Anybody remember Triptiks from AAA? You'd go to a AAA office or call them on the phone, tell them where you were going, and in return you'd get a printed spiral top-bound pad with your trip broken down in to multiple legs, the roads/routes pre-highlighted, gas stops and prices estimated in, a list of sites for stopping off at, etc. All human curated and human annotated (the roads on your route were literally gone over by a person with a Highlighter). I'm sure it was all pulled from some sort of centralized/normalized/standardized data source but the human touch was definitely there.
They were awesome. When we were growing up most big family trips were in the car because gas and hotels were just so much more affordable than flying an entire family anywhere. I got to be the "navigator" on so many trips by helping family members read the Triptiks.
Apparently AAA still offers these, but they're generated digitally now via their app, and you can print them off if you want. But something about those human-built Triptiks were really really special.
In a lot of ways, electronic maps are still inferior to the Triptik.
Even the Rand McNally showed highway rest areas and picnic areas. The Triptik also showed gas stations. Electronic maps often lack this entirely, at least in easy form.
The Triptik shows what you need to know while on a long motor trip. The electronic map emphasizes details I don't need.
At a glance the paper map tells me whether a road is free limited-access, toll limited-access, multi-lane divided, two lanes but major, two lanes and minor, a country lane, or a dirt road. Electronic map only tells me this if I zoom in on a satellite view, and it might even route me over a two-lane road to save five minutes on a two-hour trip when there's a much safer freeway that most drivers would prefer.
Paper map has little dotted lines for scenic routes. Electronic map doesn't.
Mostly I'm surprised the electronic maps don't have these things after all these years. Maybe Apple will get them eventually. Google is busy stuffing ads into its maps.
I've been growing pretty dissatisfied with the state of electronic maps. Basic things that are usually either impossible or difficult while using Google Maps or Apple Maps for directions:
- What road am I on? What town am I in?
- and other flavors of "where the hell am I, anyway?"
- This is especially annoying when on the phone and the person is asking where you are, and the best you can answer is "Google says I'm X minutes away"
- What road is this coming up next?
- instead it puts the name halfway along the road, which is out of view...
- Some of the true nav systems (Garmin, etc) do this better.
There's no way to see a street name on Apple Maps without zooming in entirely. And sometimes even then, I'll see something like Route 99 instead the name by which everyone refers to the road: "Broadway".
If I have my directions preference set to walking, cycling, or public transit, there is no reason to EVER show me the route number of a street that has a name. I don't care about it, and it actively gets in the way of using the map since it displaces the name, you know, the thing that is actually on the signs that I am looking at with my eyes.
It would be one thing if it showed both the name and the number, but usually you have to pinch and pan so far from where you are before you luck into seeing the name that you've totally lost your orientation on the map.
This annoys me too. I've submitted map feedback (holding and tapping 'Report a problem' on the map) before but who knows if that could make much of a difference. I assumed the route numbers are more of an American thing (although your comment seems to imply perhaps not)? We have them here but nobody I know here in Australia uses them or knows them, apart from major motorways. Maybe the other routes are used by truckers? Normal drivers though I would think only care about the street names.
It frustrates me to no end how hard it can be to see the names of streets in Maps, it's one of the most important things!
> I assumed the route numbers are more of an American thing (although your comment seems to imply perhaps not)?
In my area (Connecticut), it depends. Some streets are known by their route numbers, vs some streets have route numbers and most people aren't aware of them at all. It's more common to refer by route number if it's a busy main road that changes name from town to town that it passes through.
Then there's upstate New York, with plenty of streets that are only route numbers, despite being otherwise residential normal roads.
> assumed the route numbers are more of an American thing
Not for streets that go through a town or city and have maximum speeds of 30 mph (48 Kmh). And those are the streets that Maps displays route numbers. I don’t know of truckers using those streets.
Made even worse by traveling in a country with a language you can't read. sometimes it shows the native language, zoom in it might show an English transliteration. if you're showing it to a taxi driver it'll definitely not show the native language.
One thing that drives me nuts on Google Maps is "Search Nearby" doesn't leave your original point of interest (that you're searching around) on the map when showing results. Pretty sure it didn't used to be like this.
I'm pretty convinced that Google just doesn't understand information economics. In case you haven't noticed, Apple maps are getting better and better and I prefer their turn-by-turn directions over that of Google.
The interesting thing is that Apple now offers "explore" vs "driving" maps, I hope they also add "walking" or "Cycling" maps. And because they aren't driven by advertising sales, the maps can be more useful without compromising sales revenue.
If Apple decided to invest in a crawler/indexer with a search front end to give Siri the data sources for better response, and to allow for "pure" informational search (rather than search-ad/revenue prioritized search), once it got good enough for that it would put Google into a very tight spot. (Well tighter than the one it currently finds itself in).
Apple's solution isn't a serious contender because it's hardware locked to high end devices that the majority of people don't use / can't afford (the demographics of this community not withstanding).
While it's nice that their users can have an alternate first-party experience, that experience is not a publically available map. For example if you go to maps.apple.com you are told "Open this on your Apple Hardware".
(i.e. If 100% of Apple users used Apple Maps, Apple's best case scenario is still #2 in mapping)
Apple isn't a serious contender because their devices aren't sponsored by tracking/ads? You can also get an iOS device (partly) included with a post-paid mobile plan, can't you?
> Apple isn't a serious contender because their devices aren't sponsored by tracking/ads?
Apple isn't a serious contender because they don't sell anything in the low-end segment. Ferrari make great cars but you can't expect everyone to drive a Ferrari.
> You can also get an iOS device (partly) included with a post-paid mobile plan, can't you?
That acts as a payment plan, but you're still paying the full cost (usually plus interest) one way or another.
A $399 iPhone SE that has gotten seven years of OS updates and is still getting security updates today is as cost effective as several bargain bin devices that have to be quickly replaced.
$400 isn't low-end. The Samsung phone I got from T-Mobile for a one-time payment of $40 after taxes (for trading in a flip phone) is a low end phone. I've been using it for over a year, and I expect to continue using it for at least another year, probably two. At that point, I might just switch to a flip phone, since I spend my money on nice large tablets instead of oversized phones. Hopefully there'll be a decently priced flip phone that'll last more than 2 years.
I'm using a Motorola phone that I bought outright new for 200 bucks. Still works 3 years later, but has recently started showing its age, especially in the battery department.
I'll be looking for a new phone soon. 350 and under is what I'm aiming for. 400 is extreme stretch and the 400 dollar phone would have to blow me away to get me to consider it.
This is a no strings attached offer. I'm not required to continue using T-Mobile. There are no installments or contract. I can take my T-Mobile phone and immediately stop using T-Mobile without paying a fee for it. The phone might be locked to T-Mobile though.
Maybe. If you have the $399 upfront or the credit rating to get it on a phone contract. If you have anything to spend on buying a phone at all as opposed to having to use whatever hand-me-down device found its way to you.
> as opposed to having to use whatever hand-me-down device found its way to you
Given that Apple just issued another security update for the decade old iPhone 5s, your ability to hand down an iPhone is greatly extended, especially compared to the support policy you get with a bottom of the barrel Android device.
>Given that Apple just issued another security update for the decade old iPhone 5s, your ability to hand down an iPhone is greatly extended, especially compared to the support policy you get with a bottom of the barrel Android device.
I think this is a fair point in favour of Apple, but I would be surprised if many people who are weighing up hand-me-downs vs cheapest models are concerned with security updates
Build quality, years of OS updates and security patch longevity are absolutely reasons why iPhones hold their value much longer than a bottom of the barrel Android device does.
> based on handsets with an initial buyback price of $700 or higher, Android phones lose value twice as fast as iOS models over the first two years of ownership.
Low trade-in value is a reason a lot of those devices end up as hand-me-downs; there's no liquid market so they're notionally worthless, but they still work so people are likely to pass them on rather than trade them in. (Indeed one could argue that Apple pays inflated trade-in values to get their old models out of circulation and sustain their premium positioning)
One could argue that Android vendors intentionally refuse to support low end Android devices after the sale to force users to buy another device every year.
One could, but the competitiveness of low-end Android makes that pretty implausible; people buying a cheap no-name Android who replace it with another cheap no-name Android are unlikely to get that from the same company.
It's implausible that it would be for market control purposes, because no one player controls that market and competition is intense (unlike Apple's situation). If no-one's offering support in the low end it's because doing so is uneconomic in itself, not to create an effect in another part of the ecosystem.
About your second response (which is quite right), let me add that in my neck of the woods (and in many others), there's no way to get an iOS device with any postpaid plan, or any other cell phone plan, for that matter.
One could argue that "most" people[1] have iPhones (at least in the US). And yes it is only 22% world wide. But putting aside the currently available "seats" for a moment, at the point where is it clearly the better product then two things start happening
1) People start buying Apple hardware because it has a better map experience.
2) Apple can produce the iMap device, likely in cooperation with their maps partner TomTom, that people can use to get the Apple Maps experience without changing their phone provider.
