Comment by BozeWolf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BozeWolf | Hacker News Reader

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I felt betrayed as well. Just paid €30,- the month or so before because I liked the app and the service, but I also needed more maps. It offered great value to me. If I knew 80% of the employees would be fired, inevitably leading to a degrading service, I would have never done that.

It is weird, but I do not trust the app any more in planning routes either. Sometimes i have the feeling bugs in the planning part already appear. The stability of the service for sure decreased.

Also there are more nag screens about the premium offer (dude I paid for the other great offer already!).

Very unhappy with this. I hope the komooters build an alternative. I’m happy to support them. I know that eventually I might get betrayed again.

For today I planned another route with komoot. If somebody knows an alternative? I like the komoot user photos because it gives an impression of the (gravel) roads. Plus the suggested routes and the planning ux are great. Im stuck with komoot for now.

The article mentions one example: https://wanderer.to/. Haven't used it personally but seems promising (albeit less "social" than something like Strava).

Less "social" would be a feature for me. I just want one that can plan routes, track journeys, and give me directions. I don't want to be worried that I'm accidentally sharing what I'm doing/where I am with the world.

I'll do you one better: I just want the GPS data. I use https://alpinequest.net on android which is a 15 euro one-time purchase and they focus on the app, and that's all. I don't want every activity I do turn into some version of facebook.

Eh, the social features of Komoot were never intrusive to me, and among social features of most apps they were some of the most well designed. Local community, very much focused on actually sharing tracks and trying out other people's routes (and maybe commenting with your experience afterwards).

There was a guy in his 60s regularly doing very nice circular hiking routes of 40 to 60 km in our nearby forests, and apart from that just being kind of awesome and impressive to see when you look at local routes, actually walking his routes was often a very nice experience with diverse landscapes often along nice small, less used paths. It was great seeing nice weather in the morning, and then oftentimes without any pre-planning just walk or bike to the forest and just start along one of this guy's routes within a few minutes, all in an incredibly hassle free manner and with a result which pretty much always beat out just following the official hiking trails shown on signs etc. I don't know if there's another app right now where you can so easily profit from the experience and knowledge of your local community.

I organise an mtb event, always refused to use Komoot, Strava or other apps just to display an XML file on a map.

I have used brouter.de as a GPX editor instead of going on site to the route, and used Umap on OSM.ch to upload a GPX:

https://brouter.de/brouter-web/ http://www.vintagemtb.org/maps https://umap.osm.ch/

One only need a web server to share gpx files really.

Planning routes can be easily done offline with desktop apps. Don't even start with mobile use, I have never seen a web based tool where you could plan a route by tapping on a smartphone screen without pulling your hair out of desperation.

Well, Komoot worked quite well for exactly that use case. I have also only very rarely found tools even in the desktop space that were quite as mature as Komoot for that use case.

Also the question remains, what do you navigate the planned routes / gpx traces? What happens if you notice you want to improvise and replan to hit some target on the way you saw in the distance while on the trail? This was (and currently still is) absolutely trivial and intuitive to do on Komoot. The best alternative I can think of is maybe brouter+ osmand, but that's really quite clunky in comparison with Komoot (similar to the experience you probably mean when talking about pulling your hair out)

Most people doing this on a regular basis do not use komoot on a smartphone anyway as the battery life of a smartphone with gps activated at all time is very short compared to a dedicated bicycle or hiking computer.

I've been using https://bikerouter.de/ to plan my ride and then import the GPX into OsmAnd~. Works quite well. It is possible to host brouter (which is what bikerouter is running) on your own http server.

In OsmAnd~ just remember to fix the track to existing paths, otherwise OsmAnd~ routing engine may have difficulty to guide you. I've never dig into it, but it looks like there can be a small offset between the GPX and Osm map.

I'm really happy with locus maps 3 classic in combination with brouter as a local routing engine with my own routing profile using my preferences.

In combination with downloadable map tiles, I can plan and ride my route completely offline which saves battery and keeps things running in the more rural areas.

The route planner is really nice. I actually plan all my routes in the smartphone and export to gpx if necessary because it's the most comfortable way to do it.

What I also really appreciate is, that it's not a subscription based payment model. So you pay once for downloadable tiles etc. and for the app and can just use it without worrying about updated terms etc.

BUT, and that's a major BUT, the version is deprecated and will be ended soon in favour of the subscription based locus map 4. I don't miss anything in locus map 3 and don't see any benefits. I'll just hope the app will work as long as possible without official support.

Friend of mine wrote this app[0]. It’s iOS-only (I’m not the target demographic, myself, but he works for a company that serves bikers, and is very much a fitness chap). It’s quite mature, and well-maintained. Personally, I know him as an outstanding engineer, so I’m sure it’s well-written. It’s been a labor of love for him, for over a decade.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/app/id605127860

I am quite happy with Wikiloc app. Feature wise it is not that different from Komoot and the yearly subscription which allows me to use it on my watch was only 20 EUR.

I'm quite unhappy with it, in Europe. It defaults to the completely useless apple maps which is unsuitable for outdoors and rural exploration, and its clustering of routes near each other is difficult to distinguish and click on. All trails had nailed this well by showing clustered trails together in a single point and letting you page through them.

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