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Comment by friend_and_foe | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't sit well with anyone familiar with OSM. This doesn't really have a good market fit; people who don't care about these things just use google, anyone that would use this won't use proprietary software, and especially anyone that uses OSM exclusively such as myself.

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I run GrapheneOS, and have Magic Earth installed for car navigation.

The reason for that is it's search actually works, it displays live traffic info, and they have a simple easy-to-read privacy policy: https://www.magicearth.com/privacy/

Would it be better open source? Yeah, for sure. However, as far as I can tell, they abide by all the licencing terms for OSM, etc.

I find OsmAnd to be OK in a pinch. I use it a lot abroad with full offline maps (the fee is less than $10 a year, bargain). You're right that search is bad. Often an exact search for a POI doesn't work, and it only shows the "increase radius" option. Generally search is very viewport dependent, which makes sense because there isn't a massive caching/index server managing geo requests. But, for "where am I" when Google refuses to cache anything, it's invaluable and there are nice plugins for tracking/logging trips.

I was in remote NZ without reception and we used it for navigation/routing. It wasn't the most efficient and Google disagreed when we finally got signal back, but it got us to where we wanted to be and the map was up to date enough.

I also run GrapheneOS. Did you have to install Google Play to be able to install and use Magic Earth?

I'm trying to keep my phone as de-Google'd as possible.

That said, the one thing I miss from proprietary Android land is Google Maps so I am very interested in a comparable alternative. I'm trying Organic Maps at the moment, and had played with OsmAnd~ but found it lacking when I tried to use it for real-time navigation while driving.

F-Droid → Aurora Store for all your Play Store needs. No login needed.

Thanks!

Do you get many apps that complain about not having Google Play Services installed? Just had one (not Magic Earth). Seems to work fine after I hit "OK" to dismiss its message. I'm assuming it only requires it for auto installing updates.

Google Play Services implements a lot of increasingly vital features and interfaces on Android. Not having it kills a good number of things people consider important, like push notifications (some apps are designed to still send push notifications like Signal, but it's kind of a hack and does drain the battery). If you're looking for almost the same functionality without google play services, MicroG[1] is an open source implementation of Google Play Services and its' associated components. I don't think it works on GrapheneOS unfortunately, but GrapheneOS already sandboxes all the Google Play Services components, so you should be fine as is. "Normal"/stock Android roms aren't set up the same way however, so you pretty much need either Google Play Services or MicroG for push notifications, location services, etc.

[1] - https://microg.org/

I do but ordinarily for services that are not anonymous in the first place. Banking, ride-sharing, so on.

You probably know this by now, but it doesn't require any Google Services to be installed in GrapheneOS. I did install through Aurora, but you could just get the apk and install it like that.

Here is a crazy fact... Google Maps doesn't require Play Services to be installed. About once a week it will popup a message about no services installed, but it still functions (other than logging in).

In my experience this goes for most - for me actually 'all' but I don't tend to use much from the Play store - apps which insist on having Google Play services installed. They blatantly tell you to 'Enable Google Play services' because (e.g.) BankID won't work unless you enable Google Play services. Just click outside of the dialogue to make it disappear and use (e.g.) BankID as normal, it just works as it should.

I think this would have been true in the past, but it may be changing. Google are fast degrading their maps UX as part of their maps monetisation efforts, to the point that backlash has even reached normal users. I was listening to a very mainstream commute-time FM radio talkshow yesterday that brought up Google Maps' UX degradation - that's an extremely non-tech audience. I can see a new space growing in the market for people wanting a Google alternative for reasons entirely removed from ethics.

In addition to all of the above, Maps.me has had a pretty ample userbase for a long time now - while it is technically an open-source codebase (to the extent its even been forked & put on FDroid), its privacy policy & general Russian links of the company behind it still leave a lot of red flags for your typical OSM users.

It's not really a matter of "Russian links". Maps.me was sold from its original founders to a payment-processing company that hasn't been developing the app further. That was the reason for the fork of its open-source codebase as Organic Maps, which is very actively developed.

Also, Organic Maps is run by (some subset of?) original founders.

Interesting case of why developers may prefer open source: company was sold, but code was open to legal reuse under a new brand.

Users may prefer for the same reason.

Surely a non-compete was involved?

It has not happened immediately. Also, AFAIK they were not in USA but somewhere in Europe.

Depends on the region you're in but non-competes vary wildly in enforceability. They mainly survive on the threat of incurring costs of a legal fight rather than likelihood of actual follow through enforcement.

"to a payment processing company". Ok. Now it makes sense. I just launched maps.me on my phone for the first time in more than 2 years I think and I was wondering why it's asking me to log in and also inviting me to use the Maps Wallet? What? A wallet? In a maps app? Haven't uninstalled an app faster in my life.

It's had 3 separate forks over the years: I was mainly basing my comment on the 2 predating the sale as I haven't actually tried Organic Maps (yet) - good to hear its actively developed. I had given up on the other two due to various challenges with the tile hosting. Must give this one a try.

May check Organic Maps? A fork.

I use it. It works substantially better than other OSM based map apps imo. My big use case for it is I frequently travel places without cell service and like having a mapping app where I can download whole regions worth of maps to use offline.

I'm also using it for navigation in my car; I find the navigation instructions (especially the way your next turn is shown with an arrow inside the map) much more intuitive than Google maps. It also shows any speed limits whenever there are any while Google maps only did this with additional software last time I tried. It's a super useful app for me.

Google Maps can download whole regions of maps to use offline.

Google maps limits the size of the regions you can download. With Magic Earth, you download entire states. I have several states that I visit regularly pre downloaded so I don't have to worry about downloading specific regions every time I go on a trip to a new area.

Apple Maps lets you download maps offline, also check out Organic Maps which uses OSM - https://apps.apple.com/au/app/organic-maps-offline-hike-bike...

I'm on Android so don't think Apple maps is an option.

As for organic maps, I tried it a while ago and it gave me some rather annoying directions. Maybe they've improved their route finding algorithm since then but I'm not feeling motivated to try it again just yet.

Apple Maps lets you download maps offline? How?

It's a new thing in iOS 17 - https://9to5mac.com/2023/06/07/ios-17-offline-maps-in-apple-...

Oh maybe it’s iOS 17 only? I’ve got the option there in maps to download any area offline and have the city I’m in downloaded.

I use osmand and have all my maps saved locally.

I tried osmand when I first switched over and didn't like the quality of directions it gave me. They've possibly gotten better since then but I'm not really feeling motivated to try it again just yet.

> It doesn't sit well with anyone familiar with OSM.

Please speak for yourself :) OSM contributor here: I'm already happy if there's a great mapping product that uses open geo data, might not use it myself if it's closed source but it's better than google keeping everything to itself or behind a paywall. I understand it costs them money to keep their map up to date, but they could also collaborate with the rest of us and have free geo data for all. Apple taking OSM data for their devices, for example, is to me exciting rather than "not sitting well". I'd be ten times as thrilled if they'd open source it, don't get me wrong, but still

Yet surprisingly, the majority of the iOS apps that OSM themselves list on their wiki are closed source:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Comparison_of_iOS_applic...

The problem with crowdsourcing data is that you need a crowd, the bigger the better.

> This doesn't really have a good market fit; people who don't care about these things just use google

Counterexample: Mapbox [1]

1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapbox

Which used to be mostly open source until 2020.

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