Since I have a Nokia phone, which permits me to download maps for specific countries and regions, I'm not dependent on Google - (or any other on-line) maps.
I'd wager that Nokia provides equal, if not - arguably - better quality than Google maps and I don't need to incur insane roaming charges when using a map abroad.
Granted, there are a few functions, that require a net connection, but basic map functionality and navigation works very well without being on-line.
Maps are only one example. I can't think of many applications, which I would prefer as a "cloud" based service as opposed to native.
You know what Google Maps needs? Offline downloadable map functionality. They had that feature, then removed it, then put it back... now I honestly don't know where it's at.
Browsing offline maps is a breath of fresh air, it's so much quicker. Obviously you wouldn't download the whole world, only your home city or whatever. But it's lightning fast to zoom and pan around an offline map compared with connecting over mobile bandwidth.
Browsing maps in Airplane mode should be possible. It's a map after all, not a website.
Z=18 is rarely used, so for Z<=17 you're looking at roughly 300MB for raster tiles a city the size of Calgary. You also don't get routing information with purely raster data.
You could try vector data which would be smaller, but then you have to display it, which can be computationally expensive if you want it to look pretty, and you'd lose the snappiness you're seeking.
>Actually, you could fit the entirety of the state of Washington in <50% of my phone's storage. I'm not seeing a problem.
Well, most people don't want to lose even 20% of their phone's storage in a single app, much less 50%.
And that's just for those satisfied to only have info for one state. What about people regularly travelling between 1-2 states?
That said, I question the OP storage math. At least with vector information, I know that something like Navigon's GPS/map app, can store the whole of US (including the smallest of towns and cities) in around 1GB.
Vector data has a much smaller footprint in most cases, but takes lots of processing to render, and even more if you need to be able to zoom around the map. Rendering the US down to z17 as raster tiles allows for efficient processing, but could easily get into 10s of GB (which makes sense, since it is creating thousands and thousands of png images). The size grows exponentially with each zoom level though, so if you only need something like z12, you might be able get it into the 10s of MB range.
I wasn't saying I would want the entirety of Washington on my phone. Quite the contrary. I was pointing out the sheer area that fits in that amount of storage. It's 71,362 square miles.
If you're traveling regularly between two states, you'd want your origin city, destination city, and your route with maybe a couple miles on either side. Say a 250-mile route, and 200 square miles at either end. I bet it fits in <2GB.
Just discovered google maps on my ipad only lets you save an offline map if youre logged in. Nice job Google, you've managed to make signing in to google a requirement even for offline functionality.
But you can't search the resulting map or get directions. I have an Android phone, and the last good Maps for it was version 6. I do two things: (1) use copilot GPS with the whole U.S. and Canada (takes 1.8 GB); (2) keep my old Galaxy Nexus with Android 4.2 which cannot be upgraded and has Maps 6.
Off the top of my head, GMail is the only one. Mostly because Outlook's/Thunderbird's UI and UX are absolute ass.
SAAS is inferior in:
* games
* text editors
* photo editors
* IDEs
Backup storage is okay, but I live in a country with tight bandwidth caps so I can't really use things, plus I don't want Google or Dropbox or MeGa snooping at what I upload.
So I would never pay to use any of the above things, and I would certainly NEVER pay Adobe for anything. I'm fortunate that I don't need to use their products.
Isn't steam like this? The bits get downloaded to your machine, but if Steam goes offline your SOL.
What steam could use is better download management. If they moved over to an on-demand streaming architecture it'd be really huge. The days you'd need to preload software could be over. This sort of thing has been solved many times before, so it's technically possible. In fact, as I type this I wonder why they haven't done it already.
I think it would be a good thing because if I have a hankering to play a game I don't have installed, I wouldn't need to wait for an hour for it to download.
I need to worry about ISPs and bandwidth before, it's just that now I can be more frivolous with what I have installed on my machine (no sense leaving something installed "just in case").
My self-hosted apps work on my laptop when I have no network connectivity. That's a big win for me.
Funny you mention Mappoint. It's exactly what I use when I'm navigating for my wife on trips. It works fine in areas with poor wireless data coverage. (We supplement with Waze to get traffic reports, but "self-hosted" Mappoint guarantees we won't lose map coverage because of radio issues.)
You've perhaps never been in the "damn, where am I...... Bollocks no signal, I still don't know", situation and that was just 30 miles from home. I bought a gps with the maps loaded at the first opportunity.