I live USA, Stanford engineer, have an Android phone and will likely never have an iPhone. My other gender breeding partner has to have an apple, so I use hers at times and am appalled at how difficult things are. But if she can't facetime friends, then she will lose face. I get free phones, and see pays large fees for hers. Sorry, I pass. I work in finance BTW.
I think that is great. FWIW I worked at Google and still have the original Dream phone in a box somewhere. And while I used iPads since the Android tablet experience never really congealed for me, used an Android phone until the iPhone 13 SE I currently own.
I am also a firm believer that everyone should "vote with their wallet" for the products they want, so no judgement, on my part, on folks who buy one product or the other.
In my experience I find that for every product I buy, the various choices all come with pluses and minuses. I go through that list and apply my own importance rating on each one and come up with my final choice.
My original comment was that Apple Maps are getting better, they were at one time a complete joke. I use maps on my phone all the time, it is probably the largest use of mine after "looking things up on the web" or "communicating" via text or voice. As a result of this improvement in maps, it made this particular choice (for me) a better choice on the iPhone than on an android phone.
I can tell that some people heard my comment above "if you don't own an iPhone you are stupid" or something like that. It certainly wasn't my intent. Never easy to know how something you say will be heard.
My other experience is that products that get "better" overall, supplant, then replace what existed before them. Whether it is TVs, cars, computers, or phones. I still have a Garmin Navigator in my car's glove box but I don't think I have used it in nearly a decade. And yet there was a time when devices of that form were 90+% of the market for "in vehicle navigation."
While 55% is technically "most", there are hundreds of millions of people in that minority block. Definitely not a number to just dismiss from a function as important as mapping. As a member of that minority, I'm very grateful for non-hardware-locked mapping apps.
I 100% agree. What I was trying to communicate was that maps is a "feature" of a bigger platform "phone" and can be a discriminator for consumers on purchase. For example a consumer who uses their phone mostly for its maps and driving directions may choose a phone based on their best "maps" experience.
The reference article was discussing a resurgence in "paper" maps, which have three advantages over "electronic" maps that I am aware of; they work when you are "offline", they have specific details of interest, and they "look good."
My observation was that Apple appears to be investing in a better "map" experience on their phones. This resurgence might influence that investment.
Dismissing that observation based on market share is probably unwise. Why? Because market share is a function of serving customer requirements better than the competition. Market share is a reflection of meeting requirements, and in the absence of external forces will result in the brands with doing the best job of meeting requirements ahead of their competitors.
If marketshare is a reflection of meeting customer requirements, then the fact that Google Maps is indisputably #1 and what 10X larger than Apple Maps means that consumers have decided which solution meets their needs the best, right?
For the record, the best data available suggests that only ~50% of iOS users choose the pre-installed built-in Maps versus explicitly downloading the Google Maps app.
One wonders what that number would look like without anti-competitive monopolistic bundling, too. From that perspective, it seems that the "majority of iOS users" would choose Google over Apple Maps, but Apple's anti-competitive behavior has kept it at around 50/50 on their own platform.
Yes and no. "Yes" at this moment in time, Google Maps is the choice of most people. "No" in that market share at one point is not a predictor of market share at a future point. If it were, we would all be using Blackberry phones right?
I would agree 100% that for the last 10 years, Google Maps has been "the best choice" for an online map. I think it would be ill advised if they relied on their historical advantage and simply "assumed" it would always be "the best choice." Their competitors are evolving their maps offerings and if Google doesn't pay attention they will find themselves suddenly playing catch up.
My observation is that Google is very distracted at the moment but I don't know how that affects the maps team (were any of them laid off?). Apple seems to be investing here and the improvements in their product reflect that investment.
I've found that when I'm planning things I tend to use Google Maps, but when I get in the car I tend to use Apple maps. I swear there are little differences like Google instructions will be "In X feet... turn right" where Apple is "turn right at the stop sign" which is easier to follow.
Yeah that’s nice but Apple Maps have also routed me down narrow rural roads, occasionally across private property, and proclaimed that I was at my destination when I was looking out the window at a vacant lot. In my experience, Google’s tech is better.
My take is it turns out this way because Google’s map data is better but Apple’s user experience is better. Google Maps seems to have completely stagnated on both data and user experience whereas Apple seems to be getting better on both fronts all the time. It’s Google’s market to lose.
Recently I've found that Google has started to put more effort into this area -- I've started getting directions like "Turn right at the next corner after the Chase bank."
When it comes to cycling maps, I’d recommend checking out cycle.travel[1], its routing (at least over here in EU land) has been awesome. I’ve done a couple of week long trips planned on it.
>Mostly I'm surprised the electronic maps don't have these things after all these years. Maybe Apple will get them eventually. Google is busy stuffing ads into its maps.
Yeah, google is always going to be trash for anything that doesn’t align well with advertising. Better to show a Starbucks than a rest area, etc.
so it's the gas station's fault for not buying Google Ads then, right? Google can't possibly be blamed. The don't do evil. It's just the people using their services that do evil things. /s
My user experience on several recent trips is that Google Maps showed me the exit number for the exit I would use next very prominently on top of the display (where it shows the direction of the next turn). Maybe that isn't rolled out consistently for all trips.
Context is when you are not using GPS. (Personally I despise being talked at by a computer for an hour, especially one that's bad at directing a driver.)
With paper maps, you can just look at them -- a single page, no pinch zooming or scrolling! -- to see what exit is appropriate for your destination. Not possible with Google Maps -- you either have to zoom in until the exit ramp fills the screen, or make up a fake address near where you're going to get directions which you then have to read through to find the relevant exit. It's a needless frustration when I'm in a hurry and just what to know what exit serves town X.
I feel you on the talking part. Especially maddening to me is where it talks over an in-progress conversation to tell us things we already know.
I now generally turn the audio part off except for alerts. I like that better, not only is it more soothing, but it forces me to engage my brain a little more.
Those two types of maps are targeting different groups -- paper maps targeting the somewhat advanced users who know the basic navigation and have little need to consult the legend. The electronic maps target much wider audience and can be dumbed down since people can interact with the map. Sure, the electronic maps probably can stuff more info to be shown at a glance, but my impression is that they chose not to.
I am reliably amazed by how many people are completely unable to read a map these days. I hate turn-by-turn directions and never use them, with the result that I am naturally paying enough attention that I can always find my way back to anywhere I've been. People I travel with, who let themselves be led around from one corner to the next with their nose buried in a screen, can't understand how I do it.
Since it became unnecessary for most people? Phones can break, so it's always good to know the paper skills... but it's definitely not an everyday thing anymore.
Besides, even before phones, it was somewhat advanced, they were never easy, as shown by how often people got lost, and still get lost with perfectly functional GPS just by making one bad turn because their memory failed since last time they checked the screen.
I'd even argue that darning socks might be more relevant to everyday life than map reading, even though map reading is more important in emergencies and people should probably know both.
If you can darn socks you can probably fix holes in your pants, and if you have a car charger, getting lost happens a lot less than clothes repair, at least in the city.
You could predict it from Streetview data though! A small bit of computer vision would go a long way here. Actually this seems like a fun project for someone inside or (if the API is not too throttled) outside Google.
Former land surveyor here. Big fan of paper maps, even though I still use Gaia, FarOut, etc. My faves are the USGS topographical map sets. There's just something you can't replace about the experience of navigating using topo maps and a compass.
Travel is such an personal thing - it's people in an environment at least somewhat foreign to them. Trusting someone to plan it is a pretty intimate thing, and companies don't do intimate things very well anymore. Too many people, too few companies.
I'd pay good money for more personal experiences from companies, especially when it comes to something like this, but it's not easy. The wife and I were looking for a honeymoon package, but neither "beach" nor "romantic European getaway" were on our list. Roughly 90% of travel companies were out of ideas after that. It's literally their JOB to plan trips and they can't deviate from a template. It's pain incarnate.
If it's something like what we had at my country, it's not a travel plan.
It's a book, fully indexed, with searchable and fully reviewed information about the place you are going and the path in between. You use it to make your own plan, or to improvise.
Specifically about improvisation, it has become almost impossible nowadays because there is no reliable information about anything.
monetization really screwed this up. having a connected computer in your pocket with the ability to search everything and make shelter and travel reservations and perform other important actions instantly should really be perfect for this.
but somehow I always end up having to sign up for a bunch of services in a hurry and take crappy pictures of my id only to find out that the hotel doesn't know anything about my reservation when I arrive anyways.
sometimes I even have to upgrade my phone while sitting on a curb to get the app to arrange for the payment etc .etc.
or that lovely looking and affordable Airbnb is next to an open sewer
I am boring, but one of the reason I keep wanting to take a cruise is because I do not want to plan anything. Show up at this place, at this time and then there will be a bunch of exotic* stuff to see/do/eat.
*Exotic very much being in the eye of the beholder, but something different from my daily costal urban experience.
I understand why that niche doesn't exist - most people looking for a personal experience tend to plan it themselves. Though it would be nice to say "I want to go here, here and here" and have someone book all of the hotels and transport.
You can totally do that at the luxury divisions of firms like Scott Dun and Protravel if you have the money. They'll even get you a chauffeur and dinner reservations at that high end restaurant if that's what you want. If you need anything mid-trip just call the 24/7 concierge and they'll figure out how to get it to you.
