You made me realize that I share all these grievances but the degradation has been so relatively slow that I never really thought about how worse it had become, boiling frog style.
I've definitely experienced the "wait why won't it show me the name of that street I'm clearly focused on" problem multiple times. It's especially ironic because I remember that once Maps readability was first class and an example to follow, IIRC mainly because they had a relatively simple but elegant algorithm that would aim to maintain a relatively constant information density over the area of the map at any zoom level. So if you had a very dense area only the very important labels would show and the rest would be hidden until you zoomed in, while in more sparsely populated areas you'd have a lot more detail pop up even at relatively high zoom level. That was a good compromise.
In hindsight it's completely obvious but I remember that when Maps started that was relatively innovative, I remember that many predecessors tended to emulate paper maps more closely (probably because that's what people expected back then) and were a lot more cluttered as a result.
>I think it's a real shame, because I remember in, e.g. 2012 I thought Google Maps was an incredible revelation
That seems late to me, are you sure that's the right date? I remember spending hours zooming in and out of Google Maps (and Google Earth) in the mid-to-late 2000's. Having a full map of the world to explore was mindblowing to me. Apple Maps launched in 2012!
I've definitely experienced the "wait why won't it show me the name of that street I'm clearly focused on" problem multiple times. It's especially ironic because I remember that once Maps readability was first class and an example to follow, IIRC mainly because they had a relatively simple but elegant algorithm that would aim to maintain a relatively constant information density over the area of the map at any zoom level. So if you had a very dense area only the very important labels would show and the rest would be hidden until you zoomed in, while in more sparsely populated areas you'd have a lot more detail pop up even at relatively high zoom level. That was a good compromise.
In hindsight it's completely obvious but I remember that when Maps started that was relatively innovative, I remember that many predecessors tended to emulate paper maps more closely (probably because that's what people expected back then) and were a lot more cluttered as a result.
>I think it's a real shame, because I remember in, e.g. 2012 I thought Google Maps was an incredible revelation
That seems late to me, are you sure that's the right date? I remember spending hours zooming in and out of Google Maps (and Google Earth) in the mid-to-late 2000's. Having a full map of the world to explore was mindblowing to me. Apple Maps launched in 2012!