[HN Gopher] In 2023 Organic Maps got its first million users
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In 2023 Organic Maps got its first million users
Author : RicoElectrico
Score : 190 points
Date : 2023-12-23 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (organicmaps.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (organicmaps.app)
| FredPret wrote:
| This app is incredible. Downloadable, offline contour maps with
| driving directions.
| eisa01 wrote:
| I'm a contributor to OpenStreetMap, but what I find very lacking
| is the POI data
|
| It's only updated if there's someone like me in the local area,
| or if it's a tourist destination. But even then it can be sparse
| (eg just visited Merida, Bacalar and Valladolid in Mexico), and
| it's worse in "non-western" countries
|
| Tellingly, Overture Maps that use OSM for the street data to not
| use the POI data.
|
| A lot of people pointed out that the POI data of Overture had
| mediocre quality. While that is true, they do at least have
| coverage in places OSM do not. If you know the name of the place
| you can at least find it
|
| I'm not sure how this can become better, I'd think that a
| prerequisite would be that corporate users like Grab, DiDi, Uber
| start contributing
|
| But that may not happen as they are not allowed to combine
| datasets [1]. Hence you have a chicken and egg problem: The
| dataset is not usable until it is complete...
|
| The street data fundementally have the same problem, but that is
| easier to edit remotely and may be more stable in contrast to
| POIs
|
| So I'm starting to question if it's really worth it to continue
| update POIs in OSM, but I also would not know how to contribute
| to Overture as it does have quite some errors :)
|
| [1] https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/discussions/102
|
| edit: Or maybe it is possible to conflate them, but that is not
| planned - https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/issues/96
| mpol wrote:
| An idea might be to have an "Adopt Your Own Neighbourhood"
| campaign. I don't know if this is seen as wanted in the OSM
| community, it might attract a lot of low-effort contributions
| which might wear out longtime volunteers.
|
| The way I started contributing to OSM is when I was tired of
| seeing old or no POI data and thought "enough is enough". I
| first started editing the shopping mall in my neighbourhood,
| then the schools, and so forth. It is now 5 years later and I
| can quite keep up locally with POI.
| eisa01 wrote:
| Same, 95% of my edits are POI data in the past two years and
| I fixed two of the main shipping streets in my neighborhood
|
| But yeah, not sure how scalable even such a campaign would
| be. I'm the only user I know that use EveryDoor to
| confirm/update POI in a city of 500k people...
|
| You'd probably need at least 1 out of 1000 people globally to
| actively contribute. That's almost 10 million people, quite a
| bit more than the 1 million Organic Maps users and 250k OSM
| contributors in 2022 :)
| matkoniecz wrote:
| local mappers interested in mapping their area are highly
| welcome!
|
| if anyone here is interested and unsure how to start, feel
| free to ask at https://community.openstreetmap.org/ (official
| forum, requires OSM account) or at one of other contact
| channels (
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels ) -
| there is Slack, IRC, Discord and so on.
|
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/ may help but it is sadly
| suboptimal for someone completely new.
|
| If you just click edit you will get tutorial for default in-
| browser editor.
| Rygian wrote:
| > So I'm starting to question if it's really worth it to
| continue update POIs in OSM, but I also would not know how to
| contribute to Overture as it does have quite some errors :)
|
| It's not a chicken-and-egg situation. Here, the egg is clearly
| OpenStreetMap data, and the chicken are other maps (such as
| Overture) that benefit from OSM.
|
| Contribute to OSM for better eggs, or contribute to Overture to
| make your chicken look better.
| NewsyHacker wrote:
| In my OSM career, bike-traveling the world, I have added POIs
| in all kinds of unlikely places in the developing world. But a
| real challenge is adding more than just the indication that
| there is, for example, a shop there. It's hard to add a name=
| tag when the shop has not hung up a sign with a name. It's hard
| to add an opening_hours= tag when the shop has not posted
| opening hours, and even if I ask the owners, they might say
| hours are totally fuzzy. Such clear information is largely a
| feature of the developed world.
|
| In some parts of urban Latin America, the challenge in adding
| POIs is that it is ill-advised to slowly, aimlessly walk down
| the street with your phone, because it could get snatched.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"It's hard to add a name= tag when the shop has not hung
| up a sign with a name. It's hard to add an opening_hours= tag
| when the shop has not posted opening hours"_
|
| Even Google Maps has this problem. There's a lot of "great
| noodle shop second on left" type business names in some parts
| of the world. Owners often live above/behind/in the
| shop/restaurant and they open more or less on demand. Hours
| will change seasonally - if there's customers they're open
| and if there isn't they close.
|
| The real trick with POI data is not just the data itself but
| the metadata that tells you how important it is. If you know
| how many people are searching for a place, visiting a place,
| reviewing it etc then you can boost its prominence in map
| rendering and search results, greatly improving UX.