Travel agents still exist. If they don't know how to plan the vacation of your dreams, they know somebody who does. I used one to plan a trip to Florida, which was obviously a normal-ass tourist thing but they got in touch with another agent who knew the ins and outs of where to stay at the Space Coast and the pros and cons of onsite stay vs offsite for Disney.
There are specialty outfits specific to an area/country and/or type of activity that I've used which are pretty good. But most mainstream travel agents have been book a cruise/flight/tour for pretty much forever.
My dad had one for years who was better than that but I've only sometimes used specialty agencies, e.g. for English walking trips.
Just curious here—what sort of things were on your list that you couldn’t find? If there were better templates, what kind of trips would you expect to be able to plan?
I'm referring to unknown unknowns here. I'm going to a completely foreign area, and I want to pay someone money instead of doing hours of research myself. It's just a huge pain in the ass made way harder by the fact that I don't know anything about the place, and the places I visited were all very rigid. Maybe the type of experience I'm looking for is not something I can afford, and that's why I haven't come across it?
It makes life easier at the expense of some indescribable sense of "quality" or connotations of "wealth", the feeling that the product makes a statement about the skill of the maker and the user, that there's real skill involved not just a technological cheat code in real life.
Which seems to be very culture specific, it's important to some but not others.
I don't have much doubt that people get lost less with phones now. It's reliable and available on demand at any moment. Basic utilitarian trips might even use less gas because if dynamic traffic data.
The main thing we lost is the sense that things are real and solid, rather than unearned power ups in a global scale video game, but by technical engineering measures, it seems like almost every single product outside of the arts has improved, year after year.
Old analog stuff is cool, but if I only had room in my bag for one, I'm probably going to take the latest new version, every time.
Rather than a subjective cultural "quality", I think there's an issue where folks are dependent upon technology and that handicaps their ability to learn or perform advanced skills.
In the US, younger students are performing worse in mathematics than previous cohorts; calculators aren't a singular cause but their ubiquity does encourage a mentality both from children and adults that basic arithmetic and even algebra or geometry aren't important, which then becomes worse performance by older students who lack the fundamentals.
I'd be interested to see a study on how often folks are "lost" and how that was defined: if someone's phone lost power or crashed mid-journey, then the person would qualify as lost because they don't know where they are or how to get out of where they are, but even with the phone _telling_ them where to go, do they really know where they are or how to get out of where they are? Or are they just a simple child being given and following directions from a parent, without any concept of what those directions mean?
It's the same problem math has always had for my whole life. The fundamentals are important to reach the high level stuff but no longer directly useful, and people aren't always sure whether they want to go into a field that needs it, until they are past the age where people used to learn the basics.
Algebra is not useful to an average person directly, and the path to actually getting a job that needs math is long enough that nobody in school is going to think through their future like that, we don't really have a culture of kids thinking a decade ahead. I sure didn't.
Plus, the main thing educators seem to talk about is this mysterious "New way of thinking" you get from math. But nobody just trusts their teachers on that, since it's not something that can be explained easily.
It probably doesn't help that they still like to pretend you're going to actually directly do long division IRL. Even if there's a reason to learn it, I don't see why we need to tell people they'll actually use it directly, when it seems pretty clear most people don't.
But that seems like a matter for educators to solve rather than tech or tech culture.
Is there a different optimal curriculum that takes into account the existence of calculators and the fact we learn math for different reasons now? Or is the best way to teach it unchanged?
Philosophically I suppose phone-dependent people are perpetually lost, but I think a practical definition would be "Unable to navigate to their destination with available equipment".
Someone who's phone dies isn't really experiencing what most know as lost unless they have no power bank or car charger, only then are they going to really be experiencing some panic.
This is an interesting thought. What other examples are you thinking of besides the maps? And does this extend to innovations that create a whole new space, or is it just when innovation does an existing thing differently?
I think this was the premise of the Innovator's Dilemma, which showed examples where disruptive competition comes from below, and catches big companies off guard, toppling them, all the while prior they were successfully optimizing their business, until poof.
There's still an AAA office that I drive past all the time. Never been in there, though. I should go and ask for a Triptik sometime.
When I told people I went to Alaska, the inevitable answer was, "Oh, did you go on a cruise?" No, I didn't go on a forking cruise. Those are for lazy people.
What I've started doing is booking a short (2-4 days) trip inside the country or state, and being independent before & after that. You still get some guidance and socializing and seeing things you wouldn't otherwise, but your whole vacation isn't locked in. I recommend this.
When I was a child, my parents took the tribe around the country for 2 months. We towed our trailer behind an International Traveall. To prepare, my mom worked with AAA to design the route we were going to take starting from our home in California, up to Seattle, across to Yellowstone and Glacier, across the midwest to Philadelphia, down the east coast to Florida then back home through the south, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada. The trip require a dozen of these books. I remember spending hours pouring through these prior to our leaving, just fascinated with all the roads, and cities, and attractions. We kept them for years afterwards and I continued looking at them for several years. Not sure what happened to them, however. Great times.
Oh, yes! My Dad used to have these made for our summer road trips. I used to love pouring over the maps before the trip to get hyped up. Then, in the car, following along as we drove. I forgot about that till your comment reminded me. Thanks for the nostalgia!
Yes. I remember going into the AAA office with my dad before family vacations to pick them up. They gave you a whole pre-trip briefing too on current construction, tips and any issues you might encounter. While apps like Waze do a great job of getting you from A-Z they completely lack the contextual information about where you’re going, things to see along the way and other details. One really had to pay a lot more attention to what was happening too vs just waiting for some voice in a box telling you to turn off the highway. Rest stops and roadside attractions where part of the adventure too vs todays boring cookie cutter outfits with the same chains.
I probably sound old and nostalgic but there were some things that were just “better” when life was a bit slower and not completely driven by tech—-and I’m someone that works in tech!
Those trips really felt like an adventure whereas now it’s just push some buttons and drive.
In theory, I can set my car navigation system to "Paris" now and drive there for a coffee (in about 9 hours or 788 km). I can even half-way change my mind and drive to Prague instead, without any preparation. The car will make sure that a lot of silly mistakes will be avoided, at the expense of perhaps some new silly mistakes (but fewer than without navigation system, for most casual drivers).
Of course, that modern ability lacks the anticipation, excitement and celebration of the annual family trip experience that you talk about, and yes, a personalized physical map that not just aids your navigation to your holiday/vacation destination but later becomes a memory artifact/artefact when said road trip is fondly remembered and re-imagined.
We invent electronic replacements for things and processes without giving much thought to the positive aspects of the experience that we may wish to retain (or better: re-create) before replacing them. Naturally, the first iterations of the substitute will be lacking. Later refinements will be evaluated relative to previous versions of the electronic replacement, not the original experience, which is soon forgotten. That's why many electronic/automatic replacements are lacking: examples include manual maps versus car navigation systems, human layout creation versus DTP publishing, traditional printing versus print on demand, traditional slide photography and development versus digital photography. The new is not just a replacement of the old, it is different. But the new often renders the old uneconomical and makes it disappear, like it or not, even when they tell us that the new thing is "complementary" to the old.
For better or worse, free market economy does not have a place for something _and_ its substitute, only the cheaper one of the two.
I would pay for a nicely printed and bound, personalized street map of a planned family holiday/vacation if the price was appropriate, and they did not ask me for the date and time of departure... ;-)
It's easier than ever to go off on an adventure if you want to. Any turn you like, you can take, you don't have to worry about getting lost. Anywhere you think looks like a nice detour, you can add it in and see immediately how much time it's going to add.
Most people don't bother, but I don't think that's the technology's fault. The technology absolutely supports it.
True but it also depends on who is in the car with you. I have to turn aside randomly if I have taken a route too many times, whether by car, foot, or bicycle. Trains and buses I am more happy to just do the routine.
As a kid on many a roadtrip in the 80s, I have a special fondness for triptiks. It gave me something to focus on and it gave my parents some peace as I quietly studied maps. I have a vivid memory of going to AAA before a roadtrip where someone would walk us through the route they chose.
However, it's all nostalgia. There is nothing about them that I would've preferred over a phone or tablet with working internet, had they been a thing back then.
There's nothing about anything that anyone prefers over a phone with working internet...
It's almost like a local maximum, if you plot (total happiness-total boredom) against (total screen hours).
Almost no individual activity is more appealing than scrolling (As we can infer from most people's behavior these days), but people will tell you that they want a life that isn't just scrolling and mobile games, and people are happier when they do more than screens.
I just tried the online site: my complaint is that they only show AAA-rated places to eat. On the other hand, the "5 diamond" places look really nice... it might be interesting to try some of them. I forgot all about AAA-rated restaurants.
The Milepost used to be essential for those who traveled in Alaska and Northwestern Canada. It's still quite useful, given that there are plenty of places there that don't have cellular service or any other kind of internet access.
I remember going to AAA offices where they would pull out a map and use highlighter on the spot and mark up the map in front of you. Nothing was prepared in advance.
