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Maps. There’s still unfortunately nothing better.
Yeah. I tried using OpenStreetMap for five minutes until I realised most of my city doesn’t have the house numbers mapped out.
In my experience, google maps has the same issues in some areas,e.g. Tanger. OSM was way more reliable there. You could help fix those issues by contributing. I think it’s fun and you’ll get to know your neighborhood better
I’m going to spend an hour happily contributing to openstreetmaps in response :P
On iOS I find Apple Maps to be better in general. I don’t think Google maps is as much of a monopoly as it once was
That may be, but then you’re in the unfortunate position of owning an Apple device.
I’m fine with that, I’ve always had trouble with android devices but I haven’t had any issues since switching a few years ago. To each their own
I’ve always said “Apple devices ‘just work’ for people who think throwing money at a problem is a valid solution”.
Case in point: Louis Rossmann on why he hates Apple devices
Maps also has gone to shit. Complex routing including public transport is pretty much the only thing it still is useful for. For using maps as maps openstreetmap has been better for a long time, even before Google decided to dumb down their maps. For bicycle routing osm also is better nowadays as Google is missing most of the small paths.
Maps was crowdsourced like wikipedia. Still is.
It will turn to shit as crowds migrate. And the crowds are migrating.Helping to contribute to OpenStreetMap using Street Complete has the potential to change that.
And they’ve been neglecting that. There are a couple of street names that they have wrong, and I’ve been using the edit feature fruitlessly for over 8 years. I’ve included links to local business web sites with the new name of one, links to municipal web sites with the new name, geo-tagged photos of the street signs, and even links to the municipal ordinance that changed the names in 2003. It all goes into the same black hole.
The UI for GMail is awful. Can’t even follow conversations on my phone app. Just put that shit in order like Outlook does. Fuck.
I dunno that Outlook redesign is fucking awful
You know what I don’t want when I search for an email Microsoft? I don’t want your fucking suggestions about what I’m looking for.
I have to use Teams, Outlook, and Sharepoint for work.
What kills me about the search functions in all of them is how bad it is. I work for an ISP, and we use identifiers for different services. I can search SharePoint for the unique numerical identifier of a circuit and get multiple results returned.
Granted, the first is usually what I’m looking for, but none of the other returned results have the identifier anywhere in them.
Same for Outlook. So much junk noise returned when searching for anything.
I hate Google and try not use it anymore but there’s still one thing I can’t do without : Google Maps.
Have you tried open street maps? I suggest organic street maps for your phone
OSM is great in some places. But outside of the more techy areas, it’s a barren land. I something do my part with streetcomplete, but anyway, it’s not there yet (in most places)
Yeah I contribute to OSM but apps like OsmAnd are a far cry in features from Google Maps. The paths are very much not optimized. If I tell it to go back to my hometown it takes me about 15 minutes out of the way. And I can’t tell it to go to a certain house because the houses aren’t mapped yet.
Should I help map them? Yes. But for your average user that’s not going to work.
OsmAnd blows google maps out of the water in terms of features, but google does better with less. It’s easier to use and it has everyone contributing to traffic analysis with them even realizing.
I can never stick with those alternatives, the traffic conditions feature is simply too good to miss
I find Waze quite good for traffic conditions. The only thing it always tries to steer me wrong with is that there’s 2 main routes home from work, around the North East of the city, and on the bypass around the West/South of the city. It always wants to take me on the bypass as when I’m at the exit for the other route, traffic is way lighter. However by the time I’m halfway home on the bypass traffic has brought itself to an essential standstill. And there’s no real ways cutting across the city that avoids the high traffic section of the bypass that doesn’t take longer than sitting in traffic. Also…the NE route is at most 15mins longer due to speed limits, but it’s 20ish km shorter.
Surprise! Waze is owned by Google :-(
FUCK.
Well, here’s hoping they don’t kill it like they kill everything good they’ve ever made…
Waze isn’t technically difficult to replace, but it is going to be difficult to replace because the replacement needs critical mass to become useful. There’s no point using it over some other navigation app if people don’t report stuff.
