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Organic Maps

organicmaps.app

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81–90 of 493 posts

Re: Organic Maps

#81

Post by sneak »

darkwater wrote: post #53
sneak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSMAnd tracks users using a secret supercookie by default because the developer wants metrics. This is done without consent. The defensiveness of the developer with regards to such unethical tracking means that I will never use any software they ever release. https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/15058 Organic Maps does not, and should be supported instead.

I took the time to go through the whole thread. Your tone was pretty aggressive from the start and throughout the whole conversation. On the developer's side yeah, they did minimize the issue at the beginning and then eventually modified how it works to increase privacy (rotating the UUID every 3 months, permitting to disable it anyway, clearly state it in the TOS etc). You are still downloading a tons of data from t…

> You are still downloading a tons of data from their infra, and for free, I think it's fair for them to have some sort of control to avoid abuses.

I agree with you 100%. The issue of client tracking is completely orthogonal, as a client-generated and client-reported identifier does nothing to avoid these abuses. All it does is allow them to track users of the software.

Re: Organic Maps

#82

Post by palata »

Leo_Verto wrote: post #49

Organic Maps really nails the use case for a minimalistic, no-nonsense mapping app with great UX design. Whereas OsmAnd tries to accommodate all use cases with full configurability, which results in a mess of nested options menus, OM goes for reasonable defaults and short menu paths. Unfortunately that minimalism comes with some downsides. While OM has a great metro map, it doesn't show bus lines (which would probabl…

I use both Organic Maps and OsmAnd, I see both your descriptions as features:

- Organic Maps is minimalistic, easy, great for what it does.

- OsmAnd does everything. Whenever I want to do something more advanced that is not in Organic Maps (typically I like the GPX stuff for hiking, or the ski maps, etc), I turn to OsmAnd.

I just need both.

Re: Organic Maps

#83

Post by palata »

orbital-decay wrote: post #76
Occivink wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> only alternatives for certain use cases

Which is fine. I love both, I just use the one that fits the use-case at hand :-)

Re: Organic Maps

#85

Post by palata »

euroderf wrote: post #6
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.

For offline use I've been quite happy with Maps.me (also OSM-based) but it sounds like Organic Maps is worth a try.

In case the other messages are not completely clear:

If you like Maps.me, you should move to Organic Maps. It's a fork, just strictly better.

Re: Organic Maps

#87

Post by DoingIsLearning »

prometheon1 wrote: post #78
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.

Usually I will take an address from my email or browser and plug it in, so indeed the search feature is not something I use much.

Re: Organic Maps

#88

Post by BlackLotus89 »

darkwater wrote: post #53
sneak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSMAnd tracks users using a secret supercookie by default because the developer wants metrics. This is done without consent. The defensiveness of the developer with regards to such unethical tracking means that I will never use any software they ever release. https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/15058 Organic Maps does not, and should be supported instead.

I took the time to go through the whole thread. Your tone was pretty aggressive from the start and throughout the whole conversation. On the developer's side yeah, they did minimize the issue at the beginning and then eventually modified how it works to increase privacy (rotating the UUID every 3 months, permitting to disable it anyway, clearly state it in the TOS etc). You are still downloading a tons of data from t…

Where does it sound aggressive? I read the whole thread as well and was more astounded that harmless messages were marked as "abusive". Maybe if you read into it he sounds a little pissed > It seems unlikely that this is an accident.

> It appears that this spyware tracking feature was added by @vshcherb (Victor Shcherb) back in 2015 and has been leaking users' data and travel history (via client IP geolocation) to the OSMAnd index server ever since.

but to be honest there was a hidden tracking feature for many years and he only called it by its name and didn't get aggressive in any form.

The original author didn't acknowledge a problem and all his messages were hidden (or are it at least now) to logged out users. This doesn't seem like a healthy discussion, but I disagree that not the reporter, but the other users/developers seem to be aggressive. They deny any problem and don't appear to understand or care to understand the "allegations" brought forward.

He insinuates that this is a feature to track users and acts in this respect in "bad faith", but assuming the worst (it saved a unique identifier and time of use and ips...) which is understandable in this situation.

For everyone reading my reply until now, but didn't read the github thread - the issue is fixed and you can now disable the identifier in the settings.

Thanks for reading, sorry for the rant, have a nice day :)

Re: Organic Maps

#89

Post by izacus »

IshKebab wrote: post #32
izacus wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do not blindly trust it. Map data can be very out of date in some places, especially on remote-ish hiking trails. Also, for the love of everything that's holy, do the same with Apple/Google Maps. They can be horribly wrong to the point of being actively dangerous.

For roads though they generally hook into official sources (e.g. Ordnance Survey in the UK) so they are guaranteed to get updated when the layout changes. That's not true for OSM. (Though obviously in the UK there are enough map nerds that it's very unlikely to be an issue.)

I don't know for UK, but in Swiss Alps the data is extremely scarce, which paths outright missing and Maps showing paths that can be closed or extremely dangerous.

Re: Organic Maps

#90

Post by jonathanstrange »

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…

Off-topic, but I find it hard to believe that throttling Wifi could possibly encourage empathy. That sounds so petty to me, it's like removing printer toner and hoping that the office banter about the dysfunctional printer may somehow forge better team-spirit. Or, putting the stapler away so people go looking for it...
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