Google Maps is constantly making weasel changes to try to get people to sign in and inserting ads for businesses. OpenStreetMaps is great offline, no sign-in required, but it's still too janky.
OSM is far superior to Google or Apple if you're not driving or riding public transit. They have much better pedestrian/cycle accessibility data. Google will send you on preposterous detours on a bike, whereas OSM gives you exactly what you need to know to take the shortest viable route.
Google does not need to go through the courts to obtain not only the driving plan but also where the maps user actually travels.
Google does not need to file a complaint that survives a motion to dismiss, reach the discovery phase of litigation and then subpoena AAA in order to obtain a driving plan for one specific driver. It continuously collects driving plans passively and indiscriminantly.
In litigation, testimony might be sealed. The data Google collects via Google Maps has no such protections available.
Let's be "realistic". Most people getting maps highlighted at AAA offices were not parties in lawsuits, the AAA employees that provided maps to them were not deposed by lawyers, and their driving plans were not used to prop up on online ad services racket. Yet every person that uses Google Maps is being surveilled for commercial purposes.
Flooding the web with more programmatic advertising.
Yep, TripTiks we’re awesome. With map apps I feel as though I’m constantly battling them as I always expect the top of the map/phone to represent north.
Maybe it was because I grew up in a rural area but I much prefer NSEW directions and looking at a physical map.
I loved TripTiks! And yes, I too was the family navigator as a kid, whether with a TripTik or an ordinary road map.
My other claim to fame was that I was the only one in the family - maybe in the entire neighborhood - who could fold a paper map so everything fell into place and it looked like new.
All the adults would just force the map to fold along whichever creases they felt like folding. I let the map "fold itself" with the map deciding where it wanted to be folded, and me just executing the map's wishes.
Specifically, first I would find the one crease that ran all the way across the map in the same direction - it was a "valley" or a "tent" all the way across, depending on which side you were looking at.
Then I'd find the next crease that was the same across the now-folded map. And the next one, and so on.
Adults didn't know this trick. They would fold along the creases, but they didn't take the time to let the map teach them which crease to fold first.
This is kind of like something I learned recently when I rescued a stray kitten from the street: You don't find a cat, the cat finds you.
Back to TripTiks, I bought one on eBay a few months ago, and it turned out to be an awesome road trip a southern California family took in the late 1960s.
First is the "front matter", with pages on:
Using your TripTik
Strip Map Legend
About Accommodations
In Case Of Accident
Western Radio Stations
The SPEED that's set is your best bet
Trip Planning
Expenses
Entering Canada and Returning to the United States
A Summary of Safety Responsibility Laws in Canada
Now we start the trip from Temple City, near Pasadena. Many of the pages were 2-3 page foldouts. I will use the original state abbreviations instead of our modern two-letter ones.
Temple City to I-10 East
I-10 to I-15 through San Bernardino
San Bernardino to Las Vegas
Local map of Las Vegas
Las Vegas to Beaver, Utah
Beaver to Salt Lake City
Local map of Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City to Logan, turning onto US 89 East
Logan to Alpine, Wyo.
Alpine to Yellowstone National Park
Local map of Yellowstone
Yellowstone to Gillette, Wyo.
Gillette to Deadwood, S. Dak.
An optional loop all around the Black Hills Region
A TripTik Supplement for US 85/14/94 where they didn't have the map
Belfield, N. Dak. to Bismarck, N. Dak.
Bismarck to Fargo and on to US 81
Fargo to Winnipeg, Man.
Winnipeg to Kenora, Ont.
Kenora to Port Arthur on the Thunder Bay
Port Arthur to Nipigon, Ont.
Nipigon to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.
Sault Ste. Marie to North Bay, Ont.
Another missing-map supplement for North Bay to Ottawa, Ont.
And finally a local map of Ottawa, their destination
Every one of these TripTik pages has a description of the towns and cities along the way, with hotel, motel, restaurant, and service station listings.
Thanks for mentioning TripTiks. It was fun for me to go through this road trip in my mind and on paper just now.
> His customers, he added, aren’t just looking to maps for directions, but as inspiration for future trips or even as art worth hanging.
I think that alone accounts for the vast majority of this increase. The article throws that in as a minor detail but I'd bet money it's the only reason. Of course you don't get as many clicks for "More people are buying maps as art". 2 of the 3 examples of maps they give at the end are exclusively art (raised maps and the coffee map).
>The article throws that in as a minor detail but I'd bet money it's the only reason.
For most people, perhaps.
After working in Google Geo, I drove across the country and back (CA - NC - TX - CA) using the trusty Rand & McNally atlas and compass, and couldn't have been happier.
No nagging voices telling me where to go. No countdown timers making me wary of taking a scenic detour. No feeling of going on rails.
Yes to seeing things and being aware of my environment. Yes to understanding where I am at all times. Yes to exercising my brain and being in control of my lived experience.
As a hiker I find paper maps absolutely essential and far easier to use than anything digital. Maybe it's because of that familiarity that I print or buy paper maps whenever I'm going on a trip more than a few hours' drive from home. I also rely heavily on printed maps and guidebooks for any extended travel and for trip planning, which are excruciating if you're relying solely on the internet. Can't say I've ever used a map for art.
Paper maps are great for knowing where to go, but a little less great for knowing where you are. Off/deep trail hikers will have a stand-alone GPS, because climbing trees/hills to get your bearings ends up being a serious risk, with just a compass: https://gripped.com/gripped-outdoors/how-100-hikers-got-lost...
True. Maps only work if there’s uniquely, unambiguously, identifiable terrain, that’s well understood from looking at the, necessarily, topographical map.
Some may have also discovered some utility in being able to have a big picture view of a destination. However, I wouldn't impute too much utility to the explanation. I'd be pretty surprised if younger generations are suddenly discovering that it can be really useful to have a physical backup in case their phone battery dies.
This, and while no small device can easily replace a large physical map, but map developers aren't helping here either. I find more often then not, in map apps the 2nd you zoom out even a little, you start losing half the details. Even on a larger iPad.
Especially the topo map apps, which also tend to forget most devices are HighDPI, so the topo image is also blurry.
I just wish I could set the map level to it's best, then zoom out as far as I want without jumping to a worse level map.
I agree with the big picture utility. A good project would be a map where you can choose to display all Best Westerns, Shell gas stations, etc at state zoom level so you can visualize a day's worth of travel including food, gas and lodging destinations without needing to repeatedly search GMaps. (i.e. it looks like there's a Shell station in 15, 65 and 128 miles along our route...)
I love maps, and I'll admit that my wife and I have a bunch of map art hanging on our walls, one of each city or state where we've lived, but they're not like actual maps that you could fold up and take on a road trip. I hadn't thought of hanging up that sort of map. I'll also admit that I haven't bought a paper map to put in the glove box of my car in over a decade. I have printed Google Maps before a trip, though.
This is coming from a career Army officer, so I'm quite used to looking at maps on the walls of operations centers, and doing serious map-and-compass navigation exercises.
We've bought almost all of them through Etsy, and they are indeed "random bespoke" products. Some sellers are military spouses so they design prints of the places where we've lived (i.e. around Army bases, which wouldn't interest most other people). Last week we were looking at this one, and the seller appears to specialize in artistic maps: https://www.etsy.com/listing/346969594/fort-rucker-map-print...
I only own one paper map, and it is specifically for art. I've traveled extensively and I wanted a way to track where I've been, so it's stapled to a pin-board, so I can put push-pins in after I visit somewhere. I've been primarily using a portable form of GPS for more than a decade, even before Google Maps.
Down the street from my office is a store that sells maps as art. Old maps, new maps, and transit memorabilia. One of the advantages of a digital map is that it always up to date, but that also means it can never be a historical document, the way an old map can be.
For myself I have a pile of bike maps, that I admit I don't use as much as I used to (partly because I have all my regular routes in my head now). The nice thing about those maps is that they marked elevation changes, and also the location of ice cream shops. You know, the essentials.
I'm renting now, so I avoid putting things on the wall as much as possible. But I used to have a map to help build a mental map from repeatedly seeing it. Recently I've noticed that something similar happens to me with analogic watches.
Something I find really fun when traveling in the car with kids is to give them a paper map and ask them to plan a route a for us to get to our destination. Then when you're driving ask them to follow along and give the directions.
Obviously they can't be too young and they're not going to be perfect, but if you have a child around 7-13 they'll probably find this quite fun.
Being able to use a map is one of those skills which admittedly isn't all that useful today, but I still think it's fun to plan out your own routes and decide the kinds of roads you'd like to take and the places you'd like to pass on your way from A to B. Plus, there are so many times my phone has died or my GPS has randomly stopped working and I'm glad I have my paper map with me just in case.
On our last road trip, I gave our 4 year old a printed map with the route highlighted and lettered milestones every hour or so. I was hoping to give a sense of scale (how far away are we, how far we do we travel in a certain time, etc.) that's harder to convey with a digital map. It also worked to practice letters and cardinal directions (we're at K, what's the next letter? the road turns at M, which direction will we be going now?). It worked rather well, but probably because he got a gummy bear at each waypoint.
