One of my biggest irks with Google Maps is how aggressively it shows pins for hotels, bars and restaurants, even on their search results map. Do users really feel the need for this constant in-your-face advertisement?<p>But as I type this, I realized Google is primarily an ad business and whatever will drive that revenue will get pushed further. Oh well.
I just want Google Maps to slide the location of the street labels so they always stay visible. Zooming into an area and having a street label simply vanish is an absurd behavior for software in the 21st century.
Google Maps has changed styles quite a few times, and it usually won't take long to get used to the new one.<p>One particular change before I remembered was when they reduced the contrast (and amount of details) when zoomed out, which I hated at the time, but now can't go back. It makes finding neighborhoods and such much easier. It looks like the author found the opposite, I guess it's just something very subjective.<p>(The author provided a comparison between various previous versions at the end (sans the newest), and I genuinely can't say the older ones were better, even the "before 2018" ones.)<p>But I do agree this newest one is bad, mainly due to the color choice of the roads. I really like GMap's white/yellow roads.
What about actually improving directions, not sending us through barely usable roads in Mediterranean islands, if we can consider them roads at all.<p>Or shortcuts that might be interesting in a computer game, how the RTS units select their path, but hardly so when driving through a medieval village, instead of the somehow longer circular road that everyone should use.
> The new New York map above looks comically bad, almost like student-level work.<p>I found the new NY map refreshing because of its higher contrast between the streets and city blocks. Feels like it's easier to get a handle on what's on the screen. Granted, whenever a product gives me the opportunity to opt for increased contrast, I usually go for it.
The changes to foliage and general terrain I like.<p>The updates to roads and streets? Not so much. There is way too much emphasis on streets, distracting you from seeing the labeled places. The streets and highways shouldn't be a city's prominent showcase, the landmarks should.<p>That second-to-last image of Chicago streets around The Art Institute of Chicago show the lack of contrast between the green of a street and the green of the park - it all just blends in. It was better before, but just barely.
I can’t believe there’s only one image of Apple Maps in that article.<p>Every image is captioned with “See! Look how similar it is” but I have nothing to compare it to.
TBH <a href="https://mapy.cz/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://mapy.cz/</a> are still the clear winner in map presentation and usefulness.
Has anyone else noticed that Google maps has lately become a lot worse on Firefox compared to Chrome? Zooming is less smooth, even with the whole map flashing in between levels, and in satellite view the tiles seem to load a lot slower.
Apple Maps has an almost game-like UX, which is far superior to Google’s. It really does make them look amateurish in comparison.<p>Here in the US, Apple has surpassed Google and now has a 2-3 year lead, in my opinion (I travel quite a lot, and use both products interchangeably).
Well that explains why it changed.<p>They should add an option "focus on roads" "focus on landscape". Although to be realistic focus on roads is probably way more common, and that appears to be the new design - the roads really stand out.
I never thought I would see the day when Google Maps would copy Apple Maps. Apple has absolutely nailed the map UI and even the UX (like richer details during navigation, requiring fewer touches to do things, etc.) is so good and well thought out. GMaps just looks so cluttered and bloated.<p>The only reason for me not to use Apple Maps (in the US) is that they are far behind GMaps in POI data.
Apple Maps is hard to use in rural areas. It is just a pretty green page with the faintest lines. Labels are maddening to read. Google maps also needs label improvements, but generally has enough contrast to see the lines.
Haven't seen these new Google Maps yet, but from the screenshots, I couldn't disagree more.<p>Broadway is completely invisible in the "old" map, but visible on the "new" map.<p>But I guess the more usable contrast makes the Madame Tussauds label slightly harder to read?
I love-hate this blog. It covers the long and slow enshittification of one of my most beloved websites. I vividly remember their previous post about the loss of labels on Google Maps, which rendered them useless for manual navigation.
Wow the streets and avenues are especially bad, they are borderline unparseable if you're looking for things around the area rather than the roads themselves, which is usually my use case.
The biggest advantage of apple maps is that they don't sell every move you make to 3rd party vendors or keep a long history of where you've been and sell that to vendors.
To be fair, I think Apple Maps has by far the best design and look (even if not yet the usability), and Google Maps seems to be catching up but not quite there yet.