17 ms·

Maps.me is gone, and we must bring it back

548 points by monort 6y ago

zihotki 6y ago
Wow, it looks like the new marketing department is trying very hard to provide people false promises looking at the last comments in the thread which were posted by very new users (bots?). And same pattern repeats on many public web sites where similar news appeared and caused a lot of discussion. It would have been better if they put the effort into the app instead of that.
h4kor 6y ago
Are you planning to build this as an open source project?
- dolmen 6y ago
  MAPS.ME is already Open Source. The issue for maps apps is the cost of hosting the tiling service.
ruhrharry 6y ago
There is already an open source fork at F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/de/packages/com.github.axet.maps/ https://f-droid.org/de/packages/com.github.axet.maps/ Note: This is not new. F-Droid maintains this open source version since serveral years.
- dest 6y ago
  This fork is in a poor state, barely working, needs some love
  - linker3000 6y ago
    Installed OK, but errors-out trying to download the first map :(
  - lucideer 6y ago
    The fork is in a good state codebase-wise but they've had ongoing issues hosting map tiles (hosting a tileserver is an arduous task for a free/voluntary effort). The fork is/was very popular so I can envisage this new effort having similar issues if it starts to get traffic.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      I kind of feel it’s supposed to be set and forget right? I spent a few days setting it all up but it was pretty seamless after.
dan1234 6y ago
> Thankfully, the original Belarusian engineers made the source code free. It is up to the community to pick up development of this app. Let's make sure that the MAPS.ME we know and love stays alive. No link to the source code? > If you like MAPS.ME, then please sign up. I will post updates on how it's going and will send instructions on how to get back the original app. No, how about you give the instructions in the article?
- mkl 6y ago
  Here, I think: https://github.com/mapsme/omim https://github.com/mapsme/omim
- gerardnll 6y ago
  I thought the same... 'Let's make sure the maps we know and love' gets remade by me and you guys come to my version because I won't give the repo code url.
- hoschicz 6y ago
  Sorry, forgot the link, it's updated now. The reason there are no instructions in the article yet is that the app is not published yet. I wanted to quickly inform people like me who woke up to an updated app about what happened and get a way to contact them once it's back up.
fab1an 6y ago
Too bad, maps.me was by far the best maps application for non city use, and ideal for hiking. Commendable initiative to bring it back in its original version! A few examples of why it was so great: Simple, non social bookmarks. As in: place a bookmark so you don't get lost while hiking, or when you find a nice spot you want to come back to later. Yep, a utility feature that doesn't somehow map to some stoopid business OKR in advertising. I am sure this is possible with Google maps or Apple maps somehow, but only after you've created an account, logged in, and made sure you have the equivalent of a South Korean inner city internet connection. Also, easily downloadable maps that just stay on your phone. I am hiking, I don't have internet and need the map on my phone. I know Google Maps allows you to do that but it is tedious unlike maps.me, which is instant.
- woutr_be 6y ago
  Even for city use it was great. I've used it plenty of times when traveling to new places, because quite often I wouldn't know if I would be able to get data on my phone. So it was great being able to download maps up front.
- Ayesh 6y ago
  Most of the hiking maps are simply not even on Google maps. Only in OSM
  - rob74 6y ago
    Not only hiking! Traveling to Ecuador last year was a real eye-opener. For some reason, the maps on our navigation device (TomTom) were badly out of date and incomplete (despite of course downloading the latest update before travelling), fortunately I also had OsmAnd on my phone, it saved us from getting lost multiple times...
  - improbable22 6y ago
    It depends a lot where you go. In places like Nepal OSM is often better than any map you can buy. In the Europe and especially the US, it's not as detailed as the national maps. They usually also have much better contours (drawn from aerial photos not from the space shuttle). But still much better than Google maps, which seems very much for cars (at least outside of cities).
KingOfCoders 6y ago
I moved from maps.me to Osmand after maps.me changed.
xcambar 6y ago
as for the original project, the hard part will be to build incentives to contribute updates to the maps. that’s where I imagine Google’s commercial incentives to be hard to build, but I’m not really versed in the topic, so maybe that’s just an uneducated guess.
- donatzsky 6y ago
  The maps are from OpenStreetMaps, so that's not really a problem. The bigger issues are likely going to the infrastructure for converting from the OSM format to the maps.me vector format, and hosting the download servers.
mkl 6y ago
Mine doesn't seem to have updated yet - no "wallet" that I can see, icons not the new colours, and I can turn 3D buildings on. I just disabled auto-updates for it. I use Maps.me all the time. It has detailed offline maps, with bike paths mapped (where I am, at least).
- HenryBemis 6y ago
  If the source data (world/map data) is untouched (silly example - the trashcan in the corner), then it's the front-end that has changed, aka the app version filters things differently in this new version and gives preference to "setA" data (e.g. banks) vs "setB,C,D" data (e.g. trashcans, burger places, trashcans, benches). Then "all" we have to do is fork the front end and keep it steady (with the assumption that the API is open and it will allow 'foreign' apps accessing their data - for free), or stay on the same non-updating app forever. As a principle I don't update apps, unless I absolutely need to (app nags to update 'or else'). I'm not a dev, but without having to rebuild the universe, I don't see any other solution that does not take massive effort. Also, Ondřej Sojka speaks on the interface. How about the many GB/TB required? Is the new company willing to freely hand out an API that will provide thousands of hits, for free? Are they that generous to pay for the storage, network for someone else's charity? ADDITION: just because I know this area (of the map used) pretty well, if you are ever there, try the "Honest Burger". I hope they survived the COVID shutdown.. they make what I call honest burger (I use this term for everything of a fair price/value)(way before I discovered that place). I especially liked the fries with rosemary. You don't get that often in a burger palce.
fignews 6y ago
Will you also be releasing the iOS version?
vinni2 6y ago
I was hesitant to use maps.me because it was Russian based. Dont know much about the company which bought it.