|
| An ideal solution would be for all the travel, mapping apps,
| etc that compete against Google (TripAdvisor, Yelp, Apple
| Maps, Facebook, all the in-car apps, etc) to share some kind
| of global OpenPOI database on top of OSM that aggregates
| reviews, photos, metadata, etc. And also gives owners a
| single source of truth to update their business data, keep it
| updated in real time, and have it disseminated everywhere...
| szszrk wrote:
| What do you think about Street Complete [0][1][2]? I know it
| doesn't let you provide all and any data, but I find it super
| friendly.
|
| It lets you add details to objects that already exist in OSM.
| It looks very polished, has nice map, icons, and this default
| style of sticking to your actual location like some location
| based games for crazy people (I'm a former Ingress player,
| Enlightened FTW).
|
| My neighborhood has all details about building size, roofs,
| street lights, you know if there are markings on the ground on
| street crossings (for people with poor vision), each path has
| clear info of what's it's made of, and stores has open/close
| hours provided. Super cool, easy to use and has real impact.
|
| [0] https://streetcomplete.app/ [1]
| https://f-droid.org/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/ [2]
| https://play.google.com/store/search?q=street%20complete&c=a...
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > I know it doesn't let you provide all and any data, but I
| find it super friendly.
|
| But shops can be added (using shop overlay).
|
| (I am one of people developing StreetComplete)
| NewsyHacker wrote:
| StreetComplete is great for newbies, especially those that
| need the gamification approach to be more motivated. But if
| you are already an experienced OSM editor, you likely have
| developed muscle-memory in Vespucci or EveryDoor that lets
| you quickly add additional tags while barely looking at the
| screen.
|
| Also, as I mentioned in my other post, adding POIs and
| additional tags in some regions' urban areas is difficult
| because you don't want to walk around with your phone out.
| And the USA makes it challenging to add and update POIs
| because you often can't just walk down a street, the sprawl
| sets everything too far apart for that. The existing mobile
| editing apps, alas, cannot make up for political failures.
| dn3500 wrote:
| I live in Merida. The POI data on Open Streetmap is pretty bad.
| I've been updating it on OSM but my changes never seem to make
| it to Organic Maps.
| stereo wrote:
| I was in Merida a year ago and used OpenStreetMap to get
| around. I thought the quality was quite good! Thank you!
| nelblu wrote:
| They absolutely deserve this! App is light weight and works
| smoothly. Every once in a while I do get into unmarked building
| numbers, to get around that I search location on google maps (in
| browser) and get the coordinates and then plug them into organic
| maps - not a big deal for me.
| bbarnett wrote:
| And yet sadly, is very difficult to use on freeways in North
| America.
|
| While I am thankful for their time, it's as if all the devs don't
| drive. Or don't drive on freeways.
|
| It never announces an exit soon enough to take action, at
| 130km/hr, when you also have to move over 5 lanes.
|
| I've had it announce an exit when I'm beside it, making it
| impossible to take any action.
|
| Well, anyhow, hopefully rough spots like this get ironed out, we
| need a Google competitor.
|
| It's sad, because this one thing keeps so many on google maps.
| eisa01 wrote:
| The devs are quite responsive on GitHub, so you could help
| contribute by opening an issue :)
|
| https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| One of the things I love most about OSM, and has kept me
| contributing to it for 19 years, is that it isn't car-centric
| like the rest of the mapping industry. The world would be
| better with much less reliance on cars and OSM is a small part
| of that.
|
| But if you want to have an open source freeway navigator,
| there's nothing stopping you: Organic Maps and OSM data are
| both open and welcome contributions.
| 4wsn wrote:
| Had the same experience, and ended up being satisfied with
| Magic Earth[1]. I tried more or less every major navigation
| service (paid and "free"), and I ended up sticking with it.
|
| And no, I'm not affiliated in any way; just wanted to share a
| recommendation because I was in the same boat.
|
| [1]https://magicearth.com
| FredPret wrote:
| If you have an iPhone, Apple Maps is amazing for driving.
|
| When in driving mode, the UI simplifies completely, only
| showing you the minimum you need to drive. The spoken
| directions are super clear, telling you things like "skip this
| light and go into that lane and then take a right at the next
| intersection". I let Siri guide me just by voice and it works
| brilliantly, even when navigating spaghetti intersections.
| Animats wrote:
| This sounds like ZaNavi. Is it better, worse, about the same?
| thriftwy wrote:
| "Application that is no longer developed and has been removed
| from PlayStore."
|
| Compared to that, Organic Maps work and is being actively
| developed.
