My offline maps expire in years, not in months or weeks. I'm not sure that's a huge issue, roads change over time and eventually maps will be so old that they are harmful.
I get a popup/notification once a month or so, when on wifi. It just asks if I want an update. There are settings to automatically update offline maps and one to control the automatic downloading of offline maps.
Seems pretty reasonable to me, after all roads do change over time.
My main motivation is to make nav less bandwidth intensive (I pay per GB with Google FI) and to ensure I have maps even if I don't have a good data connection.
It's reasonable to warn and suggest to update. It's not reasonable to not allow to use the old maps just because you don't update - but the Maps app enforces that.
It might have something to do with licensing. Either way, OsmAnd doesn't have that problem.
That's stupid. I do offline maps mainly for the times when I don't have a good connection. It makes no sense to lose the maps when you are spending an extended amount of time off-grid. That's exactly when you need offline maps.
If I remember correctly, the maps aren't auto-updated by default; you do get notifications, but those are too easy to ignore (esp. since Maps is chatty in general).
And then for someone on an expensive metered or slow connection - which is a lot of people in the developing countries - they might not want auto-update at all. So if they didn't notice expiration, they'll find out that their maps aren't there next time they try to navigate offline.