I’d be okay with Google dwindling all the way down to just Google Maps.
I have tried using it for a while but a few updates ago the search functionality was kinda messed up (and still is) so I had to switch back to gmaps :(
Organic Maps are great, however if you’re looking for shops and restaurants (or rather their reviews) Google Maps are second to none.
OSM can technically replace Gmaps for shops and restaurants if enough people were using and updating it.
However, Gmaps in unbeatable for public transportation :( no alternative at all
Oh, I’m well aware of that, but there are so few cities that have been mapped to the degree to compete with gmaps, that I doubt we ever will reach that level.
Also reviews. I’m not sure if there even is a way to fix that without creating a separate program with a separate ecosystem in the process…
Unfortunately the reviews at GMaps are becoming less and less reliable though, as many businesses begin to have bad reviews removed through lawyers.
I’ve had it happen to a couple of mine, where Google forwarded the request of a law firm to prove I had actually been at a restaurant more than 5 years ago (where I reviewed it with 3*).
Even if you can prove it, most people won’t and in that case the restaurant went from 3.8 stars to 4.6, which is a shame really. It confirms a hunch that just as with Amazon the reviews get a lot less reliable.
Gmaps in unbeatable for public transportation
citymapper
Ooh, nice. Thanks for making me discover it! I would have liked a FOSS alternative, but this is pretty good.
Edit: argh, it’s nice for local urban commute, but it doesn’t work outside or between big cities :(
In Europe you can usually download an app for the public transit in that specific country/city. However, Google Maps is the only one that will show you how to get to a specific address (not just the train/bus station).
Facts, Google maps drive mode is also super handy
Drive mode = turn by turn, like the regular get directions and tap to begin navigation?
It’s like the map from an angle without a specific destination. Helpful for showing the surrounding map area.
If you’ve driven a car with a built in map display, it’s basically that but for your phone.
Like everything else, advertising pressure has ruined it. You can still search, but just zoom in and look over an area to see what is there? So many businesses missing, because they don’t pay Google to advertise. Apple Maps shows them all, because they don’t make money from advertising.
Open Street Maps are ok, but my area has a lot of businesses missing. If you know the address you need to go to, then it’s great for routing.
My personal hobby horse with Google killing things is Reader.
I feel dumb using Google Maps and seeing all the ads. Should’ve known from day one that was the game plan.
Pray Apple keeps their hardware sales up.
Docs is good too
That copy & paste block thou, never again for me
Gmail is ass. Dump it.
What do you recommend? Genuine question. I tried hosting my own email and eventually its just… It’s too much. Like everything rejects you out of hand because your email servers aren’t known. I could do more research and maybe figure that hurdle out but there does end up being an upper bar of effort.
I tried proton mail, but it’s not great. How is Yahoo or other large email providers?
For what?
Proton’s got a whole suite including mail.
It’s been getting prettier and better. Encourage those with disposable income to give them a little money (for some bells and whistles) - privacy, good-for-tech/world, & vibes are all there.
deleted by creator
They are the change we want to see in the world
Proton Mail
They’re the #1 in streaming. More people watch youtube on their TV’s than Netflix
But they didn’t invent that. They bought YouTube after it was already popular. The only thing they’ve done to the platform is put in more ads.
Was that a qualifier? “What exactly does google have left that people like?” Youtube, they have youtube
I dont like youtube, im being forced to use it if i want to wach content from my favorite creators, which by the way, also ain’t exactly happy with YT. Thats exactly the reason as to why so much people try it to migrate to twich and facebook gaming.
YouTube launched in 2005 and was bought by Google in 2006. It has been a Google service for 95% of its existence. I’m pretty sure Google did other stuff in that 18 years than “put in more ads.”
And destroying the rating system from points based, to thumps up and down relation, to thumps up only.
Doesn’t Youtube famously bleed money?
Not anymore lol. It used to, but they make a lot of money on youtube now.
No clue, but the question was what do they have that people like. People really really like youtube
Liked. They make it worse every day, there’s just not a viable alternative. Without revanced and 5 different plugins on the browser, I’d have stopped using it already
Let’s not pretend like google does not have a monopoly on search engines, maps, and shortform video content. Also, their cloud ecosystem might be second behind AWS, but it’s still fucking enormous and makes them truckloads of money.
