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I just tried checking my house on Here. It says there's a McDonald next to me and there most definitely isn't. Also my entire apartment complex is completely blank on there (and I'm in Silicon valley, not some rural town). Seeing that Google Maps also has offline mode, I don't see a single reason why you'd prefer that over Google Maps.

There is no perfect map (at least for now), I've had the same experience with every map app I tried. You just have to choose which one works best on a given location.

Not only is there no perfect map, often times cartographers will intentionally include minor errors so as to make theft of their data more apparent.

Mapping seems like a great candidate for a nation-state level project. Make the data open and free (or cheap) to download, add an API with a lowish fee. Governments at every level already collect tons of this data—satellite imagery, utility, street openings/closings/maintenance, address mapping, and so on. Unify it, open it, and let businesses compete over who has the best interface and value-add instead of everyone making their own maps (or licensing from one of several companies that have). Seems like a lot of wasted effort for something that would be a pretty good fit for a government-provided service.

I feel like this is already partially the case with OSM. Many cities offer online GIS services where you can download lots of data using a GIS program (MassGIS for example). Openstreetmaps allows anyone to make their own mapping app without worrying about where to source the data.

The main barrier is getting contributors to add data to OSM. Some cities like Boston / Somerville seem to have hired office staff to improve OSM, as I see a lot of edits from usernames relating to the city in those areas. Another barrier is that the GIS system can be hard to work with, a lot of the programs being expensive and comercial. I managed to compile QGIS from the AUR but got confused by the thousands of coordinate systems and the exporting process, so my hometown will have to go without subdivision labels until someone more experienced can add them.

I'm really hoping that more people can make maps apps using OSM data, since OSM is often up to date enough for my needs in the areas I am in, but the best app I've seen so far (Maps.me) has a kinda old interface as well as map rendering that feels too cluttered to me compared to google maps (details shown at various zoom levels).

> I'm in Silicon valley, not some rural town

I think that might actually be part of the issue. Here is much better in Europe, Google and friends have always been better in US.

Google maps works offline in most countries. I wouldn’t have survived my International trips without it. I’ve used Google map for public transit in many countries. Most time I get SIM card while travelling just to use Google maps.

When I've used it in the past, the offline maps kind) weren't very dependable.

They expired after 30 days (not 30 days of being offline, just 30 days from when you downloaded the map). If you had internet when they expired, the map would refresh and you'd be good for another 30 days. If the 30th day happened to be the first day of your trip, you were SOL until you found wifi.

Some of the other annoyances have been fixed (initially they only supported navigating to addresses, not business names). Some of them haven't (still no walking directions). But if I can't count on the maps to actually be there when I need them, nothing else matters.

I've tried both Google and HERE maps when traveling to a number of countries, and found HERE significantly better offline. It was constantly able to detect my exact position and update it as I kept walking, while Google Maps were quite inaccurate.

> "S. Jobs created iPhone", "M. Mayer created Google Maps" etc., there were whole teams of smart people working on these projects

Of course there were smart people working on it. But someone has to have long term and execution vision to make these happen

Today it's obvious that was the path, at the time, not so much

Smartphones were obvious decades before iPhone (see Sci-Fi and PDA's), it's just that technology wasn't mature enough before. The rest is just a speculation -- I might say that S. Jobs could had been replaced by Joe and iPhone would have been a success anyway, you may might disagree and there's no way to prove one point or another.

Not every technology used in Sci-Fi and mature enough is a big success in real world. But it's not easy to find examples. Maybe Automatic pocket doors from Star Trek?

I credit Jobs with obsessive attention to detail. Legend tells that when engineers brought him the iPod prototype and swore it couldn't be made any smaller he didn't even switch it on, he just dropped it in his fish tank and saw bubbles of air come out, then told the engineers there was still scope to make it smaller. Whereas Tim Cook is only fixated on whether it can show an animated poop icon.

For navigation, Google Maps are just very poor, at least here in UK. Maybe it's better in the US, but here it frequently navigates over streets that are not connected at all, wrong way on one way streets, doesn't know about closed roads(even if said roads were closed for almost two years now), a lot of businesses are just wrong, I don't know if they were placed there maliciously or by some automated process. The only thing they are kind of good at is traffic, but even there, I'd much rather trust TomTom Live traffic than Google maps.

Google cant be blamed if companies mess up their LLM Local Listings Management or hide their store locations on their websites. This is why companies like DAC Yext etc exist

I don't blame google, I'm just saying that Google Maps is an inferior product(And yes, the counter argument here is that it's free).

Google Maps is by very, very far away the best mapping solution available in the UK.

Nobody else's business data is even close. Like not even 15% close.

The Google Maps app on Android has offline maps.

iOS too

Does Google Maps offline functionality include POIs?

The last time I tried/was allowed to save Google Maps offline (it's not available in all regions) you could not navigate or search for POIs while offline.

Here allows both navigation and POI search using an offline map. This is incredibly useful if you are in a country without service or where roaming data is very expensive.

They added offline support for POIs last year I think. Offline navigation works too, but it's not always as good as it lacks traffic data.

> They added offline support for POIs last year I think. Offline navigation works too, but it's not always as good as it lacks traffic data.

Must be only in certain regions. I went on a road trip in Western Europe this summer and the offline maps did not contain POIs an offline Navigation was not possible.

Actually, Navigation itself was impossible as the app crashed every minute on my Android 7 phone.

Meanwhile HERE Maps worked just fine offline and didn't crash my phone.

Last year I was travelling in Japan and Google Maps refused to let me download the maps to use offline. I installed OSM and downloaded the maps and it worked perfectly again. I was very surprised at the quality of OSM in Japan, it was fantastic! Even showing walking paths through temples.

Last time I checked, offline navigation on Google Maps seemed to be car-only for some reason.

> Last time I checked, offline navigation on Google Maps seemed to be car-only for some reason.

To be fair, HERE Maps only supports offline navigation for driving, biking, and walking. You cannot get public transportation navigation in offline mode.

Also HERE Maps driving navigation includes speed limits and a speeding warning based on GPS measured speed. Very useful for when there are speed cameras installed (as is the case in most of Europe). I have never seen Google Maps Navigation showing the current road's speed limit.

Same, even though Google Maps has "offline abilities" it's still nowhere close to what HERE Maps have had for years.

Unfortunately POI search (even online) on Here sucks in my experience. Maybe 20-25% of the places I'm actually looking for are there. While with Google it's basically 100%. More often than not I find I have to use Google to find the address of the place I'm going before Here can navigate to it.

I have not looked into it in a while, but i seem to recall it worked by basically saving whatever was on your screen at the moment. On the more "traditional" car nav apps you can pick specific nations and get the whole thing.

Everywhere? I know at least in the past I've gotten "this region isn't available for offline viewing" for seemingly arbitrary parts of the world

> Nokia's Here

HERE was sold by Nokia in 2015

The map is now called Here WeGo, the company HERE Global, and it's owned by Audi AG, BMW AG, Daimler AG, and Intel.