> throttled wifi every Wednesday to encourage empathy
As much as slow internet hampered my productivity, I used to have 15 mbit/s download speed until very recently (Germany is behind developing countries, of course, in terms of anything internet), it was good to experience.
Before that, when I was living in the countryside, I had 500 KB/s.
I know exactly how painful downloading 10, 100, 1000MB is, and I try to make everything I do load on GPRS with reasonable speed. My website, much like HN, loads on a 64 kbit/s mobile internet "connection".
Of course vodafone's website to recharge prepaid phones takes 20+ minutes (yes) to load on 64 kbit/s internet.
I do still notice upstream improvements though. Both those old 2mbit and 8mbit connections were 256kbit up, and I currently have "up to 17mbit" which is [quick check of router logs] ~11mbit ATM - that can be limiting for backups or when wanting to share video or HQ photos with a large group. So the FTTP upgrade _might_ be justifiable as more than pure luxury.
Developers should use old hardware and slow connections, they would make much better apps.
If the whole industry had been stuck on hardware and bandwidth from 10 years ago, that most likely wouldn't be a problem.
There are old people in my village complaining that the 200 Mbps connection is "horrific" because there is something wrong with their equipment/setup so it cuts out often and leads to buffering on their IPTV.
I once had a 100+ mbit comcast connection that couldn’t reliably do 2mbit in the evenings.
Or if you have Steam, and every game wants to push 10-60 GB (!) updates every few weeks - this becomes a "leave the pc on for a few nights" ordeal. With 100 mbit/s, you give it 50mbit/s and an hour and everything is updated - all while you can keep working because you still have 50 mbit/s left.
Or if you have to quickly set up a Windows VM or other VM - not only is the download the longest process of setting it up, it will also happily update forever and hog the network.
Now assume you have 2-3 devices in the network, all doing backups, downloads, auto updates, and your 10-15 mbit/s connection is gone.
Good luck doing a backup, because residential 15 mbit/s download means 1.5mbit/s upload - you cant back up anything. Or stream your desktop. Or upload images in any reasonable amount of time.
Our users in less digitally connected countries were insanely patient. The main problem was less the time than the cost, actually. The app required updates that were enormous. The cost to download them using the most common pay-as-you-go services in India represented a month of the local salary for day laborers… That information got hammered until developers learned to be more parsimonious.
I never heard anyone suggest that FAANG engineers had to forgo their monthly wage to download the test version of the app, but that probably would have triggered their empathy a little too much.
This is the first come I come across Organic Maps but I do use OSMAnd. I'm wondering how the two compare and would love to hear more about the use cases you have for each of them.
OSMand is slightly too powerful for everyday use, organic maps is the perfect good-enough, less-is-better example.
Those were a few differences I noticed.
Moving the map is much faster in OM than in OSMAnd. I hope that OSMAnd study the code of OM.
The visualization in OM is much nicer. Another thing to copy.
OM is extremely better at displaying POIs and their information. Again, copy it.
Despite the claims it seems that OM does not show walking and cycling routes. OSMAnd shows them with their name, that matches the one you see on signposts along the routes.
OM does not seem to have a way to record a route and save it as gpx. OSMAnd does that.
OM does not seem to have a way to place markers on the map. I use them to plan new routes for biking, then I follow the markers. Navigation would bring me where it wants to go through, not where I want to.
OM is less than half the size of OSMAnd but it's still 58 MB. I wonder why these mapping apps must be so large.
Having to dowload all the maps again is very bad. I wish there is a way to share them among apps but I think that Android makes it impossible, unless we want to use a folder on an external storage (SD card) or root the phone or whatever.
I'll keep using OSMAnd because of recording, markers and routes. However I might recommend OM to friends that only need a replacement for Google Maps.
Apple Maps is even worse because it has no offline mode at all.
In any case, before traveling I try to download the offline maps in HERE wego too.
But the fact that I can download a map that has all of New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Delaware, and sizable chunks of 4 other states in that area for 890 MB is pretty awesome. Especially when it comes with full driving directions, business information including hours and the search capabilities? And it'll keep it up to date periodically? I'll take that win.
All of that impossible if I didn’t have signal to start the walking route.
I definitely can not do this with Google Maps.
Too bad their navigation does not care about traffic outside of Czechia. You can still use them for directions in a car, but no traffic jam avoidance.
