At risk of summoning an army of vibe coders, I wish map apps were more configurable and let you set "I'm happy to walk 20 min" or "someone can drive me a few miles and drop me off"

Speaking of trains, that's another thing they don't do. The auto-snapping of current location consistently snaps to whatever road or goat track it can find nearby, while equally consistently refusing to snap to the railroad they have mapped.

Sure, there's not much need for navigation in that situation, but if you're trying to be smart regarding where I am, maybe take into account if I'm travelling at 200 kph before plonking me on a twisty gravel road.

While I am on the subject, Google Maps seems to be somewhat aware of big awkward train stations which take ages to navigate, and applies a time penalty. That's good (though also a bit inconsistent). However, it seems to assume that metro stations are of zero size; you go in the door, and immediately get on any line. This is very not true in some places.

I think this likely has more to do with the NP Hard problem of generating directions more than it has to do with bad design.

Apple Maps also does this.

It would also be nice to have a configurable transportation choice for the time to leave notice. Because some things I’ll walk to, some I’ll take transit and some I’ll drive and Apple seems to want be to just pick one and only use that.

My other map complaint is that there’s no indication of how much tolls are when comparing toll vs non-toll routes. Because if it’s $5 to save ten minutes, no thanks but for a buck, maybe I’ll do it.

My Apple Watch asks me if I am doing an outdoor walk everytime I am at Disney World. It sometimes takes 15 minutes to notice. Imho if its going to ask me this it should know every time I get to Disney that I am going to walk all day long and account for it.

A lot of tech is overfit to the product manager role in tech companies. One of the side effects of living in a bubble.

My Apple Watch is set up by default to assume any 15-minute walk is a "workout" and interrupt me to ask if I wanted to record it. No, I'm just going to the store, what is this "workout" nonsense. My Oura Ring was worse, it would assume any walk duration is noteworthy and my timeline would be a jumbled mess of "workouts". But these would be reasonable assumptions for a mostly sedentary office worker living in the suburbs.

I remember when a Google feature was announced long ago, some of the headlining features was plane ticket support and currency conversion. The average American gets on a plane once a year, to a place where they accept American dollars, and wouldn't ever care about these features. But these are important if you're in your 30s and travel is an important part of your life for either business or vacations.

That completely tracks coming from people who work in a place laid out like this:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/JHQPdvSStnr6jfm77

I'm still astounded by how poorly Gmaps handles Seattle ferries. The time and routing calculations always assume the best case scenario. I've had it insist I take the ferry because it estimated a 5 minute time savings, when in reality there is a minimum 3hr wait for a boat. This I can work around, but the truly awful behavior is that if you pull off for gas and then get back on the highway, it will automatically recalculate to the 'shorter' ferry route. The only solution I have found is to add additional stops along your preferred route.

Ever since phones became pretty immune to reselling-theft (steal phone, reset it, sell it) people have been snatching phones and trying to empty crypto, banks, etc before it locks. Some apps don't reauthenticate.

> Is "snatching a phone and running off" a common enough problem in some regions that this is worth having?

Yes absolutely

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/phone-london-snatch-9.7204104

It's not exactly what you asked for, but the public transit and multimodal focused apps are generally much better at this stuff. I like CityMapper and Transit.

Neither is good for turn-by-turn directions, but both are good for "what are all the different ways to get there"

Not to mention “public transit but with a waypoint” which is too advanced for all mobile apps

They have big offices in San Francisco, and also in New York, Dublin, Zurich, London, and various other cities where this stuff matters, though, these days (their Dublin office is right beside the train station that it insists I shouldn't go to, because walking!). You'd think it would've gotten fixed at some point.

Yeah at this point Google Maps has 20 years of data to work with it should work flawlessly in big cities.

Can’t you disable ferries same as toll roads?

Or even taking a walk:

<https://archive.org/details/sim_reporter_1951-08-07_5_3_0/pa...>

(Alternate link: <https://archive.org/details/sim_reporter_1951-08-07_5_3/page...>)

In Mexico, apparently, the scheme is to grab a phone from an inattentive pedestrian from a motorcycle or scooter.

2036 crime prevention, detecting this behaviour and automatically forwarding it to the police to be referenced later for probable cause.

You may have tried this, but I run with my phone in an elasticated belt that's just tight enough to keep the phone stable without being uncomfortable. I really don't want to fork out for another device just for running. (I also find a watch on my wrist annoying when I don't wear one normally).

The solution is clear - an "I am a tweaker" toggle.

I wish I could add certain streets and routes to some sort of block list.

There are certain roads I would be willing to spend an extra 10-30 minutes driving to avoid. (And certainly would not get on them on a bike!)

Yes, its why those long crossbody lanyards are now so popular.

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mggh4ll/a/crossbody-strap...

Massive in London.

