Recently, Magic Lane (the company that makes the Magic Earth application) completely renewed their interface and general operation.
To use the application, you now have to pay €0.99/year. Personally, I find this price more than reasonable for supporting a European alternative to Google Maps.
This price point makes me wonder what the purpose is: do they really have such a large user base that their 1 EUR/year subscription will add significant funds to develop the app further? I doubt. In which case the only effect will be to lose users who refuse to pay. Disclaimer: I use their app for navigation and I quite like it
Indeed, that’s a good question 🤔 An interesting solution might have been to leave the app free and make certain functions like speed cameras or real-time traffic accessible with the €1/year subscription. (I’m not saying it’s a good solution, it’s just an idea)
For my part, I’m more concerned about the “subscription” aspect. I’d have been prepared to pay €10 to get Magic Earth for life. But at 99 cents a year, it doesn’t seem like much, and there’s no guarantee that it’ll become monthly or more expensive, for example.