- globuss 6y ago
  now i dont see the problem with it, there were many unknowns who did unreal things.
niea_11 6y ago
Source code for the mobile app here : https://github.com/mapsme/omim https://github.com/mapsme/omim
curben 6y ago
There is an existing f-droid version of Maps.me [1] and this looks like a separate effort. Despite having access to the source code, map hosting is a non-trivial problem [2]. [1]: https://gitlab.com/axet/omim https://gitlab.com/axet/omim [2]: https://gitlab.com/axet/omim/-/issues/176 https://gitlab.com/axet/omim/-/issues/176
- petre 6y ago
  It becomes trvial if one uses MapTiler or Mapbox with their own styles and overlays. And even self hosting has much improved since the days of raster tiles.
  - thomaszander 6y ago
    > It becomes trvial [] I'm looking forward to you helping solve this problem then as I have the Android app, but can't use due to lack of downloadable maps. I have a couple of places in the offline storage, which still works, but if I go to a new place I can't use the app, downloads never start.
    - petre 6y ago
      For downloadable maps you need vector tiles and a mobile rendering engine like OSMand and other mobile apps use. MapgoxGL maybe, but that one uses their service, I don't know if you can serve local data. You could with a local webserver.
  - lucideer 6y ago
    Self-hosting has improved but is still non-trivial. MapTiler and Mapbox are expensive.
    - vetinari 6y ago
      You can use openmaptiles to create the vector tiles (it is made by the Maptiler guys) and serve the tiles with tileserver-gl (or tileserver-gl-light, if you don't need raster tiles).
pw6hv 6y ago
I do not know if it's available on iOS (I suspect no) but on Android I am a really happy user of Osmand. It uses Openstreetmap as maps provider and I always use it when hiking. It gives you the altitude profile of your route which is very useful.
- red_trumpet 6y ago
  I also use Osmand, though when I compared it to Maps.me, loading a map was significantly slower in Osmand
  - PurpleFoxy 6y ago
    Yeah it was incredibly slow to render the map for me while google maps was flawless
  - ce4 6y ago
    1. Check if GPU rendering is activated. 2. Disable map features like areas, buildings and such 3. If still unhappy, delete the full blown map data and download the road only map data (about ⅓ size of full blown map) 4. eMMC/microSD speed matters a lot, if you put it on an external SD card, make sure to get a high speed IOPS card labeled "A1" (1500) or better "A2" (4000 guaranteed read IOPs). Reason: The map is rendered locally on demand from the map data(base), there's no tiles in the default map view. You basically get almost all of Openstreetmap's data (POIs, buildings, areas, ways and relations), not every poi type is indexed and searchable though. It even have has a working public transport map with routing based on timetables (if present) and ferry ways, etc. If you put the data on a slow external sd card, you'll notice.
- Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
  It is on iOS, though it usually lags the Android version.
  - circularfoyers 6y ago
    I did observe it lagging on Android in the past but some point in the last year (I can't remember exactly when) they improved the performance a lot. Still not perfect but nowhere near as laggy as it was in my experience. Edit: I realised after posting this that you were actually referring to releases not performance.
2Gkashmiri 6y ago
I wish openstreetmap used elevation data for hiking. Say I want to climb to a hill back, it should calculate distance w.r.t elevation. Right now it assumes a straight line be it on a road or up and down a mountain.
- Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
  “OpenStreetMap” is just a dataset. Whether the app/site you’re using to do routing includes elevation in its calculations is up to that site, and plenty do. Even the routing options on openstreetmap.org are third party services.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  OpenStreetMap doesn’t have any official router associated with it. (Note that the basic router on openstreetmap.org is just a tech demo.) Instead, developers are encouraged to come up with their own routers that take whatever features they feel important into account. For example, some routers based on OSM data pull in third-party publicly available elevation datasets. The most commonly used routers for bicycle touring – Brouter and Cycle.travel – certainly take elevation into account and helped me personally out all over the world. Brouter has a hiking mode, though it is still in beta, and perhaps there are hiking-specific elevation-aware routers out there.
  - petre 6y ago
    There's OSRM and a very good commercial routing engine from Graphopper. I believe they also offer the core features as an opensource Java routing server. For cycling it has three separate profiles favouring one route over the other and two profiles for walking and hiking. The commercial version allows multi routing and route optimisation. You give it a fleet of vehicles and a number of POIs for them to visit and it splits the work between vehicles and optimally routes them.
  - 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
    I use osmand so that one is missing features
fireattack 6y ago
The main difference between the two images the author showed seem to be the isometric buildings models. Where do the data for these come from to begin with? I assume these can't be user generated.
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  For "basic" building structures (number of stories, roof type, etc.) there is different effort in the mapping community. For different more complex buildings there are different sources of data. For isntance the city of Berlin published 3D models as part of their OpenData initiative. https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/stadtmodelle/de/digitale_innenstadt/3d/download/index.shtml https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/stadtmodelle/d... In other regions there are data sets from universities or others available. Some limited info also on https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/3D https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/3D
- ljm 6y ago
  The 'updated' image basically replaces all of the old map markers with ones for local businesses like Pret, Eat, etc. The original one shows you tube stations (e.g. Cannon Street) and plenty of other non-commercial points of interest.
petre 6y ago
I use Windy Maps for this purpose. It also allows one to download maps for offline use.
tpmx 6y ago
> They made another Google Maps - clearly, a map that highlights businesses makes more money than a map that is useful Suddenly the recurring removal of more and more details from the Google Maps visual style makes sense. Earlier I thought it was just a case of overzealous minimalism.
totorovirus 6y ago
I smell the typical korean way of doing business... which tries to squeeze quick cash out of something that has much more future value.
