Comment by dbrgn
2 years ago
Organic Maps is less powerful than OSMAnd (on Android), but it's much more straightforward and easy to use. It's the go-to app I recommend to all casual map users that want offline maps.
2 years ago
Organic Maps is less powerful than OSMAnd (on Android), but it's much more straightforward and easy to use. It's the go-to app I recommend to all casual map users that want offline maps.
Organic maps is also 100% free unlike OSMAnd.
OsmAnd+ installed from FDroid is 100% free AFAIK.
On F-Droid that is OsmAnd~, and it is indeed the free equivalent of OsmAnd+ from Google's app store.
What about iOS?
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I can get OsmAnd~ from FDroid for free.
You can also download map files from the server manually via, e.g., a web browser and get unlimited downloads that way. Don't need to pay for the standard functionality no matter where you downloaded the apk.
OsmAnd is free-as-in-beer if you want it to be, though imo that's not fair to the developers unless you truly can't afford a few euros (which can be, no judgement, especially in countries with lower incomes or high income disparity).
So how do they finance the servers from which you download the sizable map files, if there's no "pay to unlock unlimited downloads" like in OsmAnd?
"Our sponsors - Mythic Beasts ISP provides us two virtual servers with 400 TB/month of free bandwidth to help our users with maps downloads and updates."
On their github README.md.
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Also consider that with Google you have to redownload your area of the map almost constantly since they're online maps, whereas it's only even possible to download a ~100mb map file from OrganicMaps monthly-ish when they release app updates and most people don't update. 100mb per user is nothing.
We pay it out of pocket or from users' donations.
It's less powerful, but also orders of magnitude less bloated and faster. OSMAnd has that quintessential kitchen-sink application feeling where features is the main concern and cohesive design an afterthought.
They rewrote the renderer so OSMAnd speed is tolerable now. There's still no real replacement for it for more advanced use, only alternatives for certain use cases, like Organic Maps.
> only alternatives for certain use cases
Which is fine. I love both, I just use the one that fits the use-case at hand :-)
I have tried OSMAnd a few times but it reminds me of the GIMP. Super powerful but incredibly convoluted UI
In your opinion what is the most important feature missing in organic maps (compared to OSMAnd)?
Importing GPX tracks and displaying it on the map. For my bike trips I do my planning in advance on a computer using brouter or openrouteservice, then import the created file into OSMAnd.
GPX import was already implemented several months ago.
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We were writing about missing the same feature, for the same reason, at the same time. :'-)
OrganicMaps supports this too though?
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For me the biggest missing feature is an easy way to sync bookmarks/saved places.
You can manually export it but it gives me a little stress that one day I'll just lose my phone after not having exported for a while.
At the very minimum it would be great to auto export the file every X days to a specified location so I can auto sync it with syncthing or something.
But a nice setup would also be supporting webdav (nextcloud) to just drop the file there automatically.
This is the related issue but doesn't have too much traction. https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/622
- Good contour lines and hill shading! I live in Switzerland and it's considerably harder to understand the terrain without these features.
- Configurable POIs. In Organic Maps I can show POIs for a few common categories, but many are missing (for example EV charging stations). And I can only show one type of POI at once on the map. In OSMand, I can show POIs for "drinking water, EV charging stations and public bathrooms" at the same time.
- Track recording and especially live tracking (OSMand has a very nice plugin for that, which works with services like Traccar).
- I miss the ability to make Wikivoyage articles (and their associated POIs) available offline, which is really useful when travelling.
- OsmAnd's flags feel more ephemeral, whereas in Organic Maps I'm just adding them as regular bookmarks under "My places", which make them harder to distinguish from bookmarks I want to keep long-term.
- Bus lines and stops are pretty useful if you're taking the bus somewhere unfamiliar.
But those are pretty minor; I've still switched to Organic Maps just because it's so much easier to use (ironically, that probably is because it has fewer features).
Also, I just keep both installed just in case, so I can always fall back to OsmAnd :)
Oh also, OsmAnd's bicycle routes seem better (shorter/prettier routes)? Though I'm not even sure if Organic Maps's directions are for bicycle - the icon looks like a motorcycle, so they might be motorcycle directions.
Android Auto compatibility. Although I think it's a planned feature.
Yeah they're actively working on it. Though apple car play is out and works!
If anyone knows android dev maybe you can checkout one of these smaller issues they're having.
https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues/4096
The ability to import a gpx track, for instance.
