A product using free and open-source data generated by the OSM community plus crowd sourcing traffic and keeping the code proprietary does not sit well with me. You can have a paid product but open source the project.
It doesn't sit well with anyone familiar with OSM. This doesn't really have a good market fit; people who don't care about these things just use google, anyone that would use this won't use proprietary software, and especially anyone that uses OSM exclusively such as myself.
I run GrapheneOS, and have Magic Earth installed for car navigation.
The reason for that is it's search actually works, it displays live traffic info, and they have a simple easy-to-read privacy policy: https://www.magicearth.com/privacy/
Would it be better open source? Yeah, for sure. However, as far as I can tell, they abide by all the licencing terms for OSM, etc.
I find OsmAnd to be OK in a pinch. I use it a lot abroad with full offline maps (the fee is less than $10 a year, bargain). You're right that search is bad. Often an exact search for a POI doesn't work, and it only shows the "increase radius" option. Generally search is very viewport dependent, which makes sense because there isn't a massive caching/index server managing geo requests. But, for "where am I" when Google refuses to cache anything, it's invaluable and there are nice plugins for tracking/logging trips.
I was in remote NZ without reception and we used it for navigation/routing. It wasn't the most efficient and Google disagreed when we finally got signal back, but it got us to where we wanted to be and the map was up to date enough.
I also run GrapheneOS. Did you have to install Google Play to be able to install and use Magic Earth?
I'm trying to keep my phone as de-Google'd as possible.
That said, the one thing I miss from proprietary Android land is Google Maps so I am very interested in a comparable alternative. I'm trying Organic Maps at the moment, and had played with OsmAnd~ but found it lacking when I tried to use it for real-time navigation while driving.
Do you get many apps that complain about not having Google Play Services installed? Just had one (not Magic Earth). Seems to work fine after I hit "OK" to dismiss its message. I'm assuming it only requires it for auto installing updates.
Google Play Services implements a lot of increasingly vital features and interfaces on Android. Not having it kills a good number of things people consider important, like push notifications (some apps are designed to still send push notifications like Signal, but it's kind of a hack and does drain the battery). If you're looking for almost the same functionality without google play services, MicroG[1] is an open source implementation of Google Play Services and its' associated components. I don't think it works on GrapheneOS unfortunately, but GrapheneOS already sandboxes all the Google Play Services components, so you should be fine as is. "Normal"/stock Android roms aren't set up the same way however, so you pretty much need either Google Play Services or MicroG for push notifications, location services, etc.
You probably know this by now, but it doesn't require any Google Services to be installed in GrapheneOS. I did install through Aurora, but you could just get the apk and install it like that.
Here is a crazy fact... Google Maps doesn't require Play Services to be installed. About once a week it will popup a message about no services installed, but it still functions (other than logging in).
In my experience this goes for most - for me actually 'all' but I don't tend to use much from the Play store - apps which insist on having Google Play services installed. They blatantly tell you to 'Enable Google Play services' because (e.g.) BankID won't work unless you enable Google Play services. Just click outside of the dialogue to make it disappear and use (e.g.) BankID as normal, it just works as it should.
I think this would have been true in the past, but it may be changing. Google are fast degrading their maps UX as part of their maps monetisation efforts, to the point that backlash has even reached normal users. I was listening to a very mainstream commute-time FM radio talkshow yesterday that brought up Google Maps' UX degradation - that's an extremely non-tech audience. I can see a new space growing in the market for people wanting a Google alternative for reasons entirely removed from ethics.
In addition to all of the above, Maps.me has had a pretty ample userbase for a long time now - while it is technically an open-source codebase (to the extent its even been forked & put on FDroid), its privacy policy & general Russian links of the company behind it still leave a lot of red flags for your typical OSM users.
It's not really a matter of "Russian links". Maps.me was sold from its original founders to a payment-processing company that hasn't been developing the app further. That was the reason for the fork of its open-source codebase as Organic Maps, which is very actively developed.
Depends on the region you're in but non-competes vary wildly in enforceability. They mainly survive on the threat of incurring costs of a legal fight rather than likelihood of actual follow through enforcement.
"to a payment processing company". Ok. Now it makes sense. I just launched maps.me on my phone for the first time in more than 2 years I think and I was wondering why it's asking me to log in and also inviting me to use the Maps Wallet? What? A wallet? In a maps app? Haven't uninstalled an app faster in my life.