lucideer 6y ago
The complete lack of any mention in the article of the long-running F-Droid fork effort is a bit disturbing if I'm honest. If the author had already reached out to @axet to offer to help / become a maintainer I'd imagine it would've been mentioned up top. I'm all for people creating multiple divergent open-source forks of things (diversity is great) but this doesn't seem to be divergent at all. The stated intent is to repeat @axet's work exactly...
- CGamesPlay 6y ago
  Does the F-Droid fork have an app store version? Author did say they used an iPhone.
  - izacus 6y ago
    Since F-Droid is an Android store, it most likely doesn't even exist for iOS. But that's kinda the price you pay there.
  - lucideer 6y ago
    Given the cost & overhead of distributing via Apple, I can't imagine there'd be much incentive for this.
    - mosselman 6y ago
      Could you expand on this please? What costs apart from the $100 or so dev license?
      - AnyTimeTraveler 6y ago
        As far as I know, you actually need a Mac or other Apple computer to push something to the Appstore and even then it's not a fun process. This knowledge is second hand from a friend of mine, whom I had the pleasure of listening to when he was ranting about the process a few years ago. Maybe things have changed since then..?
kissgyorgy 6y ago
There is https://maphub.net/ https://maphub.net/ which offers markers, waypoints, picture uploads and you can choose from different base maps!
betwixthewires 6y ago
Osmand is not good enough?
- yc12340 6y ago
  Maps.me uses it's own map file format and it's own 3D map renderer. It was created in 2014, — OsmAnd used to be quite slow and clumsy back then (not sure how they compare today)
- matkoniecz 6y ago
  Osmand is quite clumsy and has an overloaded interface. And is often even slower than slow maps.me. (I use it, but I see drawbacks)
Markoff 6y ago
Wow, twitter blocks this link and you can't even share it through bit.ly Agree with author, existing map design in Maps.me is by far superior to any other app I've seen and biggest reason I keep using it.
stelios313 6y ago
Man, i did TMB with the help of maps.me..literally a life saver on those mountains! So glad to see this efford
RivieraKid 6y ago
But we have it back - Mapy.cz. It's basically like Maps.me but better across most dimensions. I'm always confused why nobody know about it.
- BoumTAC 6y ago
  can you contribute to OSM like with maps.me ?
  - matkoniecz 6y ago
    Sadly, no. Though there are some other ways to do this (OSM Go!, StreetComplete, Vespucci)
- aiilns 6y ago
  I don't see that it is opensource.
- hoschicz 6y ago
  It’s published under the name Windy Maps globally. Yes, it’s a great app, but there are still no trashcans and no ability to contribute back to OSM.
- bromuro 6y ago
  The maps.me vector maps were better to me because much lighter. I could download a whole country in only 20MB.
- zubers 6y ago
  I don't see to use another if all this is in one program
johannes1234321 6y ago
I once paid for maps.me, when it was a Swiss company before being bought by mail.ru. As it was fast, simple, offline and had no tracking. Mail.ru then decided for a different revenue stream, killed the pay option and added things I don't want, like booking.com ads and travel guides and other things ... Quite sad, since it was a nice and slick tool, where I trusted privacy and faster than osmand or alternatives.
ruph123 6y ago
Is there a reason why all the OSM alternatives on iOS (like maps.me, osmAnd, mapout, etc.) require you to download the more zoomed in maps? I think being able to download is a nice feature but I don't often need it and would like to use an OSM-based alternative to Google Maps and zoom into any city without having to download it first. Like: "Where was that place in Lisbon?" - "Lemme check... oh I have to download the city, one sec..." [Adding another few hundred megabytes that I will not need for a long time]
- hoschicz 6y ago
  Actually, that’s what the „new“ MAPS.ME does - it’s just a wrapper around Mapbox, which is based on OSM and you can use it online.
- RivieraKid 6y ago
  Mapy.cz or WindyMaps don't.
- improbable22 6y ago
  Some of them make downloading more of a hurdle than others, insisting that you download a whole country, or figure out what region you want. On MapOut at least, you zoom in too far & then click the tile you don't have. On a good network there's a little more friction than on (say) google maps, but not so bad. A few MB, never hundreds of MB. (And on a bad to nonexistent network, it's golden to be absolutely sure that it still has what you looked at yesterday.)
- ce4 6y ago
  Osmand's default map is drawn by the offline ondemand renderer, and that requires a download (there's the full blown map data and a road only version with ⅓ the size) There's also the option to enable tile based online maps from a number of predefined providers, if you know the url scheme you can also define a new satellite or traffic tile source from certain known providers (and set opacity) to show those tiles on top of another base map
unicornporn 6y ago
Could you please not use a centralized service like Telegram for organizing OSS. I underand if you can't live with the limitations of IRC. But it's 2020 and we have Matrix. Protocols, not platforms.
BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago
Still works for me ... they just switched payment model from pay one time and enjoy forever to pay every year. Should have allowed old users to enjoy forever IMO ...
qrian 6y ago
The article claims that they are sold to a south korean company “Daegu ltd.”, but I was not able to find any information on this company online. One site even claims that it is an American company[1]. Although I agree that it sounds very much Korean for it is a name of a big city here, it would be nice to see it clarified if needed because there’s already a comment with how greedy korean companies are. [1]: https://mergr.com/daegu-acquisitions https://mergr.com/daegu-acquisitions
- busrf 6y ago
  Yeah the original press release from mail.ru [1] says "Daegu Limited (member of Parity.com Group)". It is not at all clear that this is a Korean company. [1]: https://corp.mail.ru/en/press/releases/10761/ https://corp.mail.ru/en/press/releases/10761/
  - pashky 6y ago
    Looks like a Cyprus registered entity for Russian owned Switzerland headquartered company. No Korea in sight. https://efiling.drcor.mcit.gov.cy/DrcorPublic/SearchResults.aspx?name=%25&number=411958&searchtype=optStartMatch&index=1&lang=EN&tname=%25&sc=1 https://efiling.drcor.mcit.gov.cy/DrcorPublic/SearchResults.... https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/MAIL/mail-ru-group-sells-maps-me/14739415?lang=en https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/MAIL/mail-r...
cdesai 6y ago
I found this press releases [1] on the Maps.me wikipedia page with some details about the sale. [1]: https://corp.mail.ru/en/press/releases/10761/ https://corp.mail.ru/en/press/releases/10761/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rnhmjoj 6y ago