Third. It goes AWS, with about 50% of the market, Azure with around 40%, and then GCP
Given that Amazon, Microsoft, and Google together only account for 64% of global cloud hosting, I’m going to say those numbers don’t add up. But you are right that Google is third behind the other two.
As someone who routinely argues that Steam has a de facto monopoly… Google does not have a monopoly on search. Bing / DuckDuckGo works just fine. Especially now that Google’s completely fucked their own results.
Google does not have a monopoly on search. Bing / DuckDuckGo works just fine.
Around 82% of search engine requests are issued through Google. Bing around 10%. I don’t know if we just have differing definitions of “monopoly,” but Google is the default on all Android devices, almost every non-Microsoft browser, and probably on Apple products as well. And most users don’t know enough or care enough to ever change from that.
Honestly I suspect Bing will eventually surpass Google. Its reached the point where its better than Google for web search
It’s not a question of liking, but not having a choice.
Kind of like Microsoft then. They buy up or spend money trying to break into all kinds of different areas but consistently take bad L’s and get pushed back to their core business time and again after face-planting and alienating those who gave them a shot.
wait Fitbit was killed off?
My latest day-job employer has made the switch from Apples (and s20fe) to pixels. The staff - mainly nerds - is actually generally pleased with the switch.
If the embarrassment that is Purolator (our national postal service offshoot courier ‘service’) was adequate last week, not only would they break a 20-year streak but also I’d’ve had my shiny company pixel by now and could pepsi-challenge it against my wife’s shiny new company iphone.
Yeah pixels are awesome. Call screening is my favorite feature. Someone calls and my robot assistant asks why they’re calling, and then I get a real time transcript of who they are and why they’re calling and I get to decide whether or not I pick up.
I hate call screening. I never activate it on purpose, the phone’s screen decides to wake up while it’s still in my pocket and let my thigh press the button for some reason. Then I pull the phone out of my pocket, look at the caller ID, and see that a robot is screening an important call from my boss, and the button to actually answer the call is greyed out until the robot is done harassing my boss. Or my doctor, or my therapist, or my bank. I’ve had important people I was expecting a call from hang up because they reached a robot instead of me and assumed it was a wrong number. It’s a terrible first impression to make when I’ve applied for a job and this robot decides to harass my potential new boss.
If they made the call screening button a slider, it would reduce the butt presses by 90%
Pixels are awesome. Mostly cuz i can remove google from them.
If/when they screw up gmail, I’m blacklisting Google for good, that’s gonna be such a goddamn pain to disentangle myself from.
You should start now.
Proton Mail FTW, until they are successful, then we move on.
Email hosting is pretty cheap. Ive paid for email for a couple years now and use gmail for almost nothing except junkier things.
It’s about the thousands of things you have your old gmail tied to. Yes I use forwarding to my new proton mail but sometimes it doesn’t work cause it went into spam or smh and I must open gmail.
Sometimes also the icloud aliases stuff stops working and I don’t want my proton mail to be associated with too much ads so I again type the old mail…
To be honest I was supposed to use proton but I use apple icloud aliases stuff most of the time because I don’t want to disclose my most important and secure email address on some trashy sites. So yeah that google switch didn’t work out all that good I guess I just changed the tech overlord. At least the new one didn’t want to monopolize the internet I guess
https://xkcd.com/1361/
't was just a matter of time.As discussed [GN/Level1]
Aside from Pixels, they’ve pretty much ruined all their products.
It sucks, because I actually like Google products, minus the gross privacy violations and ads. I used to pay for YT Premium.
Visual voicemail is broken on my Pixel, but that might be my carrier (Mint)
BTW if anyone has a fix or a recommended app for visual voicemail please let me know
I remember Visual Voicemail being broken for me back when I used to use Mint as well.
I switched to US Mobile on Verizon’s network and it works perfectly fine.
Do what a normal person does. Let it fill up and you won’t have to worry about it anymore.
