In the play store on your device go to Menu (Top right) > Settings > Auto-update apps > Do not auto-update apps
Offline maps was never removed in any update. They just moved it to a place that is completely unintuitive. If you want to cache an area search for it first in maps then zoom in our out as needed to cover what you need. then in the search bar type in "ok maps" and it'll cache it.
In the most recent update they did supposedly make it a little easier to cache but i haven't found the option. Don't really need it now that i know that trick though.
Thanks for that bit of info. Pretty much every single update to the G Maps update has made it incrementally less usable and less user friendly. I loved it when I first got my phone but it just got worse and worse, slower and slower, and the UI became more and more bizarre.
I've been a longtime G Docs/Drive/Apps user, GP Music All Access subscriber, etc. G really needs to learn about UI design. Desperately.
Happily, when I decided to start yanking supposedly 'vital' G apps and services off my phone, all of a sudden I discovered that my phone actually worked very well -- it was just the bloated Google apps (with their perverse inability to store themselves on SD storage) that was dragging it down. My phone wouldn't even let me add or edit telephone numbers -- the bloated Google apps had so crippled it.
I didn't like getting rid of Google Plus Music -- I pay $10 a month for All Access and this means I can't use it on my phone -- but it was basically breaking my phone. I still use it on the desktop -- but if a 320 kbps or better service comes up with at least as good a queue mechanism as GPM, and it has a decent Android app (unlike the bloated, lame-UI GPM), I will definitely consider switching -- even though I have a
substantial sweat equity in 'building' a personal GPM AA library that fits me (comprising about 25,000 tracks). That's not an easy thing to leave behind -- but the GPM AA app so thoroughly annoyed me that I'd definitely consider it.
I don't understand how OTHER companies can field apps that work and don't bring my phone to its knees -- but Google apparently cannot. It's insufferable.