The flippant attitude that people have towards map-reading today is appalling. Maybe its the eagle scout in me but how can someone NOT want to learn to read a map? It isn't even that hard! What happens if your device fails you?
Back before ubiquitous smart phones, I had a (now ex) partner who I discovered couldn't read a map to save their life. I printed out the Google maps route to the nearest Target (we had just moved to a new city) and was surprised when they couldn't give me directions based on the map because I didn't also print out the turn by turn directions (which I considered a redundant waste of paper).
I think that incident was what made me realize that map reading was a skill that actually needed to be learned.
I'm also an eagle scout. Taught the orienteering merit badge for years.
But secret: I have the absolute WORST sense of direction. I have no internal sense of orientation or distance. Seriously I get lost if I turn left out of the corner store instead of right. I can read a map with a compass and straight-edge and find where I am based on triangulation. But once I actually have to make realtime decisions using little more than a map I get anxious and frustrated, I usually just give up and look for landmarks or one-way streets that I can find and follow. Or hope that my phone's terrible compass and navigation-hostile map programs work. (Can we talk about map apps not even showing street names or one-way directions without having to pan and zoom all over the map?)
Even if you know how to read a map, they're just not a very good UX for finding where you are and making minor course-corrections in realtime.
Even before mapquest was a thing, I was recording directions from paper maps as if it was. Sure, I'd have a map open if I were driving in an area I was unfamiliar with, but I'd also write a list of roads and exits.
The only real major advantage that gps systems have over the list method is that they can tell you when you're near an exit. Back in the early 00s I was driving to New Orleans from Dallas on a particularly foggy night and I missed the same exit 3 times because I could barely make out the exit signs.
Looking at a map and doing basic a->b route planning is straightforward. Doing it well is a skill. Finding yourself when you don't know where you are and have limited landmark info, and using the cartographically-significant features of the map to plan a route that avoids hazards or navigates with tolls, highways, and rest-stops in mind are very much a skill that needs to be practiced even if the MO is simple at first.
Yes to all. The map is a projection of your surroundings. You just need to "map" what you see to the map to be able to see where you are and where north is. I guess contour plots is a tad more advanced since it's trying to represent the z axis on a flat sheet of paper.
I'm not trying to be obtuse, I genuinely don't see how it is difficult to read a map.
It is incredible how much of the human mind is centered around orientation and direction. It makes sense from an evolutuonary perspective, but there have been studies about how quickly the skill atrophies without use.
I believe it is a valuable skill to maintain or develop. Kids most obviously develop it now through games like Minecraft, but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a correlation between navigational skills and general memory ability.
Funny story - I was at Disney for new year's, and Disney parks have an impressive mapping app, but phones aren't great at detecting your heading when you're not at driving speed and the walking directions mode was awful. As a result, it was basically a dumb map with lots of excellent live data on it and a "you are here" dot.
A lot of people were having trouble with it because we're all used to "turn left here" instead of the top-view get-your-bearings go-that-way approach to a map.
Don't even get me started on the compass :/ the coddling that our technological advances provide are erasing entire swaths of generation intellectual wealth.
Even with a map on your phone, it's useful to have some map reading skills so you can get a good idea of where you are and where you need to go without relying on turn-by-turn navigation which can sometimes catch you off guard or malfunction.
The younger kid version of this - I ask my four-year-old if we should turn or go straight (at places where I know either way will work). She also keeps looking at maps and pretending she knows how to make sense of them, so maybe I should work with her on that.
> Being able to use a map is one of those skills which admittedly isn't all that useful today
I've met people who constantly get completely lost despite the use of the phone.
The issue with the phone is that especially under rain or trees, the position can be off of several hundreds meters, so you have to look around and find yourself on the map, because the phone really has no idea and is just guessing.
The compass thingy also works terribly on android and iphones alike, but for some reason people still think that if the arrow points a certain way, you can actually trust it.
The phone compass often works poorly near magnetic metal (which is… often). Once you start moving it will calibrate itself, but that can take a block or two of moving in a straight line in an urban area.
Mounting your phone on the windshield helps with GPS some, as does getting a newer phone with L5 GPS.
A lot of cars have the option to display a map on the radio screen, so I'm kinda surprised. I love using that thing! I always have an idea of the alternative streets available when I'm stuck in traffic because it's always there.
I had a rental car in LA once that couldn't decide if I was on the freeway, the off-ramp or the surface street nearby. It spent a good 10 minutes constantly telling me to make impossible turns or even U-turns before I turned it off and relied on my general sense of the area from previous visits and road signage.
GPS is great when it works and downright dangerous when it doesn't.
an interesting thought experiment is to ponder just how many skills are being lost due to technology. I know how to read a map and how to find rough compass bearings but i was never in a situation where i needed either skill. Could i manage without GPS - probably but i’m not confident.
If GPS died tomorrow because of a solar flare, would the younger generations manage?
People are completely dependend on GPS but also might not use it as often as you would think. First time planning a route to some new job/home/friend requires GPS but after that I'll do everything on autopilot. Proximity to existing routes also massively reduces complexity.
In general, I think our adaptation has significantly increased our ability to navigate at the minor cost of using either the map and compass or the new gps and advanced map data.
My GF has been telling about how there's a lot kids at her school that don't know how to tell the time on analogue clocks anymore.
She says it's because kids don't interact with analogue clocks much anymore and Covid lockdowns meant that a lot of kids never learnt it in school either. So apparently there is now a generation of kids who are around 10 - 12 who have no idea how to read the time from an analogue clock.
On one hand, I get the concern about this because mechanical clocks still exist, familiarity informs me that they're easy to read, and nostalgia tells me they're important.
On the other hand, they are unintuitive, less common with every passing year, and I'd rather my children get any recess than add "learn to use another antiquated tool" into the school curriculum. I do complicated math for a living, but nobody's offended that I didn't ever get good at using a slide rule.
I cannot speak for everyone, but my elementary school had analog clocks (which kids learned to read) while maintaining recess, art, music and gym.
Having taught math to children, analog clocks are a great way to learn and apply fractions. I suspect that children's inability to read analog clocks tracks pretty well with their abysmal math skills, like fractions.
So maybe we don't "add" analog clocks to the school curriculum, but we instead replace some nonsense with analog clocks and fractions.
Ten years after the slide rule calculator came out, the physical slide rules had virtually disappeared. Clock with hands show no signs of disappearing. Sundials on the other hand are safe to ignore.
I can't remember the last time I saw someone with a mechanical watch other than as a fashion statement.
25 years ago, my household had mechanical alarm clocks, a mechanical clock on the oven, and multiple mechanical clocks on the walls of different rooms. Today, I think I might have a broken mechanical watch in my "you should probably fix these things" piles.
My parents required me to have an analog watch as my first watch. We did the same for our kids.
Where we are, analog time-telling is a required part of the (common core) curriculum. So kids would have to learn it in school, though not necessarily internalize it for long enough that it would stick in the long run.
Forget about maps and navigation, I just wish all the people obliviously using their phones in public had the spatial awareness to realize they exist in a shared space and take up physical volume. Think sidewalks, roads, etc.
That's odd to me. Even when using GPS I'm always looking at the map to figure out what the upcoming turns are because I have zero faith in the accuracy of the voice directions and arrows. Do people just follow the directions without understanding the route on the map?
>Do people just follow the directions without understanding the route on the map?
Most people I know do that.
I almost always look at a preview of the GPS route and try to understand the gist of the directions before I start driving. I build a narrative like "2 left turns, 1 right, then driving for quite awhile before taking an exit". It helps my mental model of the areas of town and how they connect.
I exclusively use the map and never use voice direction or arrows. Everyone I've mentioned this to or has seen me do it thinks I'm weird for doing so, so I'd say it's uncommon.
I find it a lot easier as I have a mental picture of things.
I think GPS is best thought of as "directions as a service" (demand defaulting to JIT).
What would probably happen is that people would start asking for / giving directions again; my impression is that maps have usually been secondary to this ad hoc social process of informal directions, and it would probably re-emerge.
I don’t know if this is true for older generations, but for myself and many of my zoomer and millennial friends barely know street names making giving or receiving directions much harder.
Personally I rarely rely on turn-by-turn navigation but instead look at the map before hand and take a mental map of the directions to get there.
I always try to build a mental map of whatever area I'm traveling to. Even if only the major highways and arterials. My GenZ son is fully reliant on GPS to go anywhere he hasn't been at least three times before. While I'm sure he could build a mental map if he needed to, it's not something he does because he's never had to.
He also has no concept of road names. I was describing the route I would take when he needed to travel across the Seattle metro one time and any road other than I-5 was a complete unknown to him. It's a little scary to me.
That's interesting. Are you saying many people you know don't usually check street signs against the name of the streets the GPS directs users to? I know that's my reflex when I have readable street signs, but I guess I have no idea what portion of people rely on that vs the "feel" of how close the turn is from the visual representation on-screen (which I use sometimes too, but don't like relying on since it often lags a bit) or other cues.