Well yeah, that’s what I’ve done, but I’m self employed and some of my customers are old and don’t text. I’ve definitely lost some business because my voicemail is full
YouTube music/premium never grew on me. It simply wasn’t as good as google play music. ( in my honest opinion )
I liked it but the fact that they stole our google play music purchases to replace it with a sub only service soured the experience quite a bit.
It’s ok, and getting better. My big problem with it is (like you) that Google Play Music was incredible, so good, and they discontinued it in favor of the much worse and awkwardly named YouTube Music.
Whoever convinced them to give up the branding of “Play Store, Play Music, Play Movies” should be drawn and quartered.
I never really used it for YT Music. I don’t like YT Music.
I liked no ads + background playback on iOS and Android without having to go through hoops like using NewPipe/Revanced.
Android worse every year? How? Every update I’ve received (on a Samsung, mind you) has made my experience better.
Lots of proprietary google crap. Much harder to run a custom ROM with decent support and apps
OP technically isn’t wrong, there are many UI changes that have made android worse over the years.
Like what?
The drop down that shows the toggles and notifications. I remember when there used to be 6 or 7 toggles at the top before you had to swipe down again to get more, but now, there are 4 huge and frankly unnecessary toggles instead of the previous 6-7 small ones. Also, more and more of google shoving their unnecessary products down your throat that you cannot uninstall.
There used to be tons of customization options which have been removed/limited under the guise of “personalization”. For example you used to be able to do things like choose system colors that weren’t from a selection of 5 pastel themes. For some reason Google believes that pastels and pastels alone accurately reflect the “personality” of every user and that users wasn’t their “personality” reflected.
There’s a ton of settings that have been removed over the years, volume button behavior changed, various privacy settings reset to default with random updates, privacy settings removed…
It’s still fairly functional but if it weren’t for certain apps i need i would be trying out graphene or whatever.
You could never officially choose system colors in AOSP. It was always white with teal accent. If you’re thinking of Substratum, that was kinda an unintended exploit when Google was working on adding native theming for OEMs.
Volume buttons are being made more customizable in Android 15, which is launching on Pixels soon.
Privacy settings have never been reset for me, maybe you’re confusing it with Windows 11.
Sorry i think i meant theme colors, not system colors. In any case it was better before the “you” thing that’s currently used which has restricted customization significantly.
I think it may be google account settings, which are not android I’m aware. Though i recall phone settings becoming default whenever a settings menu was overhauled instead of something reflecting the previous selection.
No I’m on windows 10 still. Well aware of the difference lol
Android 12 took up 700MB RAM, leaving some space for non-sytem apps on lower end smartphones.
Android 13 takes up easily 1.2GB, leaving almost nothing at the benefit of having a somewhat “snappier” interface
Lower end phones usually already have 8 GB RAM (example: Galaxy A54 5G, 300€ new).
I would consider the A-Series of Samsung “mid-range”. I know you said “lower” and “mid-range” is lower than “high-end”, but I suspect tetris11’s issue mostly applies to “low-end” phones. Something like a Motorola Moto G Play 2024
You consider that a good thing… Phones shouldn’t have this much RAM.
Why would higher RAM be a bad thing? That’s like saying phones shouldn’t have more storage, faster processors, better camera, …
Sure, they worked before that already. But isn’t technological advancement still good?
More bloated and inefficient every release. That would be fine for Android but sadly, it affects the core and thus every custom ROM too.
Latest Samsung updates removed classic swipe controls for navigation. I had to do a hacky workaround including finding 2 random APKs just to preserve functionality. (S21U)
Really? D: That sucks, I use swipe navigation for everything. Not sure if it’s classic or not but losing an option is a bummer.
They used to have both the old school one where you swipe up on the three sections at the bottom, as well as the new Google one for years. The newest update to OneUI 6.1 removed the classic swipe controls for no reason, keeping only the Google one. I had to install Good Lock and NavStar to make some sort of custom settings configuration, which returned the navigation option. Thankfully I did get it working, but only after messing around and wasting 20 minutes of my time.
I really hate that they think they own my device, not me.
