161–170 of 290 posts
I can get the data[0], but is there some guide or container image that includes all the rest that is needed in a working condition?
Even Apple the most valuable company in the world with hundreds of billions of dollars of cash on hand is way behind Google in terms of mapping. https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat/ If Apple has trouble keeping feature parity with Google Maps, there is no way that an endeavor like Open Street Maps has any real chance of making something with the breadth, features, and usability of Google Maps.
Which is true, but Google doesn't get to define "maps".
Indeed, Google Maps as expounded by Mr O'Beirne is the very antithesis of OSM. He argues that Google is unstoppable because of its technology: that it can derive building shapes, heights, etc. from imagery much better than anyone else can.
That's almost certainly true (though Facebook is doing interesting ML-based stuff in this area with OSM) but it's not what OSM is. If Google is the apotheosis of technology, OSM is the apotheosis of human curiosity. It's the collected works of everyone with a particular interest that can be recorded geographically. You're interested in cycle routes? Add them in. Long-distance hiking paths? Go for it. Detailed coverage of the area where you live? We'd love to have you.
So for cycle paths, for long-distance hikes, for areas where we have committed contributors, OSM is streets ahead of Google. It doesn't always work. We struggle with stuff that no-one is interested in (principally addressing, which is just insanely boring to survey) and in areas where people aren't motivated to add stuff (basically, poor areas: OSM is a very middle-class pursuit and this is our biggest problem by a long way). Still, OSM is pretty much the opposite of Google Maps, and any comparison will fall down on that.
(Footnote: in this regard, Google's biggest advantage is that they get to draw on the entire Google search corpus. For POIs, that can be the equal of the best OSM can do, and I don't think we can easily match it. That said, Google hasn't yet worked out how to scrape linear/polygon data, and their attempt at mobilising a community to do this - Google Map Maker - ended in fairly spectacular failure.)
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> Generally when I drive with Google Maps, I already know the route but want Google to step in when there's traffic. You should try Waze. I too mostly use Google to route me around traffic, but Waze is an order of magnitude better at it. It has more frequently updated traffic data and is willing to take you on side streets. For example the other day I was driving down a major road, and Google said to just stay on it,…
Waze is pretty great but it has a habit of running you through hospital parking lots to save 2 minutes or turning multiple times to avoid a intersection that isn't really that busy. What I wish Waze would do is have a mode that allowed me to learn a route. Maps, and Waze both 'optimize' so much that its sometimes hard to learn a route from point a -> b because every time you go it sends you on different paths. Many o…
Google might route me through a turn that's theoretically allowed according to street signs but takes forever to make in heavy traffic; Waze might route me through a turn or "street" that's theoretically not usable but all the locals are using it anyway.
This post seems half right, half wrong. Wrong that OSM should be a service provider and not a database - I think it should be a database, and corporations are good for OSM. The post calls for OSM to essentially become Mapbox. It's insanely expensive to be Mapbox, and Mapzen just failed trying to be a less corporate version of Mapbox. And then the usage policy part of the article is moot or at least not that consequen…
You make the point OSM should be a database and not a service, but that’s a false dichotomy as nothing inherently prevents it from being both. The main point against a service seems to be that’s it’s an expensive thing to do, however I don’t see how we can draw any conclusion from that without weighing the costs against the upsides. I don’t see how the expense argument can be made with confidence without first establ…
Sure, these aren't provided by what's formally known as the "OSM API". They are provided by OSRM/Graphhopper, Mapbox GL/Tangram, Leaflet/OpenLayers 3, and Overpass respectively. Because that's, deliberately, how OSM works: it's the centre of an ecosystem, not a single service provider.
The OSM API is for the use of map editing programs. It's an implementation detail for the authors of iD, JOSM, Vespucci and a few others. It isn't something that anyone who isn't writing an editor needs to concern themselves about; and I honestly haven't heard many comments from editor maintainers that they want the API to do things it doesn't at present (though, Bryan, Dirk, Simon, do jump in and correct me if I'm wrong).
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There are some, e.g. OSMAnd on Android, they are awfully slow. I wonder why no one has written a proper, fast Opengl renderer for osm
> [like] OSMAnd on Android, they are awfully slow On my Galaxy Note 2 (2012), you're right. I've ordered a new phone yesterday because it's getting quite bad after five years of daily use. My girlfriend bought a phone for €300, and the one I ordered (now, a year later) for €250 actually has the same chipset. It runs great on that. I consider ~250eur to be the bottom of the smartphone market unless you're going for a…
That's ridiculous statement in itself. The bottom of the market are those [1] https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_honor_6a_(pro)-8700.php#euro...
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Well, "biggest" can mean a number of different things but, given that this is an Internet comment board and not an audited financial report, market cap seems one perfectly reasonable measure.
Market cap would be a reasonable measure for "biggest public company". It's an awful measure for "biggest company", since private companies have no market cap. This was discussed a while ago in relation to Saudi Aramco's potential partial IPO. Saudi Aramco is huge, much bigger than Apple, with no market cap.
They absolutely do. They're just updated less frequently and called "valuations". Closely-held private companies also have valuations, they're just even less frequently made visible.
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If you run them side by side, you will often find that Google Maps does not try as hard as Waze to save seconds. It prefers routes that are easier to learn, as you yourself like them, with fewer turns (and thus fewer interruptions). It caters to the 90% of people like you that don't obsess about seconds. Of course, it also has get traffic into account. Perhaps, in your case, the intersection isn't that busy, but traf…
I think there must be a factor like local data quality: I stopped following Google Maps as closely because it does things like an unprotected left turn on a major arterial road to save 100 feet going to the next light.
No, Google, I am not going to make a left turn here, because I have someplace I need to be by Wednesday.
I'm the DRI for most of these problems. Random thoughts: I think David Ogilvy said something like "Search all the parks in your city, you'll find no statues of committees". Everyone was super keen to make OSM in to a web of committees, and this is one root of the problem from an organizational point of view. It's not super clear to me what the OSMF has done in the last (to pick a number) 5 years. (I don't regard "doi…
...A-and we still don't have a single decent map people can use. And positively undoubtedly we don't have a single decent map people can use, that is owned by society and free in a sense Wikipedia is. I use Google Maps on a daily basis, and I hate Google.
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Goes both ways: Openstreetmap is better for some things already, and I don't see Google catching up to it at them. A big issue is consistency though: OpenStreetMap varies way more in quality between regions, to the point that detailed conversations almost make no sense without disclaimers about where you are talking. OpenStreetMap is a really good map where a strong community exists (either locally or dedicated remot…
> Openstreetmap is better for some things already Such as?