It's a big enough problem in Brazil that the government has an official app to report incidents of phone theft:

https://www.gov.br/pt-br/apps/celular-seguro-br

https://www.gov.br/pt-br/servicos/comunicar-roubo-furto-de-a...

Bonus security on iPhone - if you long-press on any app, you can click "Require Face ID" and it will make thieves need your face again to open bank or sensitive apps. I did this for all my financial apps amd also email so they can't reset passwords. It isna minor inconvenience but would hopefully prevent an unlocked phone from being stolen and having bank accounts emptied.

Interesting point. The article linked in a sibling comment (about 2025 thefts) suggests that they are being resold. Which makes sense if it's a $2000 product that's so stealable. But I do recall there being a lot of difficulty resetting a phone that isn't yours. Do you feel the is article wrong? Are there ways around it? Is "pretty immune to reselling-theft" a newer feature than 2025?

Thanks! Given this was CBC, my jaw hit the floor when I saw London. I live 20 mins from London, Ontario and 70k thefts in a year would be _insane_. Then I realized it was about London, U.K. and my jaw only hit the table. 70k is still insane, though.

Why bother stealing iPhones? Is it just for the scrap/recycle->repair value?

Oddly, it seems to be okay at that in Dublin at least.

The main alternate route is a toll bridge unfortunately.

Eh, it certainly gets a lot of _attention_, and London is very, very big, so the absolute numbers are impressive-looking. The chances of it actually happening to any given person are extremely low, though.

If I have your unlocked iPhone, I could probably reset your Apple ID because I have access to your email and your texts so I can reset your Apple ID password unlock your phone unlock. Remove it from Find My and reset it.

It makes me wonder if there’s some way to put a third lock on there that’s not normally unlocked.

The number is too high, but dropping: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdx4762znr6o

Android Private Space https://support.google.com/android/answer/15341885?hl=en

Activation Lock now extends to the serials of the parts inside every iPhone since Apple knows the S/N of everything. If you pull the battery off an Activation Locked phone and put it in another phone it's going to freak out and complain the part is pairing-locked and won't pair to your device but it'll be baseline usable. You'll just keep getting nasty nags in the Settings letting you know you're using stolen parts.

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/activation-lock-sec...

As of iOS 27 beta, there's now an additional "partner finance lock" status that will also be an available parts-lock status (to prevent a 'leased' device from being parted out).

https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/21/ios-27-code-suggests-apple-co...

The email is what most people miss. Unlocked phone = SMS and email for most people.

There's also a scam where they contact the owner from abroad, offering to return it, claiming they're an innocent trying to activate a used phone they spent their last dollar on, or threatening the original user into unlocking it. They will say that they're hackers, connected to criminals in your home city, using your name and recent photos to say that they're going to expose your text messages. Anything to get an unlock.

You can send them to Chinese chop-shops and still turn a decent buck.

>an official app to report incidents of phone theft

I can't be the only person to see the irony here. Do they also have a drive-thru to report car theft?

They send them to countries where they aren't locked or break it down for parts.

Even the CBC thinks of London, England before London, Ontario.

Is it really insane? That is less than 200 per day, in a city of 15 million people.. a single gang of 20 thieves could likely manage that! The real question is, how does this compare to other cities of this size and demographics?

After you install it you cana "safe contact" or do the reporting on a website which will blocklist the phone's IMEI on all phone companies, block any banking app sessions and remotely wipe the phone.

It also functions as a public searchable database of stolen phones, allowing a prospective buyer of a second hand device to check it.

RTFM

Poor London. (Ontario.) (Canada.)

Why compare demographics?

> They send them to countries where they aren't locked

iphones will remain locked regardless of what country they're in. I presume you're talking about states who are seemingly unwilling to pursue/prosecute claims of theft?

there's still a fairly lucrative parts stripping market and there are extreme efforts that are used to "unlock" locked devices - it has been known in the Chinese marketplace that you could get paired chips to do SMD rework with a "clean" set of identifiers. they'll swap the SOC, the flash, and the wireless all for a few bucks.

older iOS devices as well are also vulnerable to having their syscfg rewritten via exploits, so you can "clean" a locked device that way as well with a good set of serials. Apple Watches are a hot one for this.

I would expect a city that's mostly retirement communities to have less snatch-and-run thefts than a city where tourists make up a large part of the population at any given time.

Interestingly, Tokyo has a much larger population than London with a very low crime rate. I can’t find specific numbers on stolen phones (only lost phone statistics are published) but robberies/muggings are 0.04 per 1,000 yearly versus London’s 2.83 per 1,000. Seoul has a similar rate to Tokyo, 0.4 to 0.5.

On top of that a sizable percentage of theft victims don't even bother to report it stolen.

Retired people a probably quite easy targets in this scenario.

You can't activate the hardware with a different ID regardless. It requires the owner to relinquish ownership.

I'm sure this is different with different components of course depending on how granularly apple tracks their hardware—but the whole package certainly can't be activated.