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frederikvs | 1 year ago
Google maps is good enough for find my way in a city, or getting to a destination by car. And when I get there, I whip out another app to pay the parking. If I forget where I parked, my car has an app with a map. To plan a longer trip with an electric car, ABRP is better. And when I'm just looking for a charge pole where my card will work, Plugsurfing. If I want to use car sharing, another app with another map.
If I want to go for a run or a hike, outdooractive has some routes. Komoot has some others. But if I want to find some rock climbing routes, I need 27crags. Meanwhile, my sports watch also has a map which can show me the route I just ran.
None of these are fundamentally different. All show a very similar map, just with other points of interest, other routes, other layers, other navigation algorithms.
But all of these apps have different UI, different features, and just behave slightly differently.
I wish I could just have a single map app, where I enable the layers I'm interested in.
btbuildem|1 year ago
I kind of like having separate apps for different activities. For sure, it's nice that they integrate eg. gas station search into Waze -- it's a car-related thing, and a likely option in the workflow of navigating a trip. I'll use a totally different app for route finding along mountain trails - here I'll be concerned about offline availability, topography data, terrain types, shelters, precise location and orientation, etc.
To OP's point, it would be nice to have a bike-centric app that responds to concerns cyclists have and others pay little attention to - eg, road surface quality, lane widths, grading, wind exposure, general safety rating etc. Google Maps does the token thing of indicating the total climb and descent for a planned route, but it doesn't give an option to optimize for that (eg, longer route with fewer climbs).