Comment by carlosjobim
3 days ago
Organic Maps is great for offline navigation, agreed. Also better than the rest for hiking trails. But it doesn't have anywhere near the features of Google Maps.
I wanted to like Apple Maps, but when you are traveling and actually need maps to find your way around, it's unusable. For example visiting some of the top cities in the world, and Apple Maps doesn't have public transport info. Or outdated business information.
HERE maps are unusable on mobile because of whacky two-finger zoom and pan algorithms which seem to be taken from a different decade.
Maybe you could enumerate with more detail exactly how Google Maps is unmatched and what features you need? You haven't said much so far. You also won't really acknowledge negatives of it so I think you are not being very objective. Yes public transport is a good one but only perhaps unmatched by breadth
Citymapper is excellent for public transport.
Google Maps relies on business owners updating details too, often outdated and incorrect. They also doesn't publish a lot of helpful negative reviews
Yes basically you need more than one app for the different things but I prefer that to one single and frankly mediocre app
There's plenty of negatives for Google Maps. None of those are deal-breakers, while the negatives of other apps are deal-breakers.
Negatives of Google Maps:
- Awful graphical interface
- Bad performance
- Ads
- Offline maps could be better implemented
Features where other apps fail, but Google Map works well:
- Unable to zoom or pan map because of janky response. This core feature needs to be right, or the app is unusable.
- No public transport integration. Makes the app unusable if you're on vacation in a different country without your vehicle. Apple Maps fails hard on this. Which is when you are most in need of good maps.
- No routing or bad routing, or routing only for cars and not for bicycles or public transport. Deal breaker for everyday use. Organic Maps has awful routing.
- No business information or outdated business information. For example, Apple Maps will ignore or reject updates which you as a business send to them, using the Apple Business account.
- No or few or outdated photos for businesses. Reviews aren't that reliable, as you mention. But photos will tell you many times what you want to know.
Fair enough. I don't think we are going to agree on much nor convince each other because:
- You want one app that works almost everywhere in the world and UX is paramount to you. Less privacy and mediocrity is fine
- I am happy to use more specific apps that excel at specific functions, and accept some lower performance/UX for the £0 I paid and £0 I paid in giving up my privacy (with the exception of Citymapper - I don't use it myself though. I figure out each city's public transport myself, or talk to staff).
We'll just go around in circles calling out the pluses/negatives of each app
There are absolutely good (enough) alternatives to Google Maps though, I won't budge on that.
edit: I'll also plug newly-discovered Gnome Maps on the desktop. It does walking/cycling/car/public transport routing too, though no idea how well. No satellite though. Also, Comaps has emerged as an Organic Maps fork due to some governance disagreements