[euroderf]

This really matters in map apps when you're on the road. Apple Maps is all very nice with transit planning but without a solid net connection it lies there mutely. Organic Maps (and others) that use downloaded OSM data work well with nothing more than GPS. You can get a transit plan (trains & trams & buses, and the transfers among them) without up-to-the-minute arrival info.

[stephbook]

Google and Apple maps have an offline mode. Just select the area you want downloaded and that's that.

[palata]

Have you ever tried Organic Maps or CoMaps?

Last time I tried with Google I could only download a relatively small area, and it would only be available temporarily.

With CoMaps, I can download entire countries and keep them forever. That's pretty different.

[euroderf]

Yes, and Organic Maps and Maps.Me do the same - download entire countries or regions. It is SO tremendously useful when traveling. Have not tried CoMaps yet.

[vrganj]

Maps.me, Organic Maps and CoMaps are all the same family.

Maps.me used to be an open source project, when they took it closed source and tried to commercialize it, the last open source version was forked and is now known as Organic Maps.

Then the Organic Maps maintainer started acting sketchy, introduced a paid partnership with Kayak and generally not behaving in a very community minded way. Organic Maps was forked and the new version is now known as CoMaps.

We'll see how long this one lasts.

[palata]

Yep, that's the beauty of open source: "what do we do if we end up disagreeing with the maintainers?" -> just fork away :-).

[euroderf]

What's the secret sauce for transferring one's own annotations and notes among all these apps ?

[cadamsdotcom]

One imagines there're subtle differences and it's not something worth getting lost in the details of..

I'd see if an LLM can help you get the data, build you a migration tool, and help you migrate it.

[dust-jacket]

You're not wrong, but this feels like an equivalent to range-anxiety in electric cars.

The area you can download is still pretty large - whole cities, big chunks of countryside. I'd put money on the fact its good enough for most people's uses.

[palata]

> I'd put money on the fact its good enough for most people's uses.

I don't know anyone (and I mean exactly zero) who ever used the offline feature of Google Maps. Online is good enough for people who almost always have an Internet connection. What happens when they don't is that they don't have access to the map.

People who care about having offline access (because they live in a place where they don't always have Internet or just because they care) don't bother using the Google offline feature. They use proper offline maps instead. Maybe in parallel to Google Maps: it's possible to have Google Maps and CoMaps.

[inigyou]

I've used it. What happens is the app mostly keeps working as normal during connection dropouts (in between cell towers while travelling) instead of getting stuck loading or displaying an error. It's the exact same experience, not a separate offline experience.

[esseph]

> People who care about having offline access (because they live in a place where they don't always have Internet or just because they care) don't bother using the Google offline feature. They use proper offline maps instead.

Have lived in Alaska. Used offline Google maps. Worked perfectly for years and years.

[dust-jacket]

Really? I'm genuinely surprised.

I've used it plenty for things like driving trip to remote places with poor signal (e.g. where you'll want to be able to get directions back to civilisation) and foreign cities (when you're on a phone contract with bad overseas data prices).

[xtiansimon]

> “Apple Maps … without a solid net connection it lies there mutely.”

Worse, without a net connection you can’t even get the phone to start a route.

[amazingamazing]

Google and apple maps work the same with offline mode.