GPX import was already implemented several months ago.
Is gpx more powerful than kml? I see that in my lists I have circular paths and other things, so I must have imported it to OrganicMaps
track recording
That's planned, now as we fixed some background location-related issues, nothing is blocking the track recording feature.
For offline use I've been quite happy with Maps.me (also OSM-based) but it sounds like Organic Maps is worth a try.
Just a heads up for context:
"In November 2014, Maps.me was acquired by Mail.Ru Group for 542 million Russian rubles"
"On November 2, 2020, Daegu Limited bought Maps.me for 1.56 Billion Russian rubles. Daegu Limited is announced to be part of Parity.com Group"
"Parity.com Group is privately held and is headquartered in Zug, Switzerland. It was founded by Viktor Mangazeev and Alex Grebnev in 2018. "
https://markets.ft.com/data/announce/detail?dockey=1323-1473...
maps.me got turned into a cryptocurrency scam. It is bad software now, hence the great fork of Organic Maps.
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We have created maps.me, open-sourced it, and then forked it to create Organic Maps.
In case the other messages are not completely clear:
If you like Maps.me, you should move to Organic Maps. It's a fork, just strictly better.
Other people have already written that it's a fork of OrganicMaps by original authors.
I'll just add that for me OrganicMaps is much better than current Maps.me which is getting worse and worse after it was sold to some Korean (or Chinese, don't remember now) company.
The UI is much simpler and in recent months you can really start to see that OrganicMaps is becoming more detailed. I used to check from time to time the difference between Maps.me and OM and and it used to not be much of a difference, but now you have: more POIs (point of interests, like physiotherapist, specific kind of shops, etc.), better rendering of walls, fences, cliffs, embankments, hedges, better rendering of parking places (very recent update!), and more!
Organic Maps comes from the original founders of Maps.me.
OK, Organic Maps looks great. But how the heck do I transfer to it all my bookmarks from Maps.me ?
https://organicmaps.app/news/2021-06-20/to-import-bookmarks-...
Organic Maps is a fork of Maps.me.
Of the original creators.
OSMAnd tracks users using a secret supercookie by default because the developer wants metrics. This is done without consent. The defensiveness of the developer with regards to such unethical tracking means that I will never use any software they ever release.
https://github.com/osmandapp/OsmAnd/issues/15058
Organic Maps does not, and should be supported instead.
I took the time to go through the whole thread. Your tone was pretty aggressive from the start and throughout the whole conversation. On the developer's side yeah, they did minimize the issue at the beginning and then eventually modified how it works to increase privacy (rotating the UUID every 3 months, permitting to disable it anyway, clearly state it in the TOS etc). You are still downloading a tons of data from their infra, and for free, I think it's fair for them to have some sort of control to avoid abuses.
And even if it sounds harsh, their initial suggestion is always valid: use another software, or fork it and maintain your own version. It's GPLv3.
Where does it sound aggressive? I read the whole thread as well and was more astounded that harmless messages were marked as "abusive". Maybe if you read into it he sounds a little pissed > It seems unlikely that this is an accident.
> It appears that this spyware tracking feature was added by @vshcherb (Victor Shcherb) back in 2015 and has been leaking users' data and travel history (via client IP geolocation) to the OSMAnd index server ever since.
but to be honest there was a hidden tracking feature for many years and he only called it by its name and didn't get aggressive in any form.
The original author didn't acknowledge a problem and all his messages were hidden (or are it at least now) to logged out users. This doesn't seem like a healthy discussion, but I disagree that not the reporter, but the other users/developers seem to be aggressive. They deny any problem and don't appear to understand or care to understand the "allegations" brought forward.
He insinuates that this is a feature to track users and acts in this respect in "bad faith", but assuming the worst (it saved a unique identifier and time of use and ips...) which is understandable in this situation.
For everyone reading my reply until now, but didn't read the github thread - the issue is fixed and you can now disable the identifier in the settings.
Thanks for reading, sorry for the rant, have a nice day :)
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> You are still downloading a tons of data from their infra, and for free, I think it's fair for them to have some sort of control to avoid abuses.
I agree with you 100%. The issue of client tracking is completely orthogonal, as a client-generated and client-reported identifier does nothing to avoid these abuses. All it does is allow them to track users of the software.
It's possible to disable it now in the app settings as the last message in the issue states. The app does enable it and telemetry by default without any warning which I think is wrong.