Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Maps.me is gone, and we must bring it back

telegra.ph

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 248 posts

Re: Maps.me is gone, and we must bring it back

#81

Post by piaste »

lucideer wrote: post #47

The complete lack of any mention in the article of the long-running F-Droid fork effort is a bit disturbing if I'm honest. If the author had already reached out to @axet to offer to help / become a maintainer I'd imagine it would've been mentioned up top. I'm all for people creating multiple divergent open-source forks of things (diversity is great) but this doesn't seem to be divergent at all. The stated intent is t…

I̶t̶ ̶l̶o̶o̶k̶s̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶F̶-̶D̶r̶o̶i̶d̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶l̶a̶s̶t̶ ̶u̶p̶d̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶f̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶a̶g̶o̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶'̶w̶e̶b̶s̶i̶t̶e̶'̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶p̶s̶.̶m̶e̶,̶ ̶r̶a̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶c̶ ̶r̶e̶p̶o̶s̶i̶t̶o̶r̶y̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶c̶i̶f̶i̶c̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶k̶.

̶G̶i̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶,̶ ̶I̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶u̶t̶h̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶s̶i̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶d̶e̶a̶d̶/̶a̶b̶a̶n̶d̶o̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶j̶e̶c̶t̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶s̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶p̶i̶c̶k̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶t̶e̶a̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶M̶a̶p̶s̶.̶m̶e̶ ̶p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶c̶ ̶r̶e̶l̶e̶a̶s̶e̶.̶

EDIT: Disregard, I was confusing the actual F-Droid fork with an older re-upload on the same store. The former is called "Maps" while the re-upload is "Maps.me".

Re: Maps.me is gone, and we must bring it back

#83

Post by boudin »

unicornporn wrote: post #77
zelphirkalt wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OsmAndroid sucked so badly with its seemingly hours of loading time. Search queries never worked well unless you entered exactly the string, including case and sometime whitespace. It would sometimes not find anything, unless I entered a useless whitespace after my words. In comparison to maps.me it is really really bad user experience and not to be recommended on any old phone. Your old phone will just laaaag and yo…

> Search queries never worked well unless you entered exactly the string, including case and sometime whitespace. This. OsmAnd is packed with advanced feautures but search is unusable which is unfortunate because that's how I'd usually use a map.

For search I use the side app Acastus Photon which works well. It's just a search to position app that then can open the position in osmand.

Re: Maps.me is gone, and we must bring it back

#84

Post by thomaszander »

petre wrote: post #34
curben wrote: post #15

There is an existing f-droid version of Maps.me [1] and this looks like a separate effort. Despite having access to the source code, map hosting is a non-trivial problem [2]. [1]: https://gitlab.com/axet/omim [2]: https://gitlab.com/axet/omim/-/issues/176

It becomes trvial if one uses MapTiler or Mapbox with their own styles and overlays. And even self hosting has much improved since the days of raster tiles.

> It becomes trvial []

I'm looking forward to you helping solve this problem then as I have the Android app, but can't use due to lack of downloadable maps.

I have a couple of places in the offline storage, which still works, but if I go to a new place I can't use the app, downloads never start.

Re: Maps.me is gone, and we must bring it back

#85

Post by piaste »

maelito wrote: post #29
pw6hv wrote: post #16

I do not know if it's available on iOS (I suspect no) but on Android I am a really happy user of Osmand. It uses Openstreetmap as maps provider and I always use it when hiking. It gives you the altitude profile of your route which is very useful.

OSMand is much more complete than maps.me. A usable alternative to gmaps for me.

A critical aspect OSMand is missing for me are business information.

OSM maps will include store and venue locations, but Google Maps will show me their opening hours and give me their phone number, website, and (for restaurants) menu and food pictures.

Looking up that kind of info is, [i]by far[/i], the most common reason for me to open the maps app in the first place, before I actually decide that I want to go there and start navigation.

Obviously this is all information that Google has and OSM doesn't. But I would be OK with a plugin that lets me click on a store on OSM to open it in a Google Maps page in a webview.

I'd be letting Google know that I am interested in that place - no way around it - but I could keep the information of whether I actually went there and how long I stayed within OSM, without sharing my location with Google.

Another, probably easier plugin would be one that lets OSMAnd recognize the location provided by Google Maps when I use the share button. Then I could look up places I want to go on GMaps and send them to OSMAnd+ for navigation.

Re: Maps.me is gone, and we must bring it back

#86

Post by ljm »

fireattack wrote: post #27

The main difference between the two images the author showed seem to be the isometric buildings models. Where do the data for these come from to begin with? I assume these can't be user generated.

The 'updated' image basically replaces all of the old map markers with ones for local businesses like Pret, Eat, etc. The original one shows you tube stations (e.g. Cannon Street) and plenty of other non-commercial points of interest.

Re: Maps.me is gone, and we must bring it back

#88

Post by jmnicolas »

pxtail wrote: post #28
fab1an wrote: post #5

Too bad, maps.me was by far the best maps application for non city use, and ideal for hiking. Commendable initiative to bring it back in its original version! A few examples of why it was so great: Simple, non social bookmarks. As in: place a bookmark so you don't get lost while hiking, or when you find a nice spot you want to come back to later. Yep, a utility feature that doesn't somehow map to some stoopid busines…

OsmAnd fits description perfectly, you can place bookmarks, no account required, maps from OSM, offline maps which can be used even without internet connection.

OsmAnd is great and it's what I have on my phone, however it has a very un-intuitive UI and I often have to search for what feels ages to find a particular functionality.

It might be because I don't need a map often or maybe I'm just an idiot :)

Re: Maps.me is gone, and we must bring it back

#89

Post by kolinko »

fab1an wrote: post #5

Too bad, maps.me was by far the best maps application for non city use, and ideal for hiking. Commendable initiative to bring it back in its original version! A few examples of why it was so great: Simple, non social bookmarks. As in: place a bookmark so you don't get lost while hiking, or when you find a nice spot you want to come back to later. Yep, a utility feature that doesn't somehow map to some stoopid busines…

Apple Maps has an option to bookmark any arbitrary point and create collections without creating an account or doing any sort of sharing.

Re: Maps.me is gone, and we must bring it back

#90

Post by nekopa »

tmoravec wrote: post #24
fab1an wrote: post #5

Too bad, maps.me was by far the best maps application for non city use, and ideal for hiking. Commendable initiative to bring it back in its original version! A few examples of why it was so great: Simple, non social bookmarks. As in: place a bookmark so you don't get lost while hiking, or when you find a nice spot you want to come back to later. Yep, a utility feature that doesn't somehow map to some stoopid busines…

For hiking, check out https://en.mapy.cz/turisticka . While it focuses on central Europe, it regularly imports OSM data worldwide and I found the coverage pretty good.

I can second this recommendation. Mapy.cz is especially awesome for me as I live in the Czech Republic. It has more updated satellite imagery for the CZ than Google, and shows all the hiking trails quite nicely. And the download function works pretty painlessly.
Post reply on HN