MapQuest stood up to President Donald Trump, and now its app is reaping the rewards.
The “OG of online mapping,” as the company calls itself, announced on Thursday that it would not change the name of Lake Ontario on its maps to Lake America, despite Trump’s executive order directing the U.S. Department of the Interior to update the lake’s name in the U.S. geographic naming service. As a result, MapQuest’s mobile app downloads soared, sending the iOS app to the No. 4 position on the U.S. App Store’s Top Charts for apps (not including games) as of Monday morning on the U.S. east coast.
MapQuest also reached the No. 8 position overall in the U.S. App Store across both apps and games, and it became the No. 1 Navigation app in the United States.
OpenStreetMap also has it as Lake Ontario:
They also have navigation called OSMAnd.
Isn’t the navigation app called OsmAnd?
Yes it is, sorry my mistake.
It’s actually more interesting than this. Open Street Map has a long history of supporting multiple names for the same place. There seems to have been a bit of an edit war since the executive order was issued, but as of now we have
<tag k="name" v="Lake Ontario"/>and<tag k="official_name:en-US" v="Lake America"/>. There are also 36 other name tags, mostly listing the name of the lake in different languages. I initially assumed that all those others were added in the last couple of days as a way to sort of protest by taking the whole thing to an absurd level. But the change log actually shows that 27 of them were already in the tags long before the executive order was issued. And honestly, I like it this way better. Instead of making Trumps announcement big to the point of absurdity, OSM has made it small to the point of inconsequence. Trump said he wanted to change the name of the lake, and OSM said “sure, whatever, your name for it can be number 28 on the list of names that people have for it. And actually, while we’re on the topic, it looks like we missed a few. Lets throw on 8 more to make sure everyone is represented.”Is OsmAnd legit? It’s not from OSM directly from what I recall
yes, good app
Thanks for sharing!
Mapquest still exists? Encarta it!
Yeah right. Going to get that AOL disc that came with PCGamer and check if I’ve got mail next.
USA is not a Democracy when one man (President) can decide how something will be named. It seems that President have unlimited power, he can do whatever he want, manipulate markets in a most corruptive way, incarcerate who ever he want, bomb and kill at his will.
My last hope for this to be not true will be tested in November, depending on the result, I’ll finally declare USA as Fascism. But even if not, the next presidential election needs to be an entire (progressive/socialistic) turnaround, to stop this continuous degeneration of “democracy”, and there’s a lot of damage of this administration, that needs repair over the next decades.
The US is fascist.
I’m convinced that the most optimal way forward is for it to split. Why the fuck do California or New York have to keep financing a bunch of fascist mouthbreathers with genocidal tendencies? I don’t think it’s possible for the country to recover as one, whole swaths of it literally need cult deprogramming.
As I said, it certainly does have a lot of fascist tendencies, but I wouldn’t declare it fascist (yet) as long as elections are still somewhat proper, that’s why i said November is an interesting date. I think for this to be actual fascism (also do not devalue the actual fascisms we have/had so far), democracy needs to be almost entirely oppressed. We’ve seen in New York that there’s still at least a little bit of hope, for this to be turned around.
But I agree, it needs a lot of cult deprogramming, and I’m very much concerned about the mental health of the average american…
What do you make of all their attempts to restrict voting for the upcoming election, including having lists of “eligible” (read: Republican) voters? It’s not just one or two bills either, they’re pushing this with all of their energy, including petitioning SCROTUS for emergency measures.
Is this not enough to call it fascist? Why do they need to have success before you call something for what it is? Someone with homicidal tendencies is a threat before they kill someone, why do pedophile fascists get a pass?
attempts
right, it’s obvious that they want to be fascists, and so far they are succeeding…
That’s not what I meant though. I meant that the whole system is not yet in a state that I would call fascism yet, or well, at least until this next election which I think is a very good test for the “democracy” there…
And my hope is, that Trump is that unpopular that they will indeed fail to continue with this…
Unlike smarter authoritarians/dictators, he’s not very good so far at this (although ~1/3 of the population is already brain dead, which is in his favor, but probably not enough…). But I don’t know, americans have already disappointed me twice, so it stays hope…
And tape kids
Obama renamed Denali and this guy’s been crying to prove anything Obama can change, he can change faster
I’ve been happy with Organic Maps
Organic maps still has the gulf of Mexico not the gulf of trumps taint.
I desperately need to get off Google Maps, especially now that it shows Lake America for me up in Canada.
Unfortunately MapQuest has virtually no support for biking/transit/walking, driving is the only option. It also lacks support for collaborative lists, which my partner and I use extensively. I’m still trying to find a viable alternative, happy to take recommendations if they have these features.
How is the Quality of Openstreetmap Based Maps and Apps for you? For Example Mapy, Comaps or Osmand.
The last time I used an OSM based map was yeaaaaaaaars ago so I can’t say, but I also can’t imagine shared lists are well supported in that ecosystem? I might be wrong of course (but everyone knows stating a wrong thing on the Internet is how you get real answers)
The other issue I’ve been running into is that Maps is unfortunately still the best way to get business data since anything else requires businesses to add their info to it. On Maps I can find store hours, menus, phone numbers, reviews, etc.
The other issue I’ve been running into is that Maps is unfortunately still the best way to get business data since anything else requires businesses to add their info to it. On Maps I can find store hours, menus, phone numbers, reviews, etc.
Well the easiest way is to add it by yourself. There are Apps which are build for that. For Example Streetcomplete or Mapcomplete. All you need is an Openstreetmap Account and you are good to go.
Take a look at this Supermarket in Germany: In OSM - In Mapy
You can add a lot of details but not every App shows them. Mapy also has your review system you wanted. So all you need is Family and Friends (and Lemmy Users) to join and rate every store in their Town.
If you want I could take a look in some towns and see if the data that is collected is good or not. Europe has a good OSM Coverage, America not so much it’s more like the basics. Canada I don’t know.
Going to guess this is Number 1 in the past week, or 24 hours, or Number 1 downloaded recently, or some other limited metric because there is no fucking way the average user cares enough for MapQuest to unseat google or apple maps.
Which hey, that’s still great. But considering people don’t go to the app store to download Google/apple maps since it typically becomes pre-installed, I can’t help but feel this headline is misleading.
Not a single idea or policy or point of view espoused by MAGA is genuinely popular. It’s all bots, bullshit, and voter suppression.
Just checked Waze, and they are still showing Lake Ontario.
Waze is Google. The change is coming.
An executive order is just that an order towards the employees of his executive. It is neither law nor has it necessarily any relevance for anyone outside of the US administration and it sure as hell has no significance outside of the sovereign borders of the USA.
I know this is just a diversion from Epstein and the Iran war but I am curious, what is the proper procedure in the US for geophical name changes, I doubt it is executive orders, according to the law those executive orders by themselves don’t do anything in this regard, do they?
Downloaded and installed. I don’t even use it. In fact I will replace Gmaps with it.
Fuck the clown brigade, and fuck ALL the Vichy collaborators!
Trump is such a sore loser.
And the Persian Lake is still Persian.
Omg i love this news.
