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Organic Maps

organicmaps.app

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Re: Organic Maps

#71

Post by Vinnl »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #68
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #64

Started using Organic Maps during the pandemic, this is the app that weaned me out of Google Maps. At the moment I only really use Google Maps to check opening times of certain shops. Also way better routing for cyclists than Google maps.

You can often find opening times of shops by searching for their own Facebook page instead of using Google Maps. Moreover, you can add business’ opening hours to OpenStreetMap so that other people in future will see the opening hours in Organic Maps and other OSM-based maps. For a programming-savvy crowd like HN, the syntax of OSM’s opening-hours tag is pretty straightforward.

> you can add business’ opening hours to OpenStreetMap

And by far the easiest way to do this, if you have an Android phone, is to use the beautiful StreetComplete app: https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/#readme

Re: Organic Maps

#72

Post by OfSanguineFire »

xNeil wrote: post #33
biodranik wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not alone, our community and contributors are helping us!

Thanks for the work you and your community is doing! Quick question - why did you fork maps.me in the first place? And how do you make money?

Maps.me got forked because it was sold from the original company to a new one (IIRC more than once). The most recent company to purchase Maps.me is in crypto, so their focus has been on e.g. adding a crypto wallet – yes, a crypto wallet in a maps app – instead of actually developing the app further for maps users.

Re: Organic Maps

#73

Post by kilroy123 »

Tee3993 wrote: post #45
bertil wrote: post #40

I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly. It’s truly staggering how, even when I do everything I can to say: save this journey, don’t delete the map around it, don’t delete the journey, just passively show me where I am next to it, it will gleefully delete everything. I once met their lead designer (who had just changed to work at another FAANG) and… boy was that not a conversati…

Google Maps has pretty good support for offline maps. Select rectangular area, download, it expires after year. I am in Europe, maybe you have different copyright on data?

You can also type a city name. Then type 'okmaps' and press ok. Then, it will bring up the download offline map screen for the whole area.

Re: Organic Maps

#74

Post by jacooper »

Personally, I lost hope in finding any gmaps alternative.

It's always either super out of date, or missing details and nice features like reviews, photos and advanced integrations like gmaps integration with public transport.

That's without mentioning the clearly worse routing Algorithms.

These issues mostly stem from a lack of data, but there are many related to the way the OSM project sees itself, and concepts like point of interest.

Let's see what comes from the new big tech alliance against gmaps.

Re: Organic Maps

#76

Post by orbital-decay »

Occivink wrote: post #34
dbrgn wrote: post #3

Organic Maps is less powerful than OSMAnd (on Android), but it's much more straightforward and easy to use. It's the go-to app I recommend to all casual map users that want offline maps.

It's less powerful, but also orders of magnitude less bloated and faster. OSMAnd has that quintessential kitchen-sink application feeling where features is the main concern and cohesive design an afterthought.

They rewrote the renderer so OSMAnd speed is tolerable now. There's still no real replacement for it for more advanced use, only alternatives for certain use cases, like Organic Maps.

Re: Organic Maps

#78

Post by prometheon1 »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #64

Started using Organic Maps during the pandemic, this is the app that weaned me out of Google Maps. At the moment I only really use Google Maps to check opening times of certain shops. Also way better routing for cyclists than Google maps.

Do you use the search functionality a lot, and is it giving you the results you want? And if so, do you have any tips on how to write search queries?

I love Organic Maps, but when I try to search, I think I find what I'm looking for about 1 out of 5 times.

Re: Organic Maps

#79

Post by palata »

Tee3993 wrote: post #45
bertil wrote: post #40

I genuinely want to know what lead Google to not support Maps offline properly. It’s truly staggering how, even when I do everything I can to say: save this journey, don’t delete the map around it, don’t delete the journey, just passively show me where I am next to it, it will gleefully delete everything. I once met their lead designer (who had just changed to work at another FAANG) and… boy was that not a conversati…

Google Maps has pretty good support for offline maps. Select rectangular area, download, it expires after year. I am in Europe, maybe you have different copyright on data?

If you find it "pretty good", I guess you have never tried an OpenStreetMap-based app like Organic Maps. I also like OSMAnd a lot (I use both for different use-cases).

Re: Organic Maps

#80

Post by palata »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #72
xNeil wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the work you and your community is doing! Quick question - why did you fork maps.me in the first place? And how do you make money?

Maps.me got forked because it was sold from the original company to a new one (IIRC more than once). The most recent company to purchase Maps.me is in crypto, so their focus has been on e.g. adding a crypto wallet – yes, a crypto wallet in a maps app – instead of actually developing the app further for maps users.

Was Maps.me open source before, or did they somehow manage to make it open source just before it got bought by the cryptobros? That would be a pretty great move IMO.
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