I find the contrast of the colors is much better when driving now. Things seem more bright/neon in a way and things actually seem to blend less for me. I was pleasantly surprised by the update.

I don't hate the colours and they're now closer to real street maps. This is of course a subjective opinion as I haven't put the new colours into use to see if the desaturated scheme is more glanceable.

However there are examples of the night mode driving directions having unintuitive colours: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/17yv4qp/...

In this example the bright blue route (matching the directional arrow) is actually the optional path, the true path is the softer blue colour (as signalled by the turning direction at the top of the screen.)

I disklike it. It looks dead. It might be better for driving, but not so for things dealing with nature.

Also I get the feeling that smaller streets disappeared, forcing me to enable the cycling mode.

Yeah, I find the new colors (and fonts!) a massive improvement in readability, especially while driving. It's so much easier to get situational awareness, recognize crossings, road exists and important landmarks.

But I did share the opinion of author and whined about it like a good HNer when I've only seen the blog post and before I actually tried it.