Google Maps disaster update

[knucklehead]

There was one thing I liked Google Maps for over anything else I had found -- that was it's traffic reporting. Any time I needed to drive any distance in the traffic nightmare that Austin has become, I would open Google Maps, and with the quickest glance, I had everything I needed to know about current traffic. That's gone now with the new "Let's make traffic data barely visible" approach they have adopted.

Any recommendations for replacement traffic apps would be appreciated.

Any Google fanboy apologists want to comment the take away useful feature/make apps worse/no choice?my way or the highway approach they seem to have stolen from Apple? (The other big burn I got was from the changes to Google Voice)

 

[C DM]

Is it that they made the traffic color overlay somewhat thinner and more dull (in the sense of color intensity)?

As far as alternatives for general traffic flow view, there are various apps that do it fairly well, like INRIX Traffic, Sigalert, Waze, and some others.

Out of curiosity, what changes in relation to Google Voice are you referring to?

In general, with Google or pretty much most other companies, it's been like this pretty much all the time--they would come up with something new or some modifications to something that exists and you either use what they come up with or you don't. It's not really a new thing or really stolen from anyone as they all pretty much do it and have been doing it for a long time, with many companies doing it even before the internet and computers essentially.

 

[knucklehead]

Is it that they made the traffic color overlay somewhat thinner and more dull (in the sense of color intensity)?

As far as alternatives for general traffic flow view, there are various apps that do it fairly well, like INRIX Traffic, Sigalert, Waze, and some others.

Yes on the intensity/visibility.

It's downright life threateningly dangerous to try and determine traffic data on the road if you drive with distance glasses and need reading glasses. It's not even overly visible with the proper glasses, sitting at home.

The traffic display intensity should be user adjustable. For the situation I usually face, where I know the directions very well, but need to navigate the traffic, traffic data should be very clearly visible -- NO QUESTION ABOUT IT!

Goole Maps was my clear choice for this as the data was clearly visible, very timely and accurate.

 

[knucklehead]

Thanks - INRX looks great! Goodbye Google Maps!

Becoming more disgusted with Google all the time. Better to pay for products and data than get sucked into the world they seem to be trying to channel people into.