I just wish my Nexus One had a better touchscreen, or that I could afford a Nexus S. :D

The old mobile maps were frustrating to use. Very data hungry and high latency and with quirky UI bugs. It was very much a translation of the web app meant for desktop use on low latency broadband to a mobile app with only a few tweaks. For example, pinch zooming would work surprisingly, by zooming the low-res tiled image and then effectively translating into a button press to zoom in/out one level, leading to a very frustrating and clunky experience that essentially removed any advantage of using multi-touch gestures over just pressing the zoom in and zoom out buttons.

Google has not only fixed those problems, they've improved the experience several times over. It's fabulous. It's faster, it's responsive, it's seamlessly interactive, it's a pleasure to use.

I totally agree with you about the previous version's shortcomings, but it is a little like "my hovershoes! The fusion drive only lasts for 8 hours!"

You have a frickin map of the earth in your pocket. With a database of all places in the earth and directions to anywhere on the earth.

I mean, holy crap.

Oh, I quite agree, and that alone is one of the major reasons why I finally upgraded to a smartphone this year after resisting for so long.

Two fingers down does the tilt. How did you get rotate to work?

Two fingers 180 degrees apart and rotate them in a circle in either direction.