Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by TFNA 23 days ago
Maps.me got sold to a series of subsequent owners. It was those subsequent owners who enshittified the app, not the original developers mentioned in your quotation. The original developers only later returned to the codebase, because it was freely licensed, and forked it in a different direction.
2 comments
bluebarbet 23 days ago
Why do people inflict this on themselves? OsmAnd has all the features of Organic Maps and CoMaps and MapsMe (in fact three times more features) and in 15 years of using it I have not any of these problems.
link
TFNA 22 days ago
We’re on a nerd forum, so of course some of us love OSMAnd. But the general public finds that app too confusing. I know this firsthand because I’m in a travel subculture where OSMAnd provides a very useful tool that Maps.me/Organic Maps/CoMaps does not, but whenever I recommend OSMAnd people react very badly to the app and get angry at me for directing them to something so unpleasant.
link
bluebarbet 22 days ago
You're right, of course. Whenever I evangelize for OsmAnd, what always surprises me is that nobody has even heard of it. Must be for a reason.

The developers seem a serious bunch, the issue tracker has been actively curated for years (although it's snowed under). They have a subscription business model, which is a bit opaque but seems to be functional. And yet everyone always has the same complaint about the app: terrible UX.

If only the Organic Maps people had contributed their undoubted skills to improving OsmAnd.

link
gedankenstuecke 23 days ago
the original developers of MM then just started to do the same to OM by equally aggressively ask for money :p
link
u8080 23 days ago
>do the same to OM by equally aggressively ask for money

I use OM for a lot of years and never saw any aggressive money ask, could you point me what I am missing?

link
gedankenstuecke 23 days ago
when opening the page for a place, the bottom for me regularly displays the "donation" ask which in good big tech fashion gives you the "ask again later" option.
link
u8080 23 days ago
Is that on iOS? Never saw such thing on android
link
gedankenstuecke 22 days ago
nope, that's on Android, installed via Accrescent
link