I too wish you could choose a scale. While it is nice to see a zoomed out view that shows your location over a country, when the aircraft marker stretches for 1/4 of the length of that country, it's not very helpful to tell where you really are. I also wish they would at a minimum show a clock on the bottom while on the map.

Now that we have in air internet and better IFE possibilities, perhaps we can have a more interactive map. I think that would be much more interesting. Particularly if they ever found a way to include something like Passur's Airport Monitor.