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.
Indeed. These changes were only needed for the mobile version, but they would be very much welcome in the web app version. This version of google maps is superior to the web version in nearly every aspect, it's interesting how innovation often happens in unexpected ways like that.
Probably never. The iPhone lacks the 4 button configuration that's standard on Android phones. It can be made to work, but it will always be a hack.
Also, not to sound like a fanboy, but why would you want Android on your iPhone? I can understand iOS fans' concerns about the UI on Android not being as polished as iOSes, but it seems like if you're going to use Android, using an Android phone just makes sense.
WRT Android on the iPhone, it's like Linux on a Mac: the hardware is usually higher quality. A 3GS and a Samsung Intercept go for the same price on a 2 year contract, but the Intercept feels like a cheap toy compared to the 3GS.
I run Ubuntu on my MacBook as well, but the camera fails sometimes, the brightness control is wonky, the sleep is hit and miss, etc. Still, what am I going to run? OS X?
That doesn't make sense to me, the article clearly says "pre-rendered". Maybe they don't render the middle of the ocean tiles beforehand but there would be no reason not to save a tile once it has been rendered.
Between this and adding priority inbox to the Android gmail app, Google has given some phenomenal holiday presents. This will be really nice to still be able to access (most of) the maps while on the subway. It'd be great if they gave you the option of always caching certain areas.
Am I the only person who thinks the color scheme changes are bad? Subtle, but the greens and yellows are harsher than the pre-rendered versions. Not a defeater: just a tiny, tiny complaint.
I had noticed something was different about the new Maps app but I hadn't paid attention to the details and put it together what was happening. Of course now that they mention it's all vector based it's blatantly obvious when you watch the screen render. Absolutely wonderful.
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