It's had 3 separate forks over the years: I was mainly basing my comment on the 2 predating the sale as I haven't actually tried Organic Maps (yet) - good to hear its actively developed. I had given up on the other two due to various challenges with the tile hosting. Must give this one a try.
I use it. It works substantially better than other OSM based map apps imo. My big use case for it is I frequently travel places without cell service and like having a mapping app where I can download whole regions worth of maps to use offline.
I'm also using it for navigation in my car; I find the navigation instructions (especially the way your next turn is shown with an arrow inside the map) much more intuitive than Google maps. It also shows any speed limits whenever there are any while Google maps only did this with additional software last time I tried. It's a super useful app for me.
Google maps limits the size of the regions you can download. With Magic Earth, you download entire states. I have several states that I visit regularly pre downloaded so I don't have to worry about downloading specific regions every time I go on a trip to a new area.
I'm on Android so don't think Apple maps is an option.
As for organic maps, I tried it a while ago and it gave me some rather annoying directions. Maybe they've improved their route finding algorithm since then but I'm not feeling motivated to try it again just yet.
I tried osmand when I first switched over and didn't like the quality of directions it gave me. They've possibly gotten better since then but I'm not really feeling motivated to try it again just yet.
> It doesn't sit well with anyone familiar with OSM.
Please speak for yourself :) OSM contributor here: I'm already happy if there's a great mapping product that uses open geo data, might not use it myself if it's closed source but it's better than google keeping everything to itself or behind a paywall. I understand it costs them money to keep their map up to date, but they could also collaborate with the rest of us and have free geo data for all. Apple taking OSM data for their devices, for example, is to me exciting rather than "not sitting well". I'd be ten times as thrilled if they'd open source it, don't get me wrong, but still
I ended up in the winding mountain roads near Saratoga without cell service, and though I had SF downloaded on Google Maps, I hadn't added the rest of the Bay. We decided we wanted to change our destination and realized we wouldn't have any further navigation only after canceling our current trip.
But then I remembered I had Organic Maps tucked away, ready to go, with a highly detailed map of California for offline navigation use.
Big thanks to Organic Maps for making me seem prepared and allowing me to recover gracefully from what could otherwise have been a somewhat annoying situation.
I had the same thing happen to me once while driving in very rural West Virginia on some mountain highway. Google Maps crashed or something and cleared out my route. This place was so desolate that I was concerned I wasn't going to find any gas station nearby to even ask for directions. I had just enough EDGE cell service to make a phone call but couldn't get any app to download data. I called up my friend, gave her my GPS position from a GPS Status app I had recently installed (Google maps wasn't giving me a lat and long), and wrote down the route. I downloaded a map covering the entire route home when I got to my destination and have been doing that ever since for long drives.
I almost miss the days of printing out MapQuest directions
I always keep Organic Maps in reserve. Waze and Google Maps provide better navigation when they're working, but I've had them fail in places lacking mobile data even when I had offline maps downloaded to Google Maps.
Here We Go’s (previously, Nokia Maps) offline support is as good as Organic Maps, and the routing is as good as Google/Apple. It runs on iOS and Android. CarPlay support is good. Haven’t tried android’s car ui.
I use it on my iPhone, but I’m rooting for OSM, long term.
I’d happily pay a bit to a company that put the money towards an open source, privacy preserving OSM app, and towards improving the upstream map data.
I tend to agree with admaiora. And Organic Maps is a cool project. However I shared this post because it's the first OSM based map/routing project I've seen that actually has traffic data. I thought that was interesting. It is disappointing that the traffic info isn't open as well.
Does it have live traffic information? It looks quite polished but for an offline feature set OsmAnd~ has a lot more and is more established. OsmAnd does not (to my knowledge) have any live traffic info.
> It looks quite polished but for an offline feature set OsmAnd~ has a lot more and is more established
OrganicMaps is a fork of Maps.me, which is very well known among the general public: 55k ratings on the Apple Store and 50M downloads on the Play Store for Maps.me vs. 1.8k and 10M for OsmAnd.
Unfortunately a lot of people who use Maps.me/OrganicMaps don’t know that maps come from OSM, whereas with OsmAnd it’s clear right from the name.
