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Comment by benatkin | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. It should be the default to have a full map of your area downloaded. But no, Google wants everyone to be dependent upon them on a second-to-second level. (Yes I know Google has offline maps and unlike YouTube the offline support is free as in beer, but it’s in an untransparent and a much less powerful manner, and if you’re online it will use the network heavily)

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I was in a chunk of the world where roaming was prohibitive this summer, and Organic Maps took us everywhere, found us incredible viewing spots to photograph from, and basically gave us a real connection to the landscape around us. The UI was slightly confusing, but forgivable, and if I had any money I would give it to them.

> found us incredible viewing spots to photograph from

Curious to hear more about this? Something specific to Organic Maps? I spend a lot of time studying maps when I'm on a trip for this purpose.

Just easy to see on the map, I guess - look for the binoculars!

Depending on where you are, Organic Maps can have far far finer detail, especially when it comes to walking paths. I used this a couple times in Japan and Korea to find my way through densely packed shrine complexes, or over less-traveled hiking paths in the mountains.

I once saw "sneaky entrance" near a temple/park in Bali and we got in for free :)

Thanks for reporting it. I’ve removed it, since personal notes do not belong in the map data.

That's so sad...

Next time don't blab!

It's all data from OpenStreetMap, you know :)

Indeed. And it's a social thing, which makes OrganicMaps a SoLoMo app :)

Absolutely, but the data is not the map, and there are so many average uses of the original data. Organic Maps is so much better than the OSM mobile site, for example, both visually and in providing the appropriate language for the user. And you can contribute useful data back to OSM, so it’s certainly my favourite map application even while I wouldn’t use the original site.

I thought the map data was OSM, and organic maps is navigation software that uses the map data.

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