I just found out that the latest upgrade of magic earth no longer works in the car, it now requires a subscription. Still works on the phone, but having it in the car display is just better.

So is there an alternative that does what waze/magicearth does that you know of? I'm thinking about the real time traffic and hazards update mostly.

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[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

it now requires a subscription.

~~I think that's wrong. I only see a one-time payment on https://www.magicearth.com/pricing .~~ 1 year fee of 6 Euro, then 15:

That said, they might shoot themselves in the foot with this. For those who don't know: The company's business model is or used to be to sell their services to car infotainment and similar industries. The free version for phones was their way to gather a big user base that contributes traffic and incident data.

Maybe their industry customer base collapsed. I don't know but with this move there is serious risk they're chasing away users and therefore the quality of the data decreases.

[–] RandomUser@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well they've lost me as a user. Shame as I really liked it.

[–] SARGE@startrek.website 3 points 1 week ago

Same. I managed to get about a dozen people to install it, too.

[–] CAVOK@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They're chasing me away. I'm not interested in paying but I was willing to contribute data in exchange for using it. That's the deal most people have with Google anyway.

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Luckily I could disable auto updates in time.

[–] Zwiebel@feddit.org 6 points 1 week ago

No FOSS one afaik. There's some other freemium apps listed on alternativeto.net

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

https://www.comaps.app/

[–] CAVOK@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Good app, but it doesn't have live traffic data I'm afraid.

[–] crank0271@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I had just signed up via the mobile app a couple weeks ago for the free trial, renewing at $1/year thereafter. They sent several notifications (or emails, can't remember) about the price going up soon. Hopefully the old pricing will be honored unless cancelled.

I had been looking for a privacy-respecting alternative to Google Maps / Apple Maps that has real time traffic info. Hopefully, as @woelkchen@lemmy.world suggested, the quality of that data doesn't degrade too much due to chasing away users / their data sources.

[–] crank0271@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Just wanted to follow up on this. It shows I was billed $1 today but next year it will renew at $20/year. I'm going to contact them to confirm, and I'm not against paying $1.66/month for a privacy-respecting navigation app with real time traffic info, but the ol' switcheroo is a little much for me.

[–] mech@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Requiring a subscription for a service that costs money to provide is NOT enshittification.
You either have to pay with your wallet or your data.

[–] CAVOK@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

They took away functionality and locked it behind a subscription. How is that not enshittification?

I was providing data. Now I'm not.