to be. (My wife ruins a small business that doesn't have a bricks and mortar store - it's just online. Since it's registered to our home address, she absolutely didn't want it in Google Maps, but it took a good bit of clicking to get it off the map. Hence, they're reliable A.F. for finding businesses, even if they don't want to be found
> I have tried to help out here by adding business in my area but the process of slow. Not sure who is in charge of approvals.
There are no approvals at all. After you submit your changeset, it's in the primary public database. Some relatively short time after that, the affected tiles are rerendered and the change is visible on the main map layer (Mapnik) on openstreetmap.org. But if you use an application (e.g. OsmAnd) or some third-party map rendering (e.g. by Mapbox), the changes might take quite some time to get there.
I agree with this 100%. And there needs to be something in the design to allow you to zoom the text size. It's comical to witness myself trying to read too small text and reflexively zooming only to have the same sized font.
Even worse, it seems almost random which zoom levels have text. Often, especially for train line and station names, zooming in makes the text disappear!
Agreed. As my eyesight has gotten worse, I rely more and more on being able to do a quick pinch-to-zoom to read small type. Ironically, this pushes me away from native apps and onto the mobile browser!
If the alternatives include "Google Maps from about 6 years ago", then yes, yes I have.
I don't really fault Google that much for their design decisions here, as Maps have really morphed into "Local Search", which makes sense for most use cases, but I agree with the GP, if you are just, for example, wanting to look at a map of a new area (i.e. not where you live), I think Maps is worse than it was some years ago.
It is a horrific map. On any given screen there is an 80% chance that the major road I'm interested in is not labeled. Finding the name of a relevant cross street is a nightmare.
I feel like it used to be better. Way better. I think the map aspect has been dropped entirely as a real feature now that they supply directions (search) primarily instead.