Not quite, but maybe, I don’t talk to my friends about how they interact with gps directions. I’m saying that when giving verbal directions knowledge of street names aren’t generally shared equally. I know my knowledge of street names when im giving directions for the city I’ve lived in for almost 2 years is not great. I also commute by bicycle and don’t rely on GPS, just navigating by special awareness mostly.
I think people could re-learn they skill pretty quickly, but putting that aside, I wonder how well we could do with just ground based stuff. We’d still have triangulation via cell towers, which was widely used not that long ago. Also I wonder how well we could do with a modern cellphone using image recognition on the road signs paired with a really accurate map of the roads.
Old marine maps had various landmarks on them, along with their height. This allowed you to get angle and distance, giving you the opportunity to calculate position with pen and paper even if you only had a single landmark in view.
Not just old marine maps -- modern marine charts have the same. They mark radio towers, grain silos, etc. because although GPS is widely-used, the old navigation techniques are still important.
I believe the U.S. Naval Academy actually stopped teaching old school celestial navigation for a while, then someone with a bit of common sense realized that there were scenarios (particularly in a war situation) where the GPS constellation might not be available, and started teaching it again.
You can't just pull over at a gas station in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and ask for directions. :-)
I distinctly remember my parents, before satellite navigation systems were common (let alone phones) having endless arguments over bad map reading when on family trips.
It's not a skill that was lost to technology, it's a skill that most people never mastered even before we all had GPS systems in our pockets.
This is answer to a lot of question. The fact that people are dependent on some technology today does not mean that they will be non-functional when that it is taken from them. People adopt very quickly.
This is a little tangential, but last year me and my girlfriend went to Greece for the first time. A few days after we purchased the tickets, a book came in the mail. She had ordered a tourism guide for Greece that had some recommendations about what to see, where to eat, where to stay, etc.
My first reaction was along the lines of "why would we do this when we have the entire internet? Each section is written by only one person recommending what they liked, how can I rely on that?"
Well, it turns out that avoiding the chaotic whirlwind of dubiously-funded and low-quality clickbait articles that come up on google when you search "things to do in _____" makes the planning process much easier. Even if the book missed a few places we would have enjoyed, it was a pleasure to read this person's insight on the areas we were in and the places they thought were worth seeing. It came with useful maps of every location we were in and gave fairly accurate pricing estimates for each activity.
The simplicity of seeing a couple sentences about why you should take the time to see a historic site or scenic view, or eat at some little hole in the wall restaurant and taking them at face value makes the entire travel process so much easier and more fun. Googling around and seeing conversations about what to do on Reddit will make me second-guess every choice and wonder if I'm truly maximizing my trip, which is guaranteed to make the trip worse, regardless of what I end up seeing.
Consuming data and services from the internet has become very transactional: Every article about tourism is either selling a ton of ad space or is sponsoring the recommendations, both of which make it more annoying to get data that way. It's hard to tell what the writer's financial motivations are. The same is true for google maps: some things are promoted because they paid for it, not because they are better. Books, paper maps, and other "analog" formats are written by people that want to sell the book. It's not impossible that they are getting kickbacks for their recommendations, but in this age where informational books are gasping for air, they really do need to do a good job for people to keep buying them.
When Lonely Planet guides were popular, there was a trend of investors buying popular hostels/attractions from the guide and running them into the ground before the next Lonely Planet was published and warned of the demise. I haven't seen this as much lately (maybe due to rise of online reviews), but cross-referencing Lonely Planet with TripAdvisor is the sweet-spot.
You have to take TripAdvisor and similar sites with a very large grain of salt.
I recall a low-star "review" of a nearby (and excellent) bird sanctuary where the text said something like "It would be okay if you like birds, I guess". Left unstated was why someone who didn't like birds would go to a bird sanctuary in the first place.
Now, in that case, the poor quality of the review was apparent, but it's not always that obvious. Others from the local region:
A (very good) seafood restaurant got panned because "the tilapia was frozen, not fresh". Given that this is Alaska and the closest place to get really fresh tilapia is, like, Louisiana, that's not overly surprising, is it? Why the hell did you order tilapia in Alaska? Have you heard of salmon? Halibut? King crab?
An (excellent) old-school dive hamburger joint (in business since 1964) got slammed for not having a "vegan option". Yes, and?
Ah yes, there are many bargains to be had on Amazon if you just read the reviews in depth. Like you mentioned, a lot of bad reviews because the manual is confusing, etc even though the product is great!
Regarding the "only one person recommending what they liked" aspect vs. second-guessing choices based on Reddit, it reminds me a bit of Segal's Law [1]: "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."
When you're going to spend maybe a few thousand dollars to travel someplace (especially cities or other popular mainstream areas), not spending $15 or so on a Lonely Planet/Rough Guide/etc. seems like false economy. Is it definitive? No. But it's generally a well-curated guide to what people like.
LP does a pretty good job on digital too. I often default to physical for this sort of thing but admit to liking LP on phone just because it's with me without extra bulk/weight.
That reminds me of the difference between Japanese travel guides and US travel guides.
Most travel guides in the US look like Lonely Planet, Frommers, etc. A big book of words, paragraphs of prose describing places.
Most travel guides in Japan look like catalogs. Most pages are full of small pictures with small descriptions, and then an address and map page/id (maps are included in the guide). I personally find the Japanese guides more interesting because I can browse and look for something that catches my eye. With the US ones I have to spend hours reading it.
Note: it's the same with restaurant guides. A western guide will often just be listings with descriptions. A Japanese guide will be full of pictures of the food and/or restaurant. Of course Yelp etc have user pictures now-a-days
Look out for printed information, it can age quite fast. I remember travelling in China. It turns out the airport we landed in when flying domestic was a completely different one than the book described. That one was shut down, despite the book being quite recent, and a new one built, not mentioned at all. But then again, construction in China seems to happen at 5x the speed, at least, as in Europe.
Another benefit too is that the places to stay are usually available. Pre-Internet the hotels listed in the LP were usually booked out a year ahead, now you can actually reserve spaces in the recommended acommodations.
For me, this is about the most ineffective way to find travel advice. Reddit's great if you want to actually get a pro-con of whatever subject you're looking into, because people will argue for and against everything there simultaneously. Since I'm looking to be given recommendations, that means pretty much every recommendation will come with somebody else saying why I shouldn't "waste my time" on that thing.
I'm sure this varies person to person, but I end up spending way too much time on reddit trying to find the "right" advice and never end up feeling truly satisfied with any of it.
I like the beautifully illustrated Dorling Kindersley books (disclaimer: my wife used to work for DK a long time ago, but in children's books, not the guides).
A cartography professor of mine once advised me to take another career path because cartography was dying; he added, “Google Maps has terrible maps- but no one seems to care.” It heartens me to see in HN comments that some are noticing.
A pet peeve of mine is when water bodies go unlabeled.
An old-fashioned paper map like the kind inserted in National Geographic mags when I was wee included a breathtaking amount of information, but that requires careful design so element labels don’t overlap etc.
It's still very much in the early stages, but https://zelonewolf.github.io/openstreetmap-americana/ is a project to build a rendering system that handles details better. It's using OpenStreetMap data in the OpenMapTiles schema, but giving lots of feedback to OMT when something won't work.
(There's some attempt to make things look nice, but the focis is still on capabilities)
Google and most other digital maps are indeed terrible maps. They are fine for a certain kind of navigation task, and great for looking up where the Starbucks nearest your current location is located, but for most other map uses, and certainly for actually getting a picture in your head of where you are or want to go, and how that relates to other things that you know or may want to know, or for thinking about an itinerary or even route that might be other than the shortest or fastest, they are terrible.
At least in the US, folks seem extremely sensitive to direct prices and are consequently penny-wise and pound-foolish (not in a Vimes's Boots way), where they could've spent an extra 5% or 10% on a better product or service and been happier for it, perhaps even saving more in short-term indirect costs. Even against a "free" product or service, spending $30 or $50 might save multiples in time -- but IME folks are really bad at pricing indirect costs.
I will go out of my way to use _anything_ that is not a screen. I stare at screens, all day, ever day. Every moment not gazing into a hyper-bright magic rectangle is a relief.
Well, me too. Hard to write software with pen and paper. But it resolves to "use tech for work and only work". I go online to get my job done but it's all work, no pleasure.
I've ridden my phone of any app which can eat my attention. It goes without saying that social media apps got trashed but also news apps, even the default google news app. My phone is more like an old-school Nokia than a modern magic rectangle and if they made a decent e-ink phone, I'd seriously consider it.
I will watch _some_ tv or film, but only in the living room, on the dedicated television, never on a laptop or tablet.
Lastly, zero video games at all. Edit, well, almost zero. Factorio is a hard habit to break but I have been clean now for several months.)
I am sure excited to teach my kids (current age, 2.5 years, and 4 months, so there's a bit of time) to use a map. I must have my old road atlas somewhere.
As an engineer and product manager (and just in general) I constantly think about, metaphorically, where I want to get to and how to reasonably get there. We literally call this "the roadmap" - it's the ability to visualize a viable path.
I love Google maps (I've relied for it on 6 continents for driving, transit, and walking, it's amazing) but it basically does the "how" for you and I want my kids to be able to do that.
