Carighan Maconar

The vast majority of the world no longer uses SMS, so I doubt it’s a problem the average customer has to worry about much.

OSMand

I’ll be honest, as much as I love how well it does, it’s still leagues behind Google Maps. Would I be fine if Google Maps were to shut down? Sure. Just like how in theory, Apple Maps on DDG serves as a usable map system on the desktop. In reality, I see no reason not to use a competitor as superior as Google Maps, as long as I can. This isn’t a Chrome-vs-Firefox situation where in many regards Firefox is the superior choice even on features, Google Maps is, for all it’s woes, incredibly ahead of the competition.

Which makes sense: It’s used so broadly, and can accumulate so much data about how people move about, it has access to a host of knowledge about motion and movement that other map system cannot match, be it out of choice or not. With OSMAnd+ it’s a choice of course, but even if that weren’t the case they just lack that ability. They cannot know how right now foot traffic in a certain area of downtown is quite slow due to a demonstration just having ended and a lot of people moving through a few adjacent streets back to the main train station. Google Maps can. Because like 75% of people in that crowd have it on their phones and enabled.

I just want my Google Now back. It was so smart by comparison to Assistant or all the other modern “AI” crap. It didn’t try to write me a funny text, instead it contextually pulled actually useful information up so that when I get the idea to look at my phone for something, hey!, it’s already there!

The craziest thing was my trip to the UK back in the days. In order, it did the following:

• The evening before it asked me whether I want to be woken up a bit earlier (20 minutes) as the weather was expected to be very bad.
• It reminded me to pack an umbrella in the morning.
• When it had decided that my movement mode was driving (I had taken a taxi), it popped up that I needed to go to Terminal 2 at the airport (they have separate areas for dropping off passengers).
• Once at the terminal, my ticket + it’s QR code was persistent on the screen.
• It also had a persistent notification with the boarding gate + the current expected time (there was a slightly delay, hence I noticed).
• When I arrived at Heathrow, it offered on-foot navigation to the coach area.
• When I got closer, the coach ticket + it’s QR was persistent on the screen.
• Once in the coach it offered me information that the weather at my destination was expected to be sunny. And when I would probably arrive, of course.

For-fucking-hell Google, that’s exactly how I need a phone to assist me during a trip! I don’t need some shitty voice interaction or long flowing texts made up of filler words and wrong facts. I need contextual information that fits the fucking context! Google Now was insanely smart. It also did lots of little things, like when I got somewhere with a car, parked it, then walked off a bit, if I then sat down for a long time when the phone was moved again (say… when you get up out of the Restaurant!) the parked position would pop up. Smarts. Not useful very often, but smarts.