“Continue straight for 2 miles”
“Continue straight for 3 miles”
“Continue straight for 5 miles”
……
Then at some point I have to wonder ok when exactly is my exit coming up. And I have to zoom out on the navigation to see oh I still have a few miles to go. The progress it shows is always based on whatever fractional random segment length they’ve got me on at the moment. So I can’t quickly tell that I’m halfway into that 20 mile section
I forgot to mention sometimes "Continue straight for 1 mile" causes me to begin my migration from left lane to right lane in anticipation of the exit, then she just says, "Continue straight for 3 miles" and I'm livid. (Not sure if this is widely understandable but I tend to speed and usually am in the left lane passing/speeding, while exits are generally on the right so I interpret "Continue straight for 1 mile" as I have an exit coming up).
No sane pilot would ever accept ads popping up on the controls in an airplane cockpit, so let's keep them away from a car's dashboard, too. The fewer distractions the better.
Which is, honestly, one of the least-annoying types of ads I get on a regular basis. Sometimes it's much easier to follow than a street name anyway!
I think that is entirely the point. Apple Maps added something similar around a year ago, where it now says "After this light, ___" or "Take the next ____", which is much easier to understand than giving a street name that you have never heard of. It gets you to look at the road more than at the map which is a bonus for safety.
Fast food restaurants and other major chains fit that bill reliably enough that you could automate adding them to directions. Telling drivers to take a right at, say, a local restaurant that may not have an obvious sign could easily be worse than relying on street signs.
Turn left where the Tastee-Freeze used to be. Hey Siri! How do I get to town from here?
And she said:
Well just take a right where they're going to build that new shopping mall
Go straight past where they're going to put in the freeway
Take a left at what's going to be the new sports center
And keep going until you hit the place where
They're thinking of building that drive-in bank
You can't miss it.
And I said: This must be the placeDisc: Googler but nowhere close to the products discussed here.
Maybe these ads are part of the reason every third stoplight I have to honk my horn because the guy ahead of me is dicking around on his phone after it turns green?
I'll add to your list of issues:
Google Maps and Gmail are products that rose to the top by being best in class. I can only assume that the smart people who built the original product, made many wise choices, and said "no" when it mattered are long gone. The new blood is not of the same caliber, and can only get promoted if they make changes. Unfortunately for them, the user experience was already excellent when they joined, and thus was difficult to improve upon. Seems like they resort to adding details that aren't relevant to the user, and trying to monetize things that are not core to the product. Every instance of feature creep and every dark pattern pulls the experience away from optimality, regressing on goals that were achieved 10 years ago.