The advantage is that it does have a very streamlined UI, so if you just want to get to a map and navigate it's far more straightforward. You really need to spend some time to understand the "quirks" of how to use OsmAnd (a downside of its long feature list).
Unfortunately it does not have live traffic data like the app it is forked from, maps.me.
Hopefully they add it, but there aren’t many good open traffic projects that exist, so they’d need to rely on crowd sourced data like Magic Earth is doing and I’m not sure how well that would work.
$ git log --format='%cs %s' -- data/World.mwm
2023-07-13 [planet] New data from 230710.
2023-06-05 [planet] New data from 230602.
2023-05-08 [planet] New data from 230503.
2023-04-02 [planet] New data from 230329.
2023-03-01 [planet] New data from 230227.
2023-02-13 [planet] New data from 230210.
2023-01-24 [planet] New data from 230121.
While I'd prefer something completely community-driven and open source, the fact that this app is on the OSM wiki suggests the project is generally OK with it.
I was just wishing for a Waze alternative last night, and here it is. It's proprietary and commercial, but it's not from FAANG or a company subject to the Chinese or Russian governments. I'll take that as an improvement.
Being on the wiki does not necessarily indicate "official endorsement". However, as long as the app holds onto the official copyright guidelines (see https://openstreetmap.org/copyright - more or less equivalent to CC-BY-SA), a closed source,commercial app is perfectly fine.
They’re not violating the OSM data license. Why would it “not sit well” with you that they keep their client closed source and try to earn a real living?
>you can have a paid product but open source the project
And you’ll instantly create 10 competitors overnight. If you use the GPL, those competitors will just be Chinese or from some non-western jurisdiction that doesn’t care about GPL enforcement.
Man, rms followers are annoying. Stop trying to GPL the entire internet. Magic Earth is a great tool. A big part of why it’s great is probably because its authors were motivated by profit.
While your main point, that in this case no license or other agreement is being broken and there is no evidence to suggest that the OSM project is unhappy with the situation…
> If you use the GPL, those competitors will just be Chinese or from some non-western jurisdiction that doesn’t care about GPL enforcement.
This is true – some in China will use GPL code and not stick to the license and that may be a competitive advantage over companies that do play ball¹. But other people ignoring the license should not be considered a reason for anyone else not to, and that shouldn't stop people choosing the GPL if that is what they want for their software.
> Man, rms followers are annoying. Stop trying to GPL the entire internet.
Man, anti-GPL people are annoying. Stop trying to have someone else's cake and eat it. :)
--
[1] Onyx and their Boox range² being one example, last I heard the company was trying to play the race card and make it an anti-China-sentiment issue instead of a blatantly-disregarding-a-license-agreement matter.
[2] Not the only issue that puts me off those devices, apparently hidden call home code is present and always active on at least some of them.
Yawn. It's classic FSF attitude, and it's a perfect microcosm of GPLv3's goals of preventing things like locked-down hardware in the scope of a software license. In this case, the commenter I replied to thinks it wrong that users of OSM's data product, which has copyleft clauses in the scope of the data only, should be able to sell a closed-source application using that data. Which is of course not the will of the data product creators (the only people that have a real say in this), and is just annoying rms cult dogma cut and paste. For the record, Magic Earth is far and away the best OSM-based non-big-tech mapping product. It absolutely blows away GPLv3 products like OSMAnd. So yeah, it's annoying hearing people clamoring for its source to be opened, or soft-shaming the authors for trying to earn a real living with their great product that's perfectly inline with the data provider's license.
I think the key thing with OSM is that the data is open.
It would be nice if this app had more open code and it's nice if people contribute back to the data set too.
But the database is the open source artifact here, not the software - as long as they're respecting that then it feels ok, even if more would be desirable.
The displeasure is the the same as that from “not returning the shopping cart;” it isn’t illegal to do so and no one will punish you, but the community as a whole is collectively taken advantage of when you do so.
Terrible analogy. Returning the shopping cart is expected behavior of user as expressed by the grocery store. Expected user behavior as expressed by OSM is that you can use the data as you please, even for profit, and if you alter the data, you need to share that data back. That’s it. YOUR desired behavior for users of OSM’s data (open sourcing any app that uses it) really has no bearing. You aren’t the licensor and you have no say. Why do you feel as though you should get to impose your dogma on OSM’s data product?
> A product using free and open-source data generated by the OSM community plus crowd sourcing traffic and keeping the code proprietary does not sit well with me.