So if we're ever doing a roadtrip, I dunno, from NYC to Miami, I want my kids to be part of the planning - how many miles can we do a day? What are the natural destinations along the way? Basically, I think mapping and trip planning is a very natural example of breaking down the problem into sub-problems that are both meaningful in their own way and add up to the whole.
It's also interesting to trouble-shoot this kind of stuff. If Google Maps suggests to us a route that is very different than what we mapped out - why? What is it optimizing for vs what are we optimizing for? I am excited to teach my kids to think this way.
Just to note, all the hiking maps I get now are made in tyvek, not really in paper. It's a newer material, it doesn't wear as much (but still some) in the folds, it is water resistant and so on. It's a more usable map as a result. It does feel slightly waxy to touch.
Do you know whether there is such a thing as laser-printable paper that you can write on with dry-erase markers and still erase? I like annotating certain documents while I'm traveling, and I wish I could wipe them clean at the start of each trip. I currently laminate the things I reuse most (checklists), or just print a new copy each time.
Went hiking while relying on a phone app. Offline, it cached the map no problems, until a few hours in when the TTL must have been triggered then everything disappeared. Bought a real map soon after.
Use an app that permanently downloads maps -- I like Mapy.cz and Organic Maps. And bring a waterproof phone case, an external battery, and a charging cable.
And also bring a waterproof paper map because it's lighter, easier to read, more resilient, and more fun.
OsmAnd is the pocket knife of cartography. It's by far the most flexible map I've use, although it's not as user-friendly as others. You can really choose what gets rendered and how.
I won't say I'm religious about it--especially if somewhere familiar--but if I'm being doctrinaire, I'd argue you should always have a physical map and compass while hiking.
Fair. As someone who grew up with physical maps, using them is pretty intuitive but I can see how it wouldn't be for everyone. And, of course, some aspects of topographic maps take some education.
With respect to compass, I'm not sure how critical real orienteering is for most people. It's more about not being totally turned around and/or being able to make sure you hit some feature like a road.
I love paper maps, but I have to admit I don't use them much. Speaking of the WSJ, my paper copy is waiting out on the driveway. For hands-free reading while you're eating breakfast, it beats the snot out of reading off a screen. Something about the number of words you can read without scrolling.
As for orienteering: I learned it once and never used it. (btw, the Sierra Club course where I learned it got cancelled when someone sued over an injury in ice ax practice.)
I've seen some otherwise capable people struggle with compasses and map reading. It's a good idea to print out some basic map reading instructions and attach it to the map just in case. That way, anyone else in your family/party will have a running start if something happens to the 'map guy'.
While you're attempting to generally go downstream (think about it), even if you wind up totally turned around, then at least never leave your drainage.
Yup. I didn't know where I was, but knew what drainage I was in, and knew that my car was at the upper end of pavement at the main stream in the drainage. I went downhill until I hit the main stream. Oh, the road is paved? Follow that up to the car. No sweat, even though I really didn't know where I was. Just knowing I was within the drainage was all I needed.
There's a difference between geographic north and magnetic north that can get pretty significant (if you live in NE US, magnetic north about 10-20° west of north). If you're sailing the clipper route, for part of your journey, your magnetic compass now points as far as northwest rather than north.
Hiking in the northeast US, you're generally speaking on trails. I'd certainly encourage people to acquaint themselves with magnetic deviation and so forth. But, especially as a backup mechanism, the main value of a compass is to avoid having absolutely no idea what direction you're going.
In my recent hiking experience, a lot of trails in the NE--even in popular parks--are pretty poorly marked, and these days, virtually every hiking trip involves at least one point where the trail makes a sharp curve, but there's something that looks trail-ish that continues ahead, and it's only a few hundred feet down the line that you realize you might have missed the trail.
The little handheld trail GPS my parents got me after my first such misadventure has proven incredibly useful for figuring out where I made the wrong move. (The first such misadventure, I was using the paper map to work out if there was a bend I missed).
OsmAnd is very good. You download maps for it. And OSM data in general is a great deal better at hiking trails than google maps.
And it's good/useful to know that you can always try to use GPS even in airplane mode. Just GPS is recieve-only so it's passive (but the location service uses multiple sources of information apart from just GPS or GPS-like if it can.)
Yes, it has offline route finding for car, other transport, and walking. Of course sometimes you really miss having the traffic info from google, but for other things it works fine. I've driven a few 1000 km following OsmAnd..
Strange... if you store a map for offline viewing in Google Maps, it will be cached for at least a few months - and when that time expires, it will ask you if you want to update it. But I can't vouch for the various hiking apps which may be better for hiking data, but have worse UX overall.
Or you can use an "offline-only" app like OSMAnd and feed it with GPX tracks downloaded from hiking sites, then you only have to worry about keeping your battery charged...
Well that's just it - it's probably supposed to do that. But bugs happen, and a phone could die or break for any number of reasons outside of your control. People on the internet trying to explain why some particular failure that you saw shouldn't happen won't be there when you're stuck with no way to navigate, and their arguments won't be of any use. Paper maps are actually immune to most of these failure modes.
For hiking and other back country activities, I rely on Gaia GPS, but there's others that offer offline capabilities (sometimes as part of a subscription) like AllTrails, OnX and CalTopo.
This has been a recurring pattern with other forms of media, e.g. vinyl records, typewriters, Atari cartridges. An uptick many years after the technology became obsolete, which generates intriguing headlines. More recently, it's been happening with digital cameras from the early 2000s.
Of course, it follows a long period of decline, so it's like a stock price that's dropped from $100 to $1. Should it suddenly increase 30%, it will attract attention, but it's still down 98.7%.
There's usually a gap of a decade or more because it can't be retro-chic until its replacement has saturated the market. The last of the laggards keep a baseline demand for the old thing, while the hipsters come in and increase its demand for a while. Then they get bored and the laggard market keeps declining, so the market falls back down again.
Traditional paper maps or charts are not booming at all.
The biggest producer of physical nautical charts has had to withdraw from the market as they have become unprofitable.
The increased availability of good open geospatial data along with amazing free open source tooling has made making beautiful maps easier than ever. Tools like QGIS and blender are world class
Maybe contentious but is it really a map if it's hung on a wall for artistic merit? At what point is it considered art?
Map sales aren't booming any more than point-and-shoot camera sales. I would bet a month's salary that this is a submarine article: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
I'd really like a breakdown on what these maps are actually used for. They could just be wall art, perhaps a (growing?) niche of custom guide books, maybe a renewed interest in exploring offroad/outback etc.
Or maybe just more people are acknowledging that a fallback paper map in the glove box is a good idea.
Some of the most fun I've had while traveling is exploring a city without a phone. Just write down your home address and destination address on a card, and if you need a mulligan - a taxi can take you to either.
I went through a roller coaster of emotions reading this thread and clicking through all the way to the github repo, where it slowly dawned on me that this was not just layers of satire.
I definitely find paper maps are better (for me) for planning long trips and I always keep a set in the car for places I normally go. (Basically, the east coast of the US.) GPS is fantastic for last-mile directions/where exactly is that house sorta thing, but "best" route for me is rarely shortest path, and it's just easier to visualize on a big paper map.
Agree. I prefer major interstates for road tripping — something Siri & Gigi (the name we came up with for Google Maps persona) don't always seem to get right.
So in our road-tripping van, we keep a trucker's road atlas for the U.S.
Part of this resurgence can undoubtedly be explained by the ready availability of high quality open geospatial data sources like OpenStreetMap.
The United States has always had a lot of open geospatial data available, but it's patchy, can be hard to find, and is of wildly varying quality. In Europe, open (geospatial) data has become the norm, but that wasn't the case even 10 years ago. And in spite of harmonization efforts, it can still be hard to cobble together map data that is consistent across countries from government sources.
I live between France and the US.
France has https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/ and IGN topographic map of every square centimeter of the country.
The US has... google map and you can also find some decent topographic map online. It's just way harder to find the paper version. ( must have in my book for hiking and such )
That article actually provide great resources to buy good topographic map of the US. It's been a struggle and a frustration for me.
Even though I bring my phone with offline maps downloaded (Gaia GPS), I still like to bring a paper map of the area as well.
In addition to having another option in case my phone breaks or dies, paper maps are nice to have so people can gather around and look together and build knowledge. When solo, paper maps are an easy thing to look at when sitting around the camp.
Shout out to my local cartographer Bryan Conant who makes excellent maps of both the Dick Smith Wilderness and San Rafael Wilderness within the Los Padres National Forest.
If I go hiking in the mountains I'd bring with me a paper map just in case something happens to my phone or I run out of battery. A power bank backups only the battery, not a cracked or lost phone. Never lost a paper map though.
On a side note, hiking is incredibly popular in Hong Kong (mountain sides too steep to practically build residences right in the middle of one of the most densely populated places on Earth). However, Google maps is comically bad for hiking in Hong Kong.