My main issue is that there should be a way to say, “Keep this journey on screen until I explicitly delete it, with a confirmation model.” I’m assuming that’s what “Pin it” is meant to do, but in practice, I occasionally see the path I last searched when I reopen my phone and map; I never see a pinned journey again if anything happens: rotate the phone, a quick switch to another app, the screen goes dark…
Too many developers just assume their users are on this year's phones and supercomputer specced desktops with three 4K 27 inch monitors and write their software to perform well on those systems.
I think I need to change my ways
Very simple answer - they want to know everything you do online. As Google Maps is provided for free, you are the product. Convenience of the product (you) is not a priority whatsoever.
> designers like to say that users are always right?
It's just smoke and mirrors. Unfortunately IT breeds a number of people who have ignorant position they have the right to tell people how they should interact, conveniently forgetting the service will be used by all groups of people, not just IT geeks.
Do you honestly think Google is looking at the number of maps users that go offline and saying, “We absolutely need their data!” rather than “Eh, not worth rearchitecting everything for.”
Not to mention they have done a lot for it even if it’s not perfect. There’s a dedicated team doing their best with it. It’s just not worth giving a lot of attention and resources.
I’m actually not even sure what the complaint is actually about since I don’t use offline myself, but I know that Google Maps is a massive app with tons of teams all working on a myriad of features in parallel and a huge dependency tree. So I’m not surprised at all if there are a bunch of features with online assumptions baked in.
1. Offline maps don't actually download all the destinations in the mapped area
2. Google maps is bad at displaying densely packed businesses - this is an issue online as well
3. No offline bike or transit directions
These are the 3 I checked immediately in organic maps, and all work significantly better there.
I think your point is reasonable, but I'm also a very high income person who thinks nothing of buying data plans when traveling internationally and has an unlimited plan in the US. I routinely meet people while traveling who have the opposite set of financial priorities, organic maps is probably a great choice for them.
Anything can be done. But you can't do everything.
One real reason could be ads. Unless they are pre-loading ads for offline display than offline browsing will not produce revenue.
Eventually I found out why: There was some lead dev on Maps, who refused to allow new imports of UK post code data because he thought they were "wrong". They were seeing data with multiple post codes for the same building!
For the record: This is valid in the UK, as there's a maximum number of households per post code or something like that.
Not sure how that ended eventually, left a few years ago, but I just checked and those post codes now exist.
Further, as mentioned, there is a limited amount of "number" that can be associated with any one postcode (currently 100 for new codes, but some legacy postcodes may have more), so for a long enough street, the postcode will change at some point - for example Chepstow Road, Newport changes from NP182LU to NP182LX at some point. If you have more addresses in a single building than the 100 limit, then the postcode indeed changes within the building.
This is quite useful as the standard way of entering a shipping address is you type your postcode, and then select the exact address from a dropdown, and there's a natural limit on how long you have to scroll to find yours.
There are usually 10 to 30 — if you work in a large office it probably has a postcode just for that office, for houses you share with 20-30 or so others. (Very large businesses might have separate postcodes for individual departments, e.g. an electric utility probably has one for handling bills, and another for everything else.)
"What's the postcode please?"
"N1C 4DN"
"And the number?"
"12"
Now they have the whole address. Satnav can take "N1C 4DN" and be very close: https://goo.gl/maps/sGR5XXhmUsLmD2UBA (not the best polygon, should be Handyside Street.)
N1 is innermost, yes, but N2 onwards are sorted alphabetically, and N1C isn't really more "inner" than N1.
(8 if you scroll down)
The only issues are what OC mentioned: some people don’t know a large building (50+ flats) can have several codes, and they are weekly updates because… ::magic dust:: construction!
The worst? Dubai: three inconsistent systems of varying length without any sense, standard, or redeeming features. The city road network is apparently even worse, so I guess those things work hand in hand?
The funniest? One person once joked that people in Ireland were not using postcodes, just the name of the nearby pub, which can get confusing as they often have the same name, so you also have to say the name of the second nearest pub…
I thought was funny, but I wasn’t sure that was a joke. Apparently, that was still true at the time? I saw a lot of discussion about “Introducing PostCodes in Ireland” and avoided those meetings so as not to sound clueless. We used Google Maps for a while during the transition.
Theres a difference between a system and embodied knowledge. I did a lot of work with systems which used Irish addresses early in my career.
"An Post", pre-eircode operated off a traditional hierarchical address system. Where there were "Counties" a real political boundary, "Post towns" which were usually big market towns but the location of a major sorting office, "Localities" (sometimes more than one) which were geographically undefined (we tried) at worst areas and some combination of street and buildings. The hierarchy was not strictly defined, it was a bit hungover.
