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Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

Organic Maps a great app in many ways, but I still don't get how people can actually use it every day and say it replaces Google Maps when its search feature totally stinks. I know it's a hard problem, but this is the number one thing that needs to somehow be fixed. I can't tell if I'm just too dumb or if FOSS/degoogle fanboys are just pretending. I just know I've tried to use it exclusively many times and always had to give in to Google Maps because the search totally failed.

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I actually think the search feature rocks, because you have high fidelity OSM maps to query. Can't search for drinkable wells in Google Maps!

But then, it of course isn't Google Maps. It is likely to be more out of date and will not understand "natural" search queries as Google does. I believe it just takes some getting used to. There is overlap between the two, each service has its strengths and weaknesses, but also unique features.

+1 That, and it works in mountainous areas like the Alps or Pyrenees, where you're lucky to have GPS and most definitely can't rely on 4G for Google Maps

Sorta. It’s still worse than proprietary solutions: in reality when on wilderness backroads (US and CA) I find myself juggling four apps at a time. CoMaps for course tracking, offline apple or google maps for navigation and satellite, Gia or All Trails for accurate topo and trails (even though I hate having to use it), and an ArcGIS app for information like additional land ownership or historic data. It’s frustrating juggling apps, but the lack of accurate (or sometime any) topo or additional map layers in CoMaps is the most galling. I’ve tried finding springs with OSM but I find i still have to verify on findaspring.org. Would be great to have am OSM based app that did it all, but that seems unrealistic given a) the horrible data accuracy and OSM’s (entirely understandable) unwillingness to pirate and consolidate large proprietary data sets from multiple competitors b) unpaid developer hours needed to create and maintain an accessible user friendly and modern UX that can compete with premier apps.

We the FOSS world just have 100 to 10000 less budget to implement this feature. It's a hard problem, and you can't ignore that lots of other features are missing. E.g. street view or place comments.

I'm working on https://cartes.app and we're well aware that search is not on par, far from it. But we have hundreds of other features and bugs to fix. https://codeberg.org/cartes/web

I guess it depends on how you use Google Maps, but I mainly navigate to addresses, and Comaps works fine for that.

This is more about OSM than Organic Maps, and I agree that looking for businesses it's not great. But looking for mapped features such as toilets, water taps, benches, fountains, etc. is far superior.

80% of OM/CM search issues are just lacking data in OSM

search greatly improved in the past couple years. try it again?

I thought I updated the app before my recent backpacking trip in Europe, but I will give it a try again.

E.g., in the CoMaps fork test builds there is now a change to prioritize nearby places more

https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/pulls/4604

Another CoMaps Search issue:

https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps/issues/4449

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