For years, the Mt. Butler HF radio station was marked as "gas station". (It's the only gas station I've seen with barbed wire locked gate and signs warning of guard dogs.) They've since fixed the HF radio station. However, last I checked, hiking from the North Point MTR to Stanley, Google maps will still try and route you over some overgrown paths, and up the side of a rock quarry where you need to scramble up with the help of some tied together odds and ends of rope someone has helpfully fastened to a small tree. Any sane human would have routed up Siu Ma Shan and along the back side of the quarry over to Park View.
Do people actually try to use Google Maps for hiking? It never occurred to me to even try. I always go to the authority maintaining the hiking trails (NPS, or some state or county agency) and download PDF maps.
Sample size 1: I have tried from time to time. Google seems to have Hong Kong trail maps in its data set, just poor quality as to which trails are passable.
It is really exhausting to read those online reviews/guides and try to find some places to eat/visit. So next time I will buy maps with recommendations and follow them. If it's not good, I will buy a new map locally.
That's it. No more reading reviews on every top rated restaurants nearby and trying to guess if they are fake!
When I enter a new state, a buy a road map of that state. Then I store it under a seat of my van.
Phone battery die, cell signal can be weak. And I can scribble on the map.
I personnally am a fan of physical 3d maps.
They are rigid and not for travel, and they're made out of plastic but there's
nothing like it to understand a region.
I love maps. I have a map of the Pacific Crest Trail (which I got at REI) on the wall of my living room - it's beautiful to look at (still need to frame it but it's on the list!), informative (cleverly shows elevation along the trail in a column on the left), and leads to interesting conversations with guests.
We also have metal "night" city maps (from displate.com) of cities my wife and I have lived in, which make wall decorations (i.e, arranged in a pattern of 8) .
I'm a small scale collector of historic and antique maps with a collection of about 20 maps. The earliest map I own is from the 17th century which I treasure because it shows California as an island. Most of them are of the United States, primarily the west. I find just looking at these maps immensely satisfying in a way digital maps can never be. I consider them works of art.
We recently had to define the boundaries of polygons that designate the various sectors of a city. We found that hand drawing them on a paper map was far more convenient than doing the same on a screen. This of course involves the initial design of the polygons and not the subsequent transformation to their respective coordinates, which inevitably had to be done using a map software.
In my experience, most land planning is done (or at least, starts) with a pencil on paper, even today. Technicians then take over the work of making it a detailed digital reality.
The computer is wonderful in so many ways, but it does not yet (in common usage) replicate the direct physical connection, the casual efficiency and universal understanding of the real world pencil-on-paper tool.
They aren't mentioned in the article, but Butler Motorcycle Maps fit with the theme.
You can currently access the same data via an app called Rever (which is great for actually driving a route you have already planned), but the physical maps give a better overview, and more accessible editorial content, than the app does:
They are more useful for deciding where you want to go in the first place.
As developers, I think it is really interesting to think about why this is true/possible. (I also find it true that PDF brochures for automobiles are a better way to understand the different trims than the car's website). All the filtering/searching/data analysis features of software seem so powerful, but sometimes committing to a single, static format for presenting information yields a more comprehensible result.
While the article points out alternatives people use in modern era, I always had a pull towards paper maps. My father had a collection of atlas of India and its different cities. I spent lot of time parsing through them, even though I haven't been to upper half of country yet.
On recent vacation, while we were trying doing street shopping, I came across Lewis-Clark map [original size] and then I thought I might as well use maps as wall art. I ended up buying following two classic replicas.
The author only makes maps of Iceland and the Faroe Islands. They’re beautiful, annotated with camping and natural spring sites, and the photographic spots are unique and cover a wide range of terrain / vistas.
I car-camped the entire island and would refer to it to find my next stop. I wish the author made maps of more locations but I also understand that this is a work of dedication and patience.
There are a lot of things you can learn from a paper map that you can't by looking through a small window into "map space". The paper map has all sorts of affordances the digital maps don't, and vice versa.
What I miss from paper maps is the size. You can spread them out on a table. Good luck with your phone.
I got tired of using Waze, as I found that when I arrived I had little idea of how I got there. I had no notion of which direction I went, or where the destination was.
Now I look at a map on my computer before I go, and sketch out the route on a piece of paper. Then, I tape the paper to the steering wheel and follow it. I know, I know, I'm out of step. But at least I am spatially oriented with this method.
I generally use paper backups for tickets. I used to print out directions when I had my first GPS, but now I usually have enough redundancy that I don't feel like I need a paper map.
I should point out that my printed directions saved me a few times with my first GPS. It was really bad, it would get confused and make me take off ramps and then get right back on; or it would make me drive in circles. One time it tried to send me 100 miles up a dirt road. (I turned around and relied on printed directions.)
Especially traveling internationally, I try to have a paper backup of important information. I can imagine arriving in a city having lost my phone and having no idea of where I was staying.
Fact number one: with the connected supercomputer, gps, camera, audio recorder etc in our hands travel gets upgraded (at least in principle) not one but several levels, from the mundane and practical to the sublime
Fact number two: the tangible, tactile reality, longevity, versatility, privacy, artistic beauty of a well made map or travel guide cannot be replicated, certainly not by the crappy websites that have come to dominate this space
Conclusion. We have two legs. Walking and hiking is better if we use them both :-)
When we were home schooling our kids we got a map of the US from Imus Geographics [1] and it made it really easy to see the places that were being talked about in history and their relative position to other places. The map in general has a wealth of details and over the years we have often used it when planning camping trips around the west.
Read a great book over summer based on a mystery of various maps - especially an old 1930s gas station map from a time of adventure that I guess doesn’t exist any more. The Cartographers, by Peng Shepherd.
I'm totally hooked on digital navigation but one thing I've noticed is it takes me longer to learn an area to the point I know my way around if I use digital navigation.
There are times digital navigation is a million times better. I remember getting lost in the boroughs of NYC a few years before smartphones hit the world. It was very difficult to have the right paper maps in your car for a place like NYC.
I think that's just you (and me maybe) haha. Most people are awful at navigating. I have a fairly photographic memory and once I read a street name once or twice I'm never forgetting it.
I love looking at paper maps for my wilderness backpacking/camping trips. I really like seeing where the trail leads and what camping spots I can use. It just makes it feel like a big adventure.
Additionally, having a weather proof map for wilderness trips is invaluable. I'd never rely on a digital device to provide what could be a life saving tool.
Wilderness backpacking/camping trips are a great use case for (laminated) paper maps. You really need a good map, and you don't want to be dependent on an electronic device that has many failure modes (e.g. running out of power, getting wet, getting dropped into a canyon, getting smashed...).
Paper maps can have pitfalls to their usage. The family of James Kim ended up lost in the Oregon wilderness because they took an ill-advised route based on using their paper map. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kim
I’ve been a google maps user for ten years and I tried Apple Maps recently and it’s way, way better. Google maps has always had a million little problems that annoy the shit out of me. It will take you down a road that is totally inappropriate, one lane and hasn’t been maintained for decades.
I have seen maps of Boston since forever, but it was not until using Google Maps to navigate that I realized some parts of Boston I assumed were not well connected are in fact conveniently driveable.
I suspect this boom is like describing cassette sales as "booming." Supposedly sales doubled in 2021.
We were on a road trip back to Midwestern City 1 from Midwestern City 2, with the grandparents driving. Every 50 miles or so I'd flick the rear door ashtray closed, and we'd immediately screech to a stop on the side of the interstate/freeway, as 'we have a blowout.'
In the city I live in, construction, random political initiatives,
broken down infrastructure, temporary closures and on
make paper maps entirely useless.
I used to have a decent map in my head from getting around but that
is impossible now.
I do wish Google Maps / Wayze / TomTOm etc updated the maps faster.
Many states in the US offer free road maps, generally available at welcome centers when you cross a state line on an interstate. Also many states, counties, and municipalities offer free or low cost paper maps. I pick up paper maps whenever I can, and some are hanging on my walls.
Antique maps are pretty fun, too. It's always interesting to compare your neighborhood now to the way it was hundreds of years ago. And original prints can be pretty collectable, too.
with a paper map I cannot count on learning every road's name that I need to know, or learning it fast. with Google Maps the last few years it can be a real battle. And at the worst time UX-wise: while I'm driving and need to make a turn or lane decision in the next few minutes.
Also this reminds me to add something to my Prepper's stash: recent accurate paper maps for everywhere I might care about. Just In Case.
I buy paper Ordnance Survey maps because they come with a scratch-off code to get the map in their digital app. You can also pay an annual subscription of about 50 quid to get coverage of the whole UK, but for my usage, which is limited to fairly small geographic areas, I prefer to pay the 8 or 9 quid each for the paper maps covering the areas I care about, which then gets me access to that map forever, rather than having an ongoing annual expense. And it's nice to have the paper map to be able to look at a larger area at once.
You can access OS maps on Bing maps. Both Landranger and Explorer. I used to use streetmap.co.uk for this purpose but recently discovered Bing has them too. Useful for areas where I don't want to buy the map yet.
paper map and compass navigation opens the world up. very cool skill to have. if one is capable in the outdoors, land navigation opens up so many cool areas to explore. easy enough to do safely and leave no trace.
