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Comment by pkulak | Hacker News Reader

If Apple made a map that labeled every street on the map at a certain zoom level, I'd switch today. I think I'm the only one who wants to use a map, to, ya know, see what the streets are. Maybe I'm old?

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No you are not odd. Often, it's frustrating when trying to read a street name on Google maps, especially in a dense area like a downtown. Google prefers to display business names over street names. And when there are lots of businesses in an area, you won't be able to see a street name until you absolutely zoom all the way in.

This is my #1 pet peeve on Google maps. It's the non-determinism that really gets me. Maybe zooming in will get me a street name? Maybe zooming out will? Maybe if I followed the road in that direction? How about this direction? How about if I follow it a few blocks, then zoom out?

Getting a good dose of impotent rage just thinking about it.

Well now you've gotten me all bothered, too. And if I do manage to find the street name but can't quite read it because the font is too small, I zoom in and the road expands but the font doesn't. No matter how I zoom or pan, it offers either 1) too small, or 2) oops, I disappeared again.

What's even more infuriating in such a case: even many businesses are missing until you zoom way in. On desktop, I've resorted to use gmaps with 50-60% browser zoom to get it to show a bigger part of the map at full zoom while still having full symbol density. It's crazy.

(The most ironic part is the pop-up "You should increase browser zoom level to get a better Google Maps experience!". No, Google, not really.)

Thank you. This drives me crazy as well. (Related: roads that have both names and highway numbers, but the map shows one and not the other, regardless of zoom level.)

I mean, there's other map providers as well. OpenStreetMap is generally good with providing lots of map detail (whereas they are not good as a Google at providing the sort of in-depth information like opening times or that this shop has been rated 5/5 by the owner, their mother and their alt account).

https://www.openstreetmap.org/

Popular app that uses OpenStreetMap-data: https://osmand.net/

I also find it frustrating you can't tap on a place while you're in "directions" mode. If you're going somewhere and want to see if some place on the way is open, you have to exit directions, tap the place and then request directions again!

Oh, you want to know the name of that major street? Too bad.

not that it is the best (or even good) solution, but you can drop a pin on the map to see the address including the street name

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