Comment on I cannot tell you a way my life has genuinely gotten better since the advent of "smart" phones.

• stevedice@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Do portable GPS also have a list of every single business near my location?

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• lurklurk@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I had those. They were much worse.

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  • Test_Tickles@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Seriously. Much much worse.

    First you had to pay a fortune for a device, with which you may or may not get very limited map updates. Then after that you had to pay quite a bit to update. Even then it could take a year for permanent road changes to make it to the map updates, and temporary changes were never shown. Road construction, wrecks, and temporary closures were your problem. And God forbid your route took you through a closed area because there was no way to route around it. You had to find a place to park so you could look over the tiny little map to figure out your own way around the blockage, or else you could pick a direction and then yolo your route until you were far enough away from the problem area that the gps would finally choose a route that didn’t go through the problem area.
    And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. For instance, all the above assumes that it accepted the address you were going to as a valid address. There was nothing like the joy of typing in an address and having the device tell you that it doesn’t exist.

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    • lurklurk@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I rented a car at some point where you had to input the address letter by letter using a little scrollwheel kinda thing.

      Smartphones have issues, but the map thing is a killer feature in itself.

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      • Test_Tickles@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Holy sweet baby Jesus! You need to put a trigger warning on your post. The traumatic memories that you brought to the surface are enough to send me back to therapy all over again.

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• bradboimler@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I was content and managed just fine with paper maps and directions before smartphones. When I got my first one it rendered those devices obsolete for me.

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