This is already common. For example, Komoot which is now big in the bicycle-travel world, uses OSM data but keeps its code proprietary and even locks community-generated content down.
If the developers are around, I would like to ask a simple question : Does this app only use realtime data for calculating ETA and routes, or does it learn some statistical regularities in the traffic patterns to make predictions ?
I'm asking because this is the main weakness of all similar apps that I know of, they always give you an estimation using only the current state of traffic on the whole journey, so if you are going towards a busy city at peak traffic time it may add one or two hours to the ETA even if you are still 5 hours away and everything will be gone by the time you get there. Obviously the reverse situation is even more annoying, I live in the Paris area, and when I leave home around 4pm and ask google maps an itinerary, it may tell me I'm only 30 minutes away, but 15 minutes later shit hits the fan and I end up an hour late on my schedule.
Obviously after a while you start learning the traffic patterns and plan accordingly, which is okay I guess, but we're in 2023, how can google not be up to the task of correctly predicting a traffic spike when it's regular on a daily or weekly basis ? Is that just too much data / compute for them ? If anybody has a clue, I'm curious.
However it appears to underestimate traffic delays for DC->OBX beach traffic. On a summer Saturday morning, that’s a 6-7 hour drive. Or worse. Apple Maps has it closer to 5-5:30 for most of the day. Google gives a range from 4:45-6:30 - 4:45 is basically impossible any time of day and year but 6:30 is ballpark-ish if you don’t hit a major traffic jam.
Here We Go is frighteningly accurate for SF bay area traffic predictions. (E.g., within 2 minutes, driving between south bay and north San Francisco, with traffic). It must be using statistical models to predict future traffic.
It is often pre-loaded on European car console units so you may be using it without realizing it. It’s free for iOS and Android, and works offline (offline support is the killer feature for me).
How long have you used Here WeGo? It used to be my primary maps application but a couple years back they updated it and broke everything (offline address search stopped working, no route choices anymore, I think they removed the TTS options which made the voice directions much harder to follow, etc).
The reviews for the app tanked after that disaster and practically all of them mentioned the update as the pain point, do you know if they ever recovered a semblance of what it used to be? Maybe I'll have to check it out again, I've been using Magic Earth ever since then and it's pretty solid but there are a few minor things I still miss.
Well that's also what I used to believe, kinda makes sense. But drawing from my own anecdotal experience I had to conclude that's not the case. Maybe I'm wrong, and it's just VERY bad at it, or it doesn't work where I live.
Well you can set a departure time and it gives "Typically ..." so it must have some information like that. And their Waze gives a graph of journey times by time of departure.
I wonder how many users you need in a given metro area to get resonable accuracy? Probably not that many, but seems like a tricky problem to boot strap.
Is the point to be an non-google alternative to Google Maps on Android? (On iOS as well of course, but there I guess you have almost no option but to trust Apple, and can use Apple Maps).
Little bit weird that the App Store listing says they are not collecting any data when they have this crowd sourcing of data?
EDIT: Probably not the same: This seems to be the company behind it https://www.magiclane.com/web/about/ if you sleuth round a bit. Then the pricing model of free makes more sense at least.
EDIT2: Or maybe not at all, the street addresses don't match up. Enough playing internet detective for this coffee break, back to work.
>Team
>
>We are a team of 46 – young yet experienced. The founders of Magic Lane also build the very first route planner which ran on the Mac and PC in the 1990, formerly known as Route 66. Route 66 was also the first to release navigation solutions for Nokia, Samsung and HTC mobile phones. With over 30 years of experience in the Maps, Location & Navigation industry, the founders decided a few years ago to rebuild the entire software from scratch. The aim was to do this without compromise, with privacy and three other basic principles in mind: the platform must operate on minimal hardware, be fully functional offline, and be easy to integrate. The development project was carried out under the name General Magic, with the navigation app Magic Earth as a testing ground for Android and iOS
Off-topic question from non-native English speaker, on the website is present this phrase; "We agree that the worst person to be stuck in traffic, is you.", I instinctively read it as them calling me the worst person, which is clearly not the case, and I understand what they mean, but I still feel like this phrasing is off...
