Get lost, Windows 10 and Phone fans: No maps HERE on Microsoft's OS

Erm. Windows maps anyone?

Terrible reporting.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/windows-maps/9wzdncrdtbvb

this is what happens when you give stuff away

After all, there's no room on a satnav app to advertise in any meaningful way.

Given the quality of Here, could they have charged for the app and still gotten market share?

Presumably the income stream will now be in car units and data access.

It's not clear entirely what the problem is

therefore, it's entirely clear that the problem is money.

Instructive differences between HERE WP and HERE Android

I am a big HERE on WP fan. It was the first app I downloaded on my Android (dual SIM) christmas present.

It was immediately a less satisfying experience. HERE on WP launches in "Driving Mode" - where the display picks up the orientation of the phone, and displays time elapsed/distance driven (but still warns of speed limits). A very hand fit-n-forget feature.

HERE Android ? Opening screen is locked to portrait (so if the phone is landscape in a cradle, you need a 90degree neck). And you have to *then* select driving mode. Clunky *and* inexplicable.

Also the "Collections" feature is painfully 1980s in execution.

Not clear what the problem is

It's very clear. Without Microsoft's mondry proping itself up, windows app marketshare is so abysmal, it's financially viable platform..

Windows continues its path to the bottom.

Balls

Here maps are great on my phone. Free to download for pretty much any country I wanted to visit, both for walking around or full turn-by-turn GPS (also excellent).

At Face Value

If what they're saying at HERE is the truth, they didn't decide to drop support for Windows 10 because they didn't like Microsoft, but for technical reasons that would have made continuing support uneconomical.

And it also means that since it's a workaround for a fundamental incompatibility that's breaking, that what Microsoft did on its end may have been a legitimate step to improve the security of their operating system.

I'm surprised that an application to display maps on a mobile device has to somehow break the rules software developers are expected to follow, and resort to hacker-type techniques in order to provide its basic functionality. But given the statement that it could work if rewritten from the ground up, likely that is not the issue, the problem could be that the app derives from legacy code written for the Windows desktop, i.e., Windows 7 or earlier.

Dollers to Donuts, it's a UAC-aware re-write that is required.

Modern apps are required to use UAC elevation requests to access resources. It's a major rewrite.

Legacy systems (Win V/7/8) allowed legacy non-UAC-aware applications. Win 10 is tighter. Win10 phone is/will be tighter. I don't know what will be tightened in the new Win10phone release, but it's a no-brainer that UAC elevatoin will be tighter.

"It's thought that the current owners of HERE – BMW, Audi, and Daimler – want to concentrate on a mobile operating system that people are actually using."

Probably the case!

Where I live in northern Spain HERE as implemented for Garmin is awful. It doesn't know that roads in my village that were just reasphalted were ever asphalted, it doesn't know that my village exists, it doesn't know that my Postcode, shared by 1000 people, exists, it doesn't know that the nearby stretch of motorway was completed three years ago and when I'm driving on it through a tunnel shows me as being in the middle of a field.

A high-quality product owned by German luxury firms, just the thing for my Merc (a 1985 190D)?