I don't have much simpathy for MapsWithMe: they were illegally using OpenStreetMap data by not providing attribution[2] to the project and never complied. I don't know if intentionally or not, but they didn't make life easy for the maintainer of the libre fork, which looks dead too. [1]: https://github.com/matkoniecz/illegal-use-of-OpenStreetMap/blob/master/MAPS.ME/MAPS.ME.md https://github.com/matkoniecz/illegal-use-of-OpenStreetMap/b... [2]: https://github.com/mapsme/omim/issues/11845 https://github.com/mapsme/omim/issues/11845
- matkoniecz 6y ago
  "they didn't make life easy for the maintainer of the libre fork" They were trying to use servers paid by maps.me in version of app that removed all revenue generators. This part was perfectly understandable, removing ads/tracking/etc is fine - but use your own servers then. But lack of a proper attribution was not acceptable (yes, I am the same matkoniecz).
  - mvexel 6y ago
    The Windy / Mapy apps recommended elsewhere in this thread don't seem to be doing that great of a job on attribution either. A recent draft[0] of OSM attribution guidelines states "attribution after one interaction" as suitable for a mobile app, but these apps require two, and some scrolling. [0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Draft_Attribution_Guideline#Mobile_devices https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Draft_Attribution_Guidel...
    - matkoniecz 6y ago
      Mote that this draft was rejected primarily because due to "attribution after one interaction" part. ODBL ( https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/ https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/ ) that is a license of OSM data - https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright ) has requirement to include attribution reasonably calculated to make any Person that views the map aware that Content was obtained from the OpenStreetMap and that it is available under the ODBL License. Hidden attribution does not fullfill it. "include a notice associated with the Produced Work reasonably calculated to make any Person that uses, views, accesses, interacts with, or is otherwise exposed to the Produced Work aware that Content was obtained from the Database, Derivative Database, or the Database as part of a Collective Database, and that it is available under this License."
smcleod 6y ago
Very sad to see it go, it was great of road trips and walks out in the country where LTE was patchy and would drain your battery. I really wish there were more OpenStreetMaps based iOS apps as competition against Google maps. Apple maps is mostly pretty decent in Australia these days (I actually find it better than Google Maps in Melbourne now) but would love to see more competition - especially open source or at least community driven mapping clients.
0xbadcafebee 6y ago
If any of the new engineers on any of the forks (?) read this, I'd donate my time on automation and server maintenance for the map tiles, if you need help. I'm an SRE so this is my day job.
ChrisLovejoy 6y ago
I loved maps.me, especially when travelling to new countries - best of luck with this
abrowne 6y ago
The newsletter they linked to¹ has an atom feed² if, like me, you want to follow this but don't use Telegram or want emails. 1: https://mapsme.substack.com/ https://mapsme.substack.com/ 2: https://mapsme.substack.com/feed https://mapsme.substack.com/feed
ethhics 6y ago
This news surprises me, as I was just preparing a route in the (iPhone) app. Seems like it hasn’t been updated for me yet. I haven’t used maps.me much, but generally it’s been a good experience. Other than being told multiple times to make a right turn to keep going straight on a highway, it’s been nice having directions and search that is entirely client-side and blazing fast. Using it has made me want to contribute to OSM to improve the quality. To hear that it’s changing owners and becoming more of a product is unfortunate.
mariodyss 6y ago
for my opinion program is one of the most spectacular, you always can find new roads foe walking or playgrounds for my children
zubers 6y ago
makes it easier to find parking without problems
Rokky26 6y ago
after update i used it as usual. some functions was gone but i think when they fix most errors it will be a great app again
jamil7 6y ago
Very sad to see. Maps.me has been invaluable when through hiking or bike packing. It will be missed. I would love to contribute to an open source version though, will check out the repo. Edit: realised the developers open sourced it.
GodricValley 6y ago
New interface better, like in google
leppr 6y ago
Maps.me is likely going to launch some cryptocurrency/blockchain integration.
miguelrochefort 6y ago
MAPS.ME allowed me and my girlfriend to do a 16-day hike to the Everest Base Camp without a guide. It had more off-road trails than I had ever seen on Google Maps, along with altitude information, lodge reviews, checkpoints, etc. I vividly remember turning my phone on a couple of times a day to look at MAPS.ME before immediately turning it off to save battery (you can't easily charge your phone up there). Except for the camera, I basically haven't used any other app for a whole 16 days. I haven't experienced such digital minimalism in adulthood until and since this trip.
korolyovvergil 6y ago
it takes a little time for everything to return to normal, I am sure that everything will work out
Adrag88 6y ago
Sad news, Have been using this app for a long time and it was the best app for me.
- globuss 6y ago
  i think that it not the end of maps.me, I believe that new owners can achieve the best results
kepchik 6y ago
maps.me became better for me, always helps me with searching the streets in my new city
kepchik 6y ago
thanks to this product I found a lot interesting place for photo
Lalaland25 6y ago
maps.me it will come back, fix all the errors and everything will be as before, perhaps even better than it was
laundrao 6y ago
maps me is better for me, because using is very easy and comfortable!
Fitch89 6y ago
maps.me it won't just go away,everything is just ahead.I hope so,as I have been using the app for a long time
Wormsstill 6y ago
Let's wait until the new owners of the app fix the flaws and find new features for their app
donsi 6y ago
in my country there has never been such an application as maps.me where all roads really converge
crishi7 6y ago
I'm writing from Spain. I believe in maps.me!
skaterr 6y ago
for me maps.me is a big chance to open new places in my city
roslinu 6y ago
very simple app. Everything you need is available and in a convenient location
Wormsstill 6y ago
everything will be fine with maps.me.They try to add something new and they do it!
ROvini 6y ago
I didn't feel any problems at all,as everything was fine, so everything remained
volyt 6y ago
quick search for places in the maps.me
stevense 6y ago
always finds what you need, shows you the right way
kratiany 6y ago
a simple program to find the right places by city and country