| Animats wrote:
| Ah. I got ZAnavi from F-Droid. It downloads maps directly
| from Open Street Map, so it's not dependent on the app
| developer for data.
|
| I tend to prefer apps that don't get "updated". Too often,
| that means adding ads, begging, or tracking. The "Simple"
| series of Android apps went down that hole.
| thriftwy wrote:
| What do you mean by "downloading maps directly from OSM"?
| OSM is a database.
|
| If it is downloading rasterized images from the web site,
| then the difference is that Organic Maps is a vector
| mapping app.
| Animats wrote:
| I think it's using downloads from
| https://download.geofabrik.de/ That extracts regions from
| Open Street Map and packages them as files.
| thriftwy wrote:
| What if their format changes? The app will no longer
| work.
| sahkopoyta wrote:
| It is fairly standard source for OSM data afaik. Organic
| Maps uses it as well at least for some cases.
| davelondon wrote:
| I'd love to start recommending my friends use Organic Maps over
| Maps.me, but it's missing one critical feature:
|
| https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/622
|
| https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/1694
|
| ... right now your bookmarks aren't synchronised anywhere so if
| you lose your phone all your bookmarks are gone.
|
| When that's working I'll change over in a second!
| neilv wrote:
| As comments in the first link suggest, the project emphasizes
| privacy, and it would have to be done in a privacy-respecting
| way.
|
| The second link is asking for iCloud synchronization.
|
| A project that emphasizes privacy and open platforms might want
| to just deprioritize requests coming from people on privacy-
| violating, closed platforms, since those people hurt their own
| credibility in the approaches they suggest.
| googlryas wrote:
| Can't you just sync some encrypted blob to iCloud? How is
| iCloud privacy violating?
| hedora wrote:
| From reading the bug, they don't support iCloud backup,
| which is surprising to me, since I thought supporting
| backup was trivial on iOS.
|
| As the bug points out, they could use core data sync for
| people that are navigating using multiple devices.
|
| I believe all of the above supports transparent E2E
| encryption at this point.
|
| (For backup, there is a toggle, since E2E makes your backup
| useless if you lose the only device that contains your
| keys, and many people only have one apple device, and don't
| want to bother enlisting their friends to secret-share
| their recovery key).
| dash2 wrote:
| If privacy advocates want to persuade people outside their
| bubble, this is surely not the right attitude. Imagine
| telling someone who wants iCloud sync, "oh you're hurting
| your own credibility"? Uh yeah (backing off slowly), guess
| I'll go back to Apple/Google maps and miss out on the
| ineffable benefit of your non-functional, but deeply
| virtuous, software.
| blowski wrote:
| This is the kind of feedback all such projects get. A million
| "if you just implement this one critical feature...".
|
| It must be really hard to balance giving all those users what
| they want, building quality code, keeping the project focused,
| and having low costs. Is it possible to enable this through
| extensions, or leveraging a product like OpenCloud?
| crooked-v wrote:
| "Save everything to the cloud by default" is a standard piece
| of functionality for mobile apps now, not a small side
| feature.
| spookie wrote:
| It's a bit much to require an open source project to deal
| with the infrastructure to provide that, don't you think?
|
| All reasonable solutions would require the user to have
| done their part in setting up a nextcloud instance or
| something akin to that. And then, as the repo discussed,
| you would still see "oh, the majority don't know that".
| Clent wrote:
| On the iOS side, Apple provides the infrastructure via
| CloudKit.
| nine_k wrote:
| Not requiring any cloud can _also_ be a feature, and an
| important one for an offline-first project.
|
| Saving things to the cloud as an option, or an officially
| blessed way to auto-export data locally for your own backup
| setup, is important though.
| gitinit wrote:
| If I remember correctly, you can export bookmarks to a file,
| though this definitely doesn't replace proper synchronization.
| kilolima wrote:
| You can export placemarks to a file and then use your own tools
| to sync. There's no reason why every single app has to include
| the kitchen sink.
| timeon wrote:
| This. I'm tired of creating accounts. I have my own
| filesystem.
| ninkendo wrote:
| I think Apple solves this pretty well in iOS... there's
| pretty simple iCloud API's apps can use to store basic data
| (also structured data with CKDatabase/etc) which
| automatically just use the user's iCloud account storage
| and implicitly are synced across devices. Apps don't have
| to implement any cloud storage or consensus/etc, they just
| use the platform API's and everything just works. I'd be
| shocked if android/play store didn't have a similar thing.
| skipnup wrote:
| Same thing on Android, e.g., WhatsApp uses Google storage
| automatically for backups.
| pydry wrote:
| I _hate_ the way whatsapp does it specifically because it
| wont let me back up to file.