My own address can be a combination of: <House number> <Street>, <Post town> <House number> <Street>, <Locality>+, <Post town>
Most of these were optional. The "Pub" thing is a testament to how awesome the staff at An Post are at just getting a letter to a door. If you needed to send a letter to "Mary O'Shea" who you knew lived in Kerry and near "Paudie O'Sheas pub" you can bet that if you put "Mary O'Shea, Near Paudie O'Shea's Pub, Kerry" you can bet the letter would get to Kerry, someone in Kerry would know Paudie O'Sheas is in Ventry, Send it on to Dingle and he postie doing the rounds in Ventry would be like "Ah right, thats for Mary" and the only catch being: about 60% of the Female population of West Kerry are probably called some combination of "Mary" and "O'Shea".
I'd imagine logistics companies were dancing for joy with every house having a unique post-code.
So, with users being actively taught not to provide it, of course no (reasonable? :-D) person is going to know it and thus provide it to make it available for use
---
[1] For example even a not-very-long street I used to live on, Alma Terrace in York, has three postcodes: YO10 4DJ on one side of most of it, YO10 4DL on the other side of that, and YO10 4DQ for both sides of the part between that and Fulford Road. I suspect from the street layout that the third code is due to that part of the road being added later, or originally not having anything on it needing a postcode.
[0]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/St._Geor...
They are using a random street name that no one else uses and no matter how many times I report it, they don't change it. It also doesn't matter that I'm a local guide with many, many edits.
https://www.post.japanpost.jp/cgi-zip/zipcode.php?pref=13&ci...
Search for 170-0013 for the beginning of the madness. At least google accepted this one.
This is on my mind a lot when I see speculation about why google (or other large organizations) does various things. It's just a bunch of human beings with egos and biases and blind spots and imperfect information. Mistakes are made.
Malice requires intent to do wrong, either for some selfish benefit or just to be cruel. That's not what's going on in this story, it's "just" ignorance.
It's mindblowing how they don't set meaningful defaults with all that mountain of data they have.
"This store is busiest at 6pm". "This area is less busy than usual". "There's a 5 minute delay ahead, but you're still on the fastest route".
All of that comes from data generated by online users. An offline user isn't providing value to Google, so why would they invest in those users?
- Full searching and POI details including hours, etc. - Full routing (no traffic of course, but possibly expected traffic? I'm not sure) - Freeform region selection, overlapping regions, etc.
They gradually increased the radius to bring hood and well documented in most of California, then some of the US coastline. I’m not sure where they are now, but I’d be surprised if they had basic things like public transport information, Nike lanes where I am. It’s never been a priority for Apple to serve an international audience.
You'll be happy to know that the Louvre is now marked as closed on Tuesdays, has a 94% positive rating, and its own 3D model
In France, Apple Maps has
- country-wide bike routing (accounts for the size of road, elevation, and prefers bike lanes where present)
- trains and busses (I can't say with certainty that every local bus will be present but the trains are)
- Paris will have detailed bus and bike lane markings directly on the map
I've attached a screenshot of public transit navigation in the greater Paris region:
Apple Maps: https://i.imgur.com/9n61j0F.jpg
Google Maps: https://i.imgur.com/uHHkYVZ.jpg
Money. Same reason they won't show you your location on a map unless you turn on location tracking, even though there's a perfectly good GPS in the phone.
You know how designers like to say that users are always right? Well, not that guy.
I have had similar conversations with leads from Google News & Scholar. My impression is that when those people go to a conference or whatever they're they're to promote the company's outlook, not to listen. In the case of the news guy he when I pointed out some logical flaws in his argument (about why they didn't offer a way of sorting by date), he just switched to nodding while staring off into space and refusing to make eye contact, so he could give the appearance of listening without engaging further.
Perhaps Google's mapping business isn't so much showing maps but helping local businesses get found, rated, reviewed... (restaurants,shops etc).
I once met their lead designer (who had just changed to work at another FAANG) and… boy was that not a conversation I wanted to have. You know how designers like to say that users are always right? Well, not that guy. Literally 45 minutes of monologue, none of it about connectivity, being lost or unfamiliar languages. Just how people were wrong, wrong reviews wrong and how they couldn’t read information properly unless they had ‘a mission’. “What if the mission is finding their way in a new city where they don’t have connection?” Didn’t care. Not a real mission.
A little later, he was told that the company he was now working for throttled wifi every Wednesday to encourage empathy. That was not a conversation he wanted to have.