548 points by monort 6y ago

Wow, it looks like the new marketing department is trying very hard to provide people false promises looking at the last comments in the thread which were posted by very new users (bots?). And same pattern repeats on many public web sites where similar news appeared and caused a lot of discussion. It would have been better if they put the effort into the app instead of that.

h4kor 6y ago

Are you planning to build this as an open source project?

dolmen 6y ago
MAPS.ME is already Open Source. The issue for maps apps is the cost of hosting the tiling service.

ruhrharry 6y ago

There is already an open source fork at F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/de/packages/com.github.axet.maps/ https://f-droid.org/de/packages/com.github.axet.maps/ Note: This is not new. F-Droid maintains this open source version since serveral years.

dest 6y ago
This fork is in a poor state, barely working, needs some love
- linker3000 6y ago
  Installed OK, but errors-out trying to download the first map :(
- lucideer 6y ago
  The fork is in a good state codebase-wise but they've had ongoing issues hosting map tiles (hosting a tileserver is an arduous task for a free/voluntary effort). The fork is/was very popular so I can envisage this new effort having similar issues if it starts to get traffic.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    I kind of feel it’s supposed to be set and forget right? I spent a few days setting it all up but it was pretty seamless after.

dan1234 6y ago

> Thankfully, the original Belarusian engineers made the source code free. It is up to the community to pick up development of this app. Let's make sure that the MAPS.ME we know and love stays alive. No link to the source code? > If you like MAPS.ME, then please sign up. I will post updates on how it's going and will send instructions on how to get back the original app. No, how about you give the instructions in the article?

mkl 6y ago
Here, I think: https://github.com/mapsme/omim https://github.com/mapsme/omim
gerardnll 6y ago
I thought the same... 'Let's make sure the maps we know and love' gets remade by me and you guys come to my version because I won't give the repo code url.
hoschicz 6y ago
Sorry, forgot the link, it's updated now. The reason there are no instructions in the article yet is that the app is not published yet. I wanted to quickly inform people like me who woke up to an updated app about what happened and get a way to contact them once it's back up.

fab1an 6y ago

Too bad, maps.me was by far the best maps application for non city use, and ideal for hiking. Commendable initiative to bring it back in its original version! A few examples of why it was so great: Simple, non social bookmarks. As in: place a bookmark so you don't get lost while hiking, or when you find a nice spot you want to come back to later. Yep, a utility feature that doesn't somehow map to some stoopid business OKR in advertising. I am sure this is possible with Google maps or Apple maps somehow, but only after you've created an account, logged in, and made sure you have the equivalent of a South Korean inner city internet connection. Also, easily downloadable maps that just stay on your phone. I am hiking, I don't have internet and need the map on my phone. I know Google Maps allows you to do that but it is tedious unlike maps.me, which is instant.

woutr_be 6y ago
Even for city use it was great. I've used it plenty of times when traveling to new places, because quite often I wouldn't know if I would be able to get data on my phone. So it was great being able to download maps up front.
Ayesh 6y ago
Most of the hiking maps are simply not even on Google maps. Only in OSM
- rob74 6y ago
  Not only hiking! Traveling to Ecuador last year was a real eye-opener. For some reason, the maps on our navigation device (TomTom) were badly out of date and incomplete (despite of course downloading the latest update before travelling), fortunately I also had OsmAnd on my phone, it saved us from getting lost multiple times...
- improbable22 6y ago
  It depends a lot where you go. In places like Nepal OSM is often better than any map you can buy. In the Europe and especially the US, it's not as detailed as the national maps. They usually also have much better contours (drawn from aerial photos not from the space shuttle). But still much better than Google maps, which seems very much for cars (at least outside of cities).

KingOfCoders 6y ago

I moved from maps.me to Osmand after maps.me changed.

xcambar 6y ago

as for the original project, the hard part will be to build incentives to contribute updates to the maps. that’s where I imagine Google’s commercial incentives to be hard to build, but I’m not really versed in the topic, so maybe that’s just an uneducated guess.

donatzsky 6y ago
The maps are from OpenStreetMaps, so that's not really a problem. The bigger issues are likely going to the infrastructure for converting from the OSM format to the maps.me vector format, and hosting the download servers.

mkl 6y ago

Mine doesn't seem to have updated yet - no "wallet" that I can see, icons not the new colours, and I can turn 3D buildings on. I just disabled auto-updates for it. I use Maps.me all the time. It has detailed offline maps, with bike paths mapped (where I am, at least).

HenryBemis 6y ago
If the source data (world/map data) is untouched (silly example - the trashcan in the corner), then it's the front-end that has changed, aka the app version filters things differently in this new version and gives preference to "setA" data (e.g. banks) vs "setB,C,D" data (e.g. trashcans, burger places, trashcans, benches). Then "all" we have to do is fork the front end and keep it steady (with the assumption that the API is open and it will allow 'foreign' apps accessing their data - for free), or stay on the same non-updating app forever. As a principle I don't update apps, unless I absolutely need to (app nags to update 'or else'). I'm not a dev, but without having to rebuild the universe, I don't see any other solution that does not take massive effort. Also, Ondřej Sojka speaks on the interface. How about the many GB/TB required? Is the new company willing to freely hand out an API that will provide thousands of hits, for free? Are they that generous to pay for the storage, network for someone else's charity? ADDITION: just because I know this area (of the map used) pretty well, if you are ever there, try the "Honest Burger". I hope they survived the COVID shutdown.. they make what I call honest burger (I use this term for everything of a fair price/value)(way before I discovered that place). I especially liked the fries with rosemary. You don't get that often in a burger palce.

fignews 6y ago

Will you also be releasing the iOS version?

vinni2 6y ago

I was hesitant to use maps.me because it was Russian based. Dont know much about the company which bought it.

globuss 6y ago
now i dont see the problem with it, there were many unknowns who did unreal things.