One would argue that there is no such thing as being stuck in traffic. You are the traffic and thus part of the problem. So it is not that badly phrased. ;-)
Non native too, but I think "The last person you want to be stuck in traffic, is you" is a better phrasing here. It avoids accidentally calling your customers the worst anyways.
Thanks for the link to this app. I had not heard of this one and normally don't use navigation apps because I don't like distractions while I'm driving. I do run into situations where it would be great to have current traffic information so that I can avoid getting caught up in someone else's malfunction though. I usually ask a passenger to check traffic if it looks dicey down the road or just wing it if I'm driving alone.
I read through each of the pages and found the website to be easy to navigate and found descriptions of features to be pretty good. I did find a couple things on one page that I think could be clarified. Both are on the "AI Dashcam" page.
The text in one of the subheadings should be changed since there is a pretty common grammar error in one sentence.
Under the subheading "Forward Collision Warning" where the sentence reads - "When a vehicle that is driving in front of you breaks abruptly, a quick response may be required."
Change "breaks" to "brakes" and I think it makes more sense. English homonyms got you there. It's very common to see breaks used when the writer means brakes.
The other thing on this page is just something that reads funny to me.
Under the subheading "Advanced Driver Assistance notifications on Apple Watch." there is a sentence that really puts the whole app situation in context.
The second sentence is great - "First, install Magic Earth for Apple Watch and add a Magic Earth complication to your Watch face. "
I wonder whether "complication" should have been "application" or whether the developers actually see this app on an Apple Watch as a complication like I do.
Pretty funny stuff.
I sent a link to one of my kids who is currently traveling to see what they say about it. They are in the US and from other comments the app may not be available here on iOS today but they will check it out when it is available.
To be more specific, in traditional watch making, a complication is the display of a calculation - the traditional clock is a complication, the date display is another complication, a chronometer is another complication, the displayed phase of moon is another complication, an additional time indicator for a different zone is another complication, etc...
That makes perfect sense now. Each additional feature complicates the original design and adds to the complexity of the finished product. Each complication requires a level higher skill set for the maker. I had never dug into watch or clock making but I see how the term fits the situation for this app.
Shameless, but related, plug for NUNAV (I work for the company behind it, but not on this product): If you are located in Europe you might like to try NUNAV Navigation as well, which uses a collaborative routing based approach to distribute traffic.
Mild expression of curiosity, since I'm not sure if this'll be useful for me (I'm in AU): this is listed as "requires Android 6+", yet shows "Does not work on your device" for every single device listed, including my main phone which definitely isn't that old. But it's not showing "not available in your country".
Somewhat off-topic but why oh why do nearly all app developers who have things on both Android as well as iOS insist on using an iPhone to show their app and also insist on saying the app is available 'on iOS and Android' instead of ordering these alphabetically? Does Apple give some incentive to do so or some punishment if it is done the other way around? This is a free app on both Android as well as iOS, it targets those who know what OSM is and as such feels like more of a fit for those running AOSP-derived distributions than closed-source walled-garden iOS yet still they advertise Apple-first. I realise that Apple is bigger than Android in the USA but the world is so much bigger than the USA and Android is so much bigger than Apple in most other locations. Android devices also offer more opportunities to show off the product with their bigger screens and less prominent or absent notches, so much so that seeing the Android version next to the iOS one - they show one Android device on the bottom of the screen, hidden behind an iPhone - makes the iOS version seem rather cramped and cluttered.
I can understand this when they're specifically advertising to the paying iOS crowd but it just seems out of place elsewhere.
No one likes to sit in traffic, but I do wonder if such tools don't create too many additional problems, by increased traffic on minor roads [1]. Suddenly small roads, have heavy traffic, because it's 1-2min faster. Leading to more road wear, circumventing road hierarchy etc.
two things come to my mind:
- use a capacity / slot based model to avoid heavy traffic on small roads
- work together with cities / police etc. to define traffic strategies especially for events.
I emailed them last week to ask about that and they said it’s currently only available in Europe, but they’d hope to have it released in the Americas this week if all goes well. This is on iOS.
Did they say why it's not available in the US? I installed it a year or so ago before it was removed from the US app store, which is why I still have it on my phone.
That's the cycle of software. Remember when Google Maps was about the mapping and finding places? Now it's about reviews, photos, online ordering, the menu, price point, and everything else. Less feature filled apps will now move in to replace the void they left. Rinse repeat. (see: every note taking / todo app ever)
