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.
Organic maps still has the gulf of Mexico not the gulf of trumps taint.
Apple also holding out.
I noticed that as well, but the Gulf of Mexico is labeled as the Gulf of America.
One mean bleat away from folding
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.
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.
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…
Obama renamed Denali and this guy’s been crying to prove anything Obama can change, he can change faster
And tape kids
OpenStreetMap also has it as Lake Ontario:
They also have navigation called OSMAnd.
I try and contribute to osm as much as i can but its still worefully lacking in information like open/close hours, and public transit routes
I still use google maps 80% of the time, :(
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
Worst product name ever.
Also, crappy app too. I appreciate that they are trying, but it has been crap for years.
Tried it again a few months ago. The spoken navigation wounded like it just huffed a can of butane. Real low, slow and fucked up sounding.
yes, good app
Thanks for sharing!
Since america now calls it Lake america we can nickname it Lac inférieure.
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?
They changed Mt. McKinley (back) to Denali while Obama was president.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denali–Mount_McKinley_naming_dispute?wprov=sfla1
Seems like it actually originated in the Alaska state legislature. According to wiki, they requested the name change in 1975 and I guess it was just ignored by the federal government until 2015 when Obama’s Interior Secretary changed the name.
“fuck up in X, try to change the topic by doing/saying outrageously stupid shit” has been a recurring theme and favourite strategy of dictators world-wide.
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.
Canada should rename Lake Superior to Lake Obama, “because Obama is Superior”.
Just call it Lake Obama is Superior
I’ve been happy with Organic Maps
Isn’t it over now? Did you mean CoMaps?
I don’t think he knows about CoMaps pip.
im going to use whats on my phone (apple maps) if they change it i could not care less. i know it’s lake ontario still
Just checked Waze, and they are still showing Lake Ontario.
Waze is Google. The change is coming.
Waze? Ew.
You know that’s Israeli tech that shares data with Palantir right?
Thank you
Not a single idea or policy or point of view espoused by MAGA is genuinely popular. It’s all bots, bullshit, and voter suppression.