niea_11 6y ago

Source code for the mobile app here : https://github.com/mapsme/omim https://github.com/mapsme/omim

curben 6y ago

There is an existing f-droid version of Maps.me [1] and this looks like a separate effort. Despite having access to the source code, map hosting is a non-trivial problem [2]. [1]: https://gitlab.com/axet/omim https://gitlab.com/axet/omim [2]: https://gitlab.com/axet/omim/-/issues/176 https://gitlab.com/axet/omim/-/issues/176

petre 6y ago
It becomes trvial if one uses MapTiler or Mapbox with their own styles and overlays. And even self hosting has much improved since the days of raster tiles.
- thomaszander 6y ago
  > It becomes trvial [] I'm looking forward to you helping solve this problem then as I have the Android app, but can't use due to lack of downloadable maps. I have a couple of places in the offline storage, which still works, but if I go to a new place I can't use the app, downloads never start.
  - petre 6y ago
    For downloadable maps you need vector tiles and a mobile rendering engine like OSMand and other mobile apps use. MapgoxGL maybe, but that one uses their service, I don't know if you can serve local data. You could with a local webserver.
- lucideer 6y ago
  Self-hosting has improved but is still non-trivial. MapTiler and Mapbox are expensive.
  - vetinari 6y ago
    You can use openmaptiles to create the vector tiles (it is made by the Maptiler guys) and serve the tiles with tileserver-gl (or tileserver-gl-light, if you don't need raster tiles).

pw6hv 6y ago

I do not know if it's available on iOS (I suspect no) but on Android I am a really happy user of Osmand. It uses Openstreetmap as maps provider and I always use it when hiking. It gives you the altitude profile of your route which is very useful.

red_trumpet 6y ago
I also use Osmand, though when I compared it to Maps.me, loading a map was significantly slower in Osmand
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  Yeah it was incredibly slow to render the map for me while google maps was flawless
- ce4 6y ago
  1. Check if GPU rendering is activated. 2. Disable map features like areas, buildings and such 3. If still unhappy, delete the full blown map data and download the road only map data (about ⅓ size of full blown map) 4. eMMC/microSD speed matters a lot, if you put it on an external SD card, make sure to get a high speed IOPS card labeled "A1" (1500) or better "A2" (4000 guaranteed read IOPs). Reason: The map is rendered locally on demand from the map data(base), there's no tiles in the default map view. You basically get almost all of Openstreetmap's data (POIs, buildings, areas, ways and relations), not every poi type is indexed and searchable though. It even have has a working public transport map with routing based on timetables (if present) and ferry ways, etc. If you put the data on a slow external sd card, you'll notice.
Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
It is on iOS, though it usually lags the Android version.
- circularfoyers 6y ago
  I did observe it lagging on Android in the past but some point in the last year (I can't remember exactly when) they improved the performance a lot. Still not perfect but nowhere near as laggy as it was in my experience. Edit: I realised after posting this that you were actually referring to releases not performance.

2Gkashmiri 6y ago

I wish openstreetmap used elevation data for hiking. Say I want to climb to a hill back, it should calculate distance w.r.t elevation. Right now it assumes a straight line be it on a road or up and down a mountain.

Doctor_Fegg 6y ago
“OpenStreetMap” is just a dataset. Whether the app/site you’re using to do routing includes elevation in its calculations is up to that site, and plenty do. Even the routing options on openstreetmap.org are third party services.
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
OpenStreetMap doesn’t have any official router associated with it. (Note that the basic router on openstreetmap.org is just a tech demo.) Instead, developers are encouraged to come up with their own routers that take whatever features they feel important into account. For example, some routers based on OSM data pull in third-party publicly available elevation datasets. The most commonly used routers for bicycle touring – Brouter and Cycle.travel – certainly take elevation into account and helped me personally out all over the world. Brouter has a hiking mode, though it is still in beta, and perhaps there are hiking-specific elevation-aware routers out there.
- petre 6y ago
  There's OSRM and a very good commercial routing engine from Graphopper. I believe they also offer the core features as an opensource Java routing server. For cycling it has three separate profiles favouring one route over the other and two profiles for walking and hiking. The commercial version allows multi routing and route optimisation. You give it a fleet of vehicles and a number of POIs for them to visit and it splits the work between vehicles and optimally routes them.
- 2Gkashmiri 6y ago
  I use osmand so that one is missing features

fireattack 6y ago

The main difference between the two images the author showed seem to be the isometric buildings models. Where do the data for these come from to begin with? I assume these can't be user generated.

johannes1234321 6y ago
For "basic" building structures (number of stories, roof type, etc.) there is different effort in the mapping community. For different more complex buildings there are different sources of data. For isntance the city of Berlin published 3D models as part of their OpenData initiative. https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/stadtmodelle/de/digitale_innenstadt/3d/download/index.shtml https://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/planen/stadtmodelle/d... In other regions there are data sets from universities or others available. Some limited info also on https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/3D https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/3D
ljm 6y ago
The 'updated' image basically replaces all of the old map markers with ones for local businesses like Pret, Eat, etc. The original one shows you tube stations (e.g. Cannon Street) and plenty of other non-commercial points of interest.

petre 6y ago

I use Windy Maps for this purpose. It also allows one to download maps for offline use.

tpmx 6y ago

> They made another Google Maps - clearly, a map that highlights businesses makes more money than a map that is useful Suddenly the recurring removal of more and more details from the Google Maps visual style makes sense. Earlier I thought it was just a case of overzealous minimalism.

totorovirus 6y ago

I smell the typical korean way of doing business... which tries to squeeze quick cash out of something that has much more future value.

lucideer 6y ago

The complete lack of any mention in the article of the long-running F-Droid fork effort is a bit disturbing if I'm honest. If the author had already reached out to @axet to offer to help / become a maintainer I'd imagine it would've been mentioned up top. I'm all for people creating multiple divergent open-source forks of things (diversity is great) but this doesn't seem to be divergent at all. The stated intent is to repeat @axet's work exactly...

