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Comment by bkovacev | Hacker News Reader

What are some reliable alternatives for both iOS and Android? I'm unsure how are Apple Maps, but they were hideous a while back for Eastern Europe at least.

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OsmAnd: https://osmand.net/ - open source, offline maps. Really great for outdoor sports, and has profiles for running, biking, skiing, etc, way better than Google Maps for that. Driving routes often give the same route as Google Maps for me. Some things are better on Google Maps though, such as live traffic and address lookup, so it depends what you want to use it for.

And supports off-line navigation IIRC.

It does and though it uses a lot of storage, that's a great feature to have.

There are still places in the world where Apple Maps isn't great, but for 90% of people they're now as good for navigation, if not better (since they've built a data gathering operation).

Last year I used Apple Maps for a 34,000 mile road trip. No significant issues.

I've switched to Apple Maps and it's been an improvement. Much better UI on CarPlay (subjective, but I find it to be easier to quickly read/decipher while driving). Still missing the "Yelp" part of Google Maps, there's not as much of a community there.

Woah. That’s quite the road trip! What was it?

Two trips around the US in a camper van; 41 states and about a year. It was amazing.

That's nearly 1.5 times around the globe.

I switched to Apple Maps a couple years ago and was also pleasantly surprised how much it has improved.

In the browser, you can effectively get Apple Maps through DuckDuckGo, as their map service is built on it. There is no meaningful way to get Apple Maps navigation on Android though, and I predict it will stay that way unless Apple decides to turn it into a paid service or changes their stance on selling user data.

The big pain point imo is that apple maps doesn't crawl for local business information as well as google. Many local businesses in LA do not show up on apple maps but have a presence on google maps. I wonder why apple maps engineers don't just crawl google maps and steal this data from them, I'm sure google would do the same.

Most map providers include some fake roads to fingerprint their map and Google probably does something similar for the businesses on Gmaps, so if they scraped the data it would be easy to prove they did it

I think this is mostly that businesses don’t realize there are hundreds of millions of people using Apple Maps. It’s improving; it’s a tiny amount of work for them to get more customers, and they’re learning.

I use the “report an issue” link periodically to fix things.

For integrity, I wish Apple Maps available on web.

I've used Apple Maps for a while now and haven't noticed any real difference in from when I used to use Google Maps. So for me: Google Maps and Apple Maps are utterly interchangeable.

Same here - Apple Maps in New Zealand works just fine.

When that's the case Apple Maps would be a better choice as it doesn't try to suck all your privacy into its ad ecosystem.

My issue is it lacks a lot of local businesses. No point in using it if I have to go to google to find the business address anyhow.

Yup that's also the issue for me. If I know where I'm going (just not how) it's not a problem. If I'm not sure where I'm going (like trying to find a place for the first time) it can be a problem.

This is the one difference I see too - if it’s a place I know I’ll just go and add them to the map.

HERE WeGo[0] works remarkably well here in the north of Africa, much better than google maps or TomTom.

[0] https://wego.here.com/

Watch out, Here Maps has the Facebook SDK malware embedded in it that will call home to Zuck on every app launch (at least) and send a device fingerprint and persistent identifier.

Reference?

My own testing on iOS by monitoring the network traffic - I don't see why Android would be any different.

Edit: Exodus Privacy also confirms that Facebook malware is indeed present: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.here.ap...

Very unfortunate, since HERE maps allows offline maps.

We need a public registry of apps that embed tracking SDKs.

And iOS needs an outbound firewall, now that it is shipping an App Privacy Report.

> And iOS needs an outbound firewall

This can already easily be added through third-party apps. Would a system-wide firewall be a worthwhile improvement? I suppose it would help to have it enabled by default for users who wouldn’t install a tracker firewall app afterwards.

Is there an iOS 3rd-party app which can provide on-device outbound firewalling across all apps?

Yes, AdGuard seems to do so and IIRC also has customizable block lists. The default includes Safari-only blocking but it is able to add a device-wide filter using Apple's API for VPNs. It seems to identify the various trackers used by the social media apps on my device, for instance.

App store link: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1047223162

GitHub link: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardForiOS

System-wide blocking: https://adguard.com/en/blog/how-to-configure-system-wide-blo...

Thank you!

Looks like system-wide blocking is via DNS, which would leak DNS requests to AdGuard's DNS server? The same could be accomplished with a local PiHole device.

Thanks for the pointer! Unfortunately FB is free on the major mobile operators and thus basically mandatory for communication, so my phone calls "home to Zuck" regularly anyways :/

Does not work on Android Auto, sadly.

And they did a rewrite a short while back and it's not as good. I used to love it, but not so much anymore.

Am hoping for Android Auto support to come to Organic Maps.

It's funny that their representation of Japan is just an empty island with a few highways on it. Does it work better if you're there?

Apple Maps was terrible and Google was ok.

Fast forward a few years and Apple Maps is now ok (not super but definitely usable) and Google Maps tried to kill me a few times by guiding me to go opposite direction into a highway or into buildings or other wrong directions. The data is super inaccurate on Google Maps.

In Apple Maps it at least shows no road instead of generating roads with completely wrong data.

(I live in Turkey, YMMV)

https://organicmaps.app/ for iOS and Android. It's a fork of maps.me codebase. Maps.me added a crypto wallet and removed features.

I have always detested Google and am a longtime Apple user. I use Maps exclusively and like it perfectly well. Occasionally there is an update that makes it a bit dumber but, that always goes away.

It's very difficult imagine the marginal benefit of a different app that would overcome their strong brand commitment to privacy for me.

Not as reliable as those but getting there (and with lifetime updates): https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 and https://pine64.org/pinephone.

I use Apple Maps in Northern New England (Maine, NH, Vermont, Eastern Canada) and it's actually a little better than Google here in my experience. Apple Maps also fully supports no tracking and a better offline mode IMO. If you are on iOS and in a location that Apple supports I'd highly recommend it.

Apple Maps has an offline mode?

I've been using Maps.me, it has great mapping material (OSM) and the navigation is decent. Been using it in the Caribbeans, GMaps and AMaps barely have street names there.

Organic Maps is the open source fork of Maps.me. It's very similar, but better maintained, and has less shady stuff

I like Organic Maps, just hoping for Android auto support.

Are there ANY alternatives to the live traffic data that Google Maps or Waze collect and provide? I know how to get around but I want to make sure that I don't get stuck on the highway. I have been looking for an alternative for many years.

I don't know. I think if something like Organic Maps got a critical mass of people using it and then integrated with Matrix so it could anonymously collect live traffic data and send it out, it would be amazing.

Organic maps seems good, and I did take it for a test navigation drive. Not sure how it is long-term though.

Mapbox, HERE Maps, TomTom, MapQuest etc.

I use here, they are pretty great

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