Android does support 180 if an app does. I can watch movies upside down on my Nexus 10 . Handy because with my cover, you have to set it one way to use it as a stand, but I find it more comfortable flipped the other way if I'm holding it in my hands.

Well the redesign with the loss of previous features, like My Maps, means you gain ... advertising!

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013...-to-maps-apps/

With the GPS problems in the new Nexus 7 and the decline in Google Maps, I wonder now about the usefulness of Android for GPS.

Then iOS version of Google Maps will have ads too but at least there are other options.

Does anyone else use the location history feature in Google Maps? That seems to have disappeared, too. According to Google you can go to the Google Settings app and turn the history back on, but no matter how many times I try, it shuts itself off again. I know some people really hated it, but I love the the ability to recreate what I did on particular days.

Whether a particular Android build supports 180 is largely device-dependent. Tablets usually support it, but most phones don't.

I found out the hard way last weekend that when you save maps for offline use, it does not save any of your "starred" places along with it, and for some reason does not update the road labels as well - lots of scrolling around to try to figure out what road we needed to look for, even for some interstates!

What's so hard about setting up a Google Plus account and just leaving it sit there? It's not painful at all. What is painful is adding a bunch of friends. I setup a G+ account back when it started, have only a very few friends in my circles, most of which work for Google, and that's it. I am not required to go to the G+ website and see what people are doing. And when a notification comes it from G+, which is rare, a quick delete stroke gets rid of that. And the new Gmail nicely places all those notifications in the new Social tab so it doesn't pollute my main email tab. So it really is painless and if it makes my overall Google experience better then I'm fine with that.

I am having a difficult time with the new Chrome interface to Google Maps, but that is just getting used to a new thing.

When I finally set up a Facebook account a few years ago, I spent several hours finding and turning off all sorts of sharing features that were turned on by default. Not fun as a FB newbie. This exercise needs to be repeated periodically as Facebook reorganizes existing features and introduces new ways to share your info.

I gave into Google+ for awhile -- it seemed innocent at first -- until it became apparent that Google+ was sharing at least some info about me, as well. Not wanting to go through the entire privacy-protecting exercise with Google+, too, I deleted my Google+ account and will continue to resist the constant prompting to sign up for it. One social media headache is enough, thank you!

Now w.r.t. Google Maps, I have a long road trip coming up, and based on this thread, I'm seriously thinking about dusting off the old Garmin and taking it along as a backup. At least the interface didn't suddenly change in the year since I last used it!

I don't use FB so no worries there.

But what could Google possibly share about you if you don't put any info in your G+ profile? I'm saying just setup an account to make things easier with Google. You don't have to put any details in there if you don't want to.

I don't use Social Media either and I am completely stumped how to setup G+ (which it feels like Google is pushing me to) without any info being passed over?

My buddy who works for Google does not use G+ either (not a big Social Media Person) and when I asked him, he had no idea how to keep G+ basically empty.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated,

Dan

Other than your Gmail email address, which is the main key to your overall Google experience, you can make up whatever you want for the rest of the G+ criteria. Fake birthday, fake country, etc. It doesn't matter. Your other email addresses and other personal information does not have to be passed over.

I gave up and reverted to the old Maps on my PC. The new version only loaded successfully about 70% of the time, no matter what browser I used. And my computer is certainly up to snuff for the technical requirements.

What kind of PC? I have a 4 year old Thinkpad running XP and the new maps loads fine on my PC. It is taking some getting used to though!

Are you using Chrome?

Possibly nothing. But based on my FB experience, I don't want to to have to figure out what info from my Google profile that Google+ does or does not share, how to disable it, and how to keep it unshared. In fact, there's nothing whatsoever I want from Google+.

My solution to this is to not sign up for Google+ at all and not have to worry about what it might be sharing. If/when Google+ has some compelling feature that's worth the trouble, I'll reconsider.

To keep this post OT, I'll add that if Google someday decides to integrate with Google Maps with Google+, that might just drive me to Bing. :shudder:

About a 1 year old Lenovo running Win7. 3.2GHz/4GB.

I've tried Chrome (my primary browser), IE, and Firefox to no avail. Most of the time I get the gray screen with "Google" and the three dots in the middle, the search box, and the black menu bar across the top, but it never gets past there to load an actual map.

I rather enjoy the old Maps anyway, so I'm clinging on to that for now.

Do you use Gmail, Maps, or any other Google product/service? I'm relatively sure that if they truly wanted to, they can and do still capture user information for folks not using G+.

I'm with you that I have no use for G+ and it seems like a bit of a hassle (especially with the big push to integrate everything into it), but I just registered the account anyway and put in nothing more than my name and city (and maybe birth year). That's all information that Google has about me anyway via Gmail and Android, so even if they did want to share it, it's not like they have anything extra just because of G+.

One thing really bothers me about how Google exposes Google+ information: they expose my name next to formerly-anonymous Google reviews for places in their maps. I've spent a little time trying to undo that to no avail. It seems the only way to get rid of them is to delete your Google+ account, and even then, Google only says it will try to eliminate them.

The same thing applies to new reviews in the Google Play market. I don't review apps there anymore because of that.