CGamesPlay 6y ago
Does the F-Droid fork have an app store version? Author did say they used an iPhone.
- izacus 6y ago
  Since F-Droid is an Android store, it most likely doesn't even exist for iOS. But that's kinda the price you pay there.
- lucideer 6y ago
  Given the cost & overhead of distributing via Apple, I can't imagine there'd be much incentive for this.
  - mosselman 6y ago
    Could you expand on this please? What costs apart from the $100 or so dev license?
    - AnyTimeTraveler 6y ago
      As far as I know, you actually need a Mac or other Apple computer to push something to the Appstore and even then it's not a fun process. This knowledge is second hand from a friend of mine, whom I had the pleasure of listening to when he was ranting about the process a few years ago. Maybe things have changed since then..?

kissgyorgy 6y ago

There is https://maphub.net/ https://maphub.net/ which offers markers, waypoints, picture uploads and you can choose from different base maps!

betwixthewires 6y ago

Osmand is not good enough?

yc12340 6y ago
Maps.me uses it's own map file format and it's own 3D map renderer. It was created in 2014, — OsmAnd used to be quite slow and clumsy back then (not sure how they compare today)
matkoniecz 6y ago
Osmand is quite clumsy and has an overloaded interface. And is often even slower than slow maps.me. (I use it, but I see drawbacks)

Markoff 6y ago

Wow, twitter blocks this link and you can't even share it through bit.ly Agree with author, existing map design in Maps.me is by far superior to any other app I've seen and biggest reason I keep using it.

stelios313 6y ago

Man, i did TMB with the help of maps.me..literally a life saver on those mountains! So glad to see this efford

RivieraKid 6y ago

But we have it back - Mapy.cz. It's basically like Maps.me but better across most dimensions. I'm always confused why nobody know about it.

BoumTAC 6y ago
can you contribute to OSM like with maps.me ?
- matkoniecz 6y ago
  Sadly, no. Though there are some other ways to do this (OSM Go!, StreetComplete, Vespucci)
aiilns 6y ago
I don't see that it is opensource.
hoschicz 6y ago
It’s published under the name Windy Maps globally. Yes, it’s a great app, but there are still no trashcans and no ability to contribute back to OSM.
bromuro 6y ago
The maps.me vector maps were better to me because much lighter. I could download a whole country in only 20MB.
zubers 6y ago
I don't see to use another if all this is in one program

johannes1234321 6y ago

I once paid for maps.me, when it was a Swiss company before being bought by mail.ru. As it was fast, simple, offline and had no tracking. Mail.ru then decided for a different revenue stream, killed the pay option and added things I don't want, like booking.com ads and travel guides and other things ... Quite sad, since it was a nice and slick tool, where I trusted privacy and faster than osmand or alternatives.

ruph123 6y ago

Is there a reason why all the OSM alternatives on iOS (like maps.me, osmAnd, mapout, etc.) require you to download the more zoomed in maps? I think being able to download is a nice feature but I don't often need it and would like to use an OSM-based alternative to Google Maps and zoom into any city without having to download it first. Like: "Where was that place in Lisbon?" - "Lemme check... oh I have to download the city, one sec..." [Adding another few hundred megabytes that I will not need for a long time]

hoschicz 6y ago
Actually, that’s what the „new“ MAPS.ME does - it’s just a wrapper around Mapbox, which is based on OSM and you can use it online.
RivieraKid 6y ago
Mapy.cz or WindyMaps don't.
improbable22 6y ago
Some of them make downloading more of a hurdle than others, insisting that you download a whole country, or figure out what region you want. On MapOut at least, you zoom in too far & then click the tile you don't have. On a good network there's a little more friction than on (say) google maps, but not so bad. A few MB, never hundreds of MB. (And on a bad to nonexistent network, it's golden to be absolutely sure that it still has what you looked at yesterday.)
ce4 6y ago
Osmand's default map is drawn by the offline ondemand renderer, and that requires a download (there's the full blown map data and a road only version with ⅓ the size) There's also the option to enable tile based online maps from a number of predefined providers, if you know the url scheme you can also define a new satellite or traffic tile source from certain known providers (and set opacity) to show those tiles on top of another base map

unicornporn 6y ago

Could you please not use a centralized service like Telegram for organizing OSS. I underand if you can't live with the limitations of IRC. But it's 2020 and we have Matrix. Protocols, not platforms.

BMSmnqXAE4yfe1 6y ago

Still works for me ... they just switched payment model from pay one time and enjoy forever to pay every year. Should have allowed old users to enjoy forever IMO ...

qrian 6y ago

The article claims that they are sold to a south korean company “Daegu ltd.”, but I was not able to find any information on this company online. One site even claims that it is an American company[1]. Although I agree that it sounds very much Korean for it is a name of a big city here, it would be nice to see it clarified if needed because there’s already a comment with how greedy korean companies are. [1]: https://mergr.com/daegu-acquisitions https://mergr.com/daegu-acquisitions

busrf 6y ago
Yeah the original press release from mail.ru [1] says "Daegu Limited (member of Parity.com Group)". It is not at all clear that this is a Korean company. [1]: https://corp.mail.ru/en/press/releases/10761/ https://corp.mail.ru/en/press/releases/10761/
- pashky 6y ago
  Looks like a Cyprus registered entity for Russian owned Switzerland headquartered company. No Korea in sight. https://efiling.drcor.mcit.gov.cy/DrcorPublic/SearchResults.aspx?name=%25&number=411958&searchtype=optStartMatch&index=1&lang=EN&tname=%25&sc=1 https://efiling.drcor.mcit.gov.cy/DrcorPublic/SearchResults.... https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/MAIL/mail-ru-group-sells-maps-me/14739415?lang=en https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/MAIL/mail-r...

cdesai 6y ago

I found this press releases [1] on the Maps.me wikipedia page with some details about the sale. [1]: https://corp.mail.ru/en/press/releases/10761/ https://corp.mail.ru/en/press/releases/10761/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rnhmjoj 6y ago