| dddw wrote:
| Oh it does backup to file, you just have just have to
| backup a very weird and almost hidden folder
| netsharc wrote:
| Huh, on Android or iOS? On Android the backup settings
| page offer a backup to Google Drive, it also says "Your
| messages will also back up to your phone's internal
| storage."...
|
| On my phone the on-device backup can be found in /storage
| /emulated/0/Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Databases
| , and I remember reinstalling WhatsApp, logging in with
| my phone number, and it found the backup and restored the
| messages.
| remram wrote:
| What's your proposed workflow? Hit "export" every time you
| create a bookmark? Add a weekly reminder to export?
|
| If it regularly exported automatically, it could get picked
| up by a syncing app, but otherwise...
| spookie wrote:
| Use Syncthing or KDE Connect to sync a folder with that
| file between devices.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| This is needlessly inconvenient and you know it
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Let's be honest, the average user will not do this. In fact,
| this comment reminds me of the infamous Dropbox one which
| suggested a similar failure of UX.
| pydry wrote:
| Saving a file is not beyond the average user.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I'm not sure about that, Google Maps and many other apps
| these days now autosave such that the average user today
| likely doesn't save anything manually anymore. But even
| still, I have the same question as the sibling above [0],
| what is the proposed workflow for saving such a file?
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38748346
| hdjrbrbn wrote:
| The whole offline first thing is the feature here. Also it is
| open source fix it yourself.
| wredue wrote:
| I expected to find that this was just another VC funded "steal
| users until the inevitable mass enshitification" and I was unable
| to find anything pointing to this.
|
| Colour me surprised. Going to definitely check it out.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| It is actually reverse case: app was open source was developers
| were able to recover it when maps.me started enshitification.
| neilv wrote:
| On GrapheneOS, I switched from OSMAnd~ to Organic Maps, and have
| been mostly happy with it.
|
| Organic Maps user interface could still use a little refinement
| (such as to give an unfamiliar user a sense of what mode they're
| in and how to get out of it). But it's much more approachable for
| basic use cases like "From where I am in the city, I want to get
| to address X."
| brunorsini wrote:
| I've used Guru Maps over the years for the same purpose (eg,
| tracing my path in walks/drives through regions without carrier
| coverage). Curious to see how this compares.
| gst wrote:
| For day to day use I use Apple Maps, but when hiking Organic Maps
| is my absolute favorite. A lot more useful than Apple Maps or
| Google Maps (as it includes routes that are missing in the other
| two) and it allows to add custom tracks which is super useful for
| navigation.
| kilolima wrote:
| Organic Maps is great, especially for planning hikes, but I'd
| be careful about relying on the OSM topos for wilderness
| travel. I got burned pretty hard in the Alps by OSM when a
| trail didn't actually exist. Since then, I like to use Organic
| Maps for a digital "reconnaissance" of OSM points of interest
| and then a country-specific topo map like USGS or IGN for
| backcountry navigation or route finding.
|
| Note: AlpineQuest is a great app for this and is one of the few
| apps that doesn't charge a subscription to access our taxpayer-
| funded maps.
| tomato-sauce wrote:
| I had a similar experience using Organic Maps for hiking. I
| was hiking on a forested hill near an urban center. Both
| Google and Apple Maps only had a couple of the biggest trails
| while organic maps showed an extensive network. This was
| really helpful for exploring but I ended up having to take a
| pretty long detour to get back since the trail I had planned
| to take didn't exist. I also encountered a trail marked on
| the map that had obviously been closed for years and was
| extremely overgrown. I really like the app but I wouldn't
| trust the data for backcountry navigation at all.
| neontomo wrote:
| Totally off topic, but it struck me that it would be funny to try
| to map out the world with thousands (millions?) of Roombas.
| blowski wrote:
| All called "Mrs Danvers". They can swim underwater, climb
| mountains, fly over walls in their quest to map the whole
| world. They connect to each other, become sentient, join forces
| with ChatGPT and launch a land war against humans. This is how
| the world ends, not with a bang but a mild hum.
| neontomo wrote:
| They not only map the world, but clean it... of everything.
| hedora wrote:
| This was one of a short list of things I missed from Android.
|
| How did I miss the iOS version?
|
| Christmas came early this year!
| Sunspark wrote:
| If any Organic Maps developers are reading this, one feature that
| I'd like to see would be the ability to define or upload and
| select a custom colour palette.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Organic Maps is so great. I don't need offline maps as often as I
| used to but I'm very glad to have this app when I do. And thanks
| to the folks for rescuing Maps.Me after that product got
| corrupted.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Organic Maps_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37347447 -
| Sept 2023 (485 comments)
|
| _OrganicMaps is Android and iOS offline maps for travel without
| trackers or ads_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27576882
| - June 2021 (116 comments)
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(page generated 2023-12-23 23:01 UTC)