It's still useful without logging in, searches and directions still work fine, they just have a big ugly prompt telling you to log-in. Just ignore it. The main functional things missing are stars, offline, and the personalized suggestion things that appear when you tap search boxes (which regrettably includes recent search history, probably the biggest thing missing from the not-signed-in experience).
(disclaimer etc: I work on google maps for iOS)
Interesting, this was the problem I was having, directions and/or directions from search results weren't working if I wasn't logged in. I just tried again and there's no problem, as you said.
You work on it, why not change that? :)
My wallet was pretty fat and I had no problems tapping in and out with the card in my closed wallet. My phone had the ability to use Pasmo but I felt a lot safer banging my wallet against the gate every day instead of banging my phone against it.
My phone is usually already in my hand :)
Japanese IC card compatibility diagram: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICCard_Connection_en...
Also, the article mentions mass transit navigation is coming for Maps. If that happens I'll get rid of Google Maps, which is almost useless as it now forces me to log in before doing anything useful.