I don't have much simpathy for MapsWithMe: they were illegally using OpenStreetMap data by not providing attribution[2] to the project and never complied. I don't know if intentionally or not, but they didn't make life easy for the maintainer of the libre fork, which looks dead too. [1]: https://github.com/matkoniecz/illegal-use-of-OpenStreetMap/blob/master/MAPS.ME/MAPS.ME.md https://github.com/matkoniecz/illegal-use-of-OpenStreetMap/b... [2]: https://github.com/mapsme/omim/issues/11845 https://github.com/mapsme/omim/issues/11845

matkoniecz 6y ago
"they didn't make life easy for the maintainer of the libre fork" They were trying to use servers paid by maps.me in version of app that removed all revenue generators. This part was perfectly understandable, removing ads/tracking/etc is fine - but use your own servers then. But lack of a proper attribution was not acceptable (yes, I am the same matkoniecz).
- mvexel 6y ago
  The Windy / Mapy apps recommended elsewhere in this thread don't seem to be doing that great of a job on attribution either. A recent draft[0] of OSM attribution guidelines states "attribution after one interaction" as suitable for a mobile app, but these apps require two, and some scrolling. [0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Draft_Attribution_Guideline#Mobile_devices https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Draft_Attribution_Guidel...
  - matkoniecz 6y ago
    Mote that this draft was rejected primarily because due to "attribution after one interaction" part. ODBL ( https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/ https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/ ) that is a license of OSM data - https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright ) has requirement to include attribution reasonably calculated to make any Person that views the map aware that Content was obtained from the OpenStreetMap and that it is available under the ODBL License. Hidden attribution does not fullfill it. "include a notice associated with the Produced Work reasonably calculated to make any Person that uses, views, accesses, interacts with, or is otherwise exposed to the Produced Work aware that Content was obtained from the Database, Derivative Database, or the Database as part of a Collective Database, and that it is available under this License."

smcleod 6y ago

Very sad to see it go, it was great of road trips and walks out in the country where LTE was patchy and would drain your battery. I really wish there were more OpenStreetMaps based iOS apps as competition against Google maps. Apple maps is mostly pretty decent in Australia these days (I actually find it better than Google Maps in Melbourne now) but would love to see more competition - especially open source or at least community driven mapping clients.

0xbadcafebee 6y ago

If any of the new engineers on any of the forks (?) read this, I'd donate my time on automation and server maintenance for the map tiles, if you need help. I'm an SRE so this is my day job.

ChrisLovejoy 6y ago

I loved maps.me, especially when travelling to new countries - best of luck with this

abrowne 6y ago

The newsletter they linked to¹ has an atom feed² if, like me, you want to follow this but don't use Telegram or want emails. 1: https://mapsme.substack.com/ https://mapsme.substack.com/ 2: https://mapsme.substack.com/feed https://mapsme.substack.com/feed

ethhics 6y ago

This news surprises me, as I was just preparing a route in the (iPhone) app. Seems like it hasn’t been updated for me yet. I haven’t used maps.me much, but generally it’s been a good experience. Other than being told multiple times to make a right turn to keep going straight on a highway, it’s been nice having directions and search that is entirely client-side and blazing fast. Using it has made me want to contribute to OSM to improve the quality. To hear that it’s changing owners and becoming more of a product is unfortunate.

mariodyss 6y ago

for my opinion program is one of the most spectacular, you always can find new roads foe walking or playgrounds for my children

zubers 6y ago

makes it easier to find parking without problems

Rokky26 6y ago

after update i used it as usual. some functions was gone but i think when they fix most errors it will be a great app again

jamil7 6y ago

Very sad to see. Maps.me has been invaluable when through hiking or bike packing. It will be missed. I would love to contribute to an open source version though, will check out the repo. Edit: realised the developers open sourced it.

GodricValley 6y ago

New interface better, like in google

leppr 6y ago

Maps.me is likely going to launch some cryptocurrency/blockchain integration.

miguelrochefort 6y ago

MAPS.ME allowed me and my girlfriend to do a 16-day hike to the Everest Base Camp without a guide. It had more off-road trails than I had ever seen on Google Maps, along with altitude information, lodge reviews, checkpoints, etc. I vividly remember turning my phone on a couple of times a day to look at MAPS.ME before immediately turning it off to save battery (you can't easily charge your phone up there). Except for the camera, I basically haven't used any other app for a whole 16 days. I haven't experienced such digital minimalism in adulthood until and since this trip.

korolyovvergil 6y ago

it takes a little time for everything to return to normal, I am sure that everything will work out

Adrag88 6y ago

Sad news, Have been using this app for a long time and it was the best app for me.

globuss 6y ago
i think that it not the end of maps.me, I believe that new owners can achieve the best results

kepchik 6y ago

maps.me became better for me, always helps me with searching the streets in my new city

kepchik 6y ago

thanks to this product I found a lot interesting place for photo

Lalaland25 6y ago

maps.me it will come back, fix all the errors and everything will be as before, perhaps even better than it was

laundrao 6y ago

maps me is better for me, because using is very easy and comfortable!

Fitch89 6y ago

maps.me it won't just go away,everything is just ahead.I hope so,as I have been using the app for a long time

Wormsstill 6y ago

Let's wait until the new owners of the app fix the flaws and find new features for their app

donsi 6y ago

in my country there has never been such an application as maps.me where all roads really converge

crishi7 6y ago

I'm writing from Spain. I believe in maps.me!

skaterr 6y ago

for me maps.me is a big chance to open new places in my city

roslinu 6y ago

very simple app. Everything you need is available and in a convenient location

Wormsstill 6y ago

everything will be fine with maps.me.They try to add something new and they do it!

ROvini 6y ago

I didn't feel any problems at all,as everything was fine, so everything remained

volyt 6y ago

quick search for places in the maps.me

stevense 6y ago

always finds what you need, shows you the right way

kratiany 6y ago

a simple program to find the right places by city and country