For me, Google video search, Google books (Internet Archive is good, but doesn’t always have the same stuff), Adobe InDesign (but in the process of learning LaTeX), and Typewise. As for the Google stuff, I liked Whoogle a lot, but almost all their instances seem to have been blocked or shut down. Also, apologies if this is repeating an earlier post.
Google maps, venmo, and lyft are my last real holdouts.
I tried Osmand~ but it like using your dads Garmin from 2005. The last two have been hard to find good alternatives to. Would be nice if signal payments were in a stable coin instead of a shitcoin.
OsmAnd is a maps app, not a navigation app
Serious question - aren’t maps for navigation? I’ve heard this rhetoric a few times and I just… don’t entirely follow the logic. Like I do to an extent, insofar as Open Street Map data is for information like rivers, buildings, updating cell data (used to do updates here and there in my city.)
But to me all of these maps, and initially starting out, maps are for… navigating?
Idk lol, not judging, mostly just confused at the intention. “We plot out maps! But dare to try and follow it to get where you are going at your own peril.”
Maps are for documenting the location of things in the real world relative to each other. It could be anything, like roads and buildings, or rivers and bodies of water, or electrical lines.
Then there is all the information that is added to all those objects; adding names to the roads, buildings having an addtess and what type of building they are, the direction a river is flowing and how many rivers flow into or out if a lake.
All of that is just information, where an what things are, it doesn’t actually do anything. That is a map.
Navigation software takes the information about the roads and how they are connected together along with their names and combines it with addresses to show you how to get from one address to another.
You could also have software that simulates the ecological effects of rerouting a river from a lake, or damming a river.
You could take data from a map to show you all the power lines that are near trees that will need to be trimmed and give estimates to your employer on how many people to hire for tree trimming, and then combine that with a map of buildings to show how many customers would be without power if a tree branch triggers a circuit to open.
Navigation is just one part of what a map could be used for, and probably one of the only parts that most people would use a map for.
OpenStreetMap started out just being a map of streets, hence the name, but it has grown to be this massive collection of information. Then there is all of tools that decide what to do with the information. OsmAnd is a good tool for simply displaying the data. It can provide navigation but it’s not the best.
Consider a map of all cell towers. Or consider a map of all power substations. Or a map of all dams.
None of those.maps are useful for navigating.
Likewise, good luck using a navigation app (like Google Maps) to produce the above maps. They’re different tools for different jobs.
Uh no. I have been using it for navigation for the past 5 years, probably even longer. It is hit and miss in some areas but it works OK.
Are there good FOSS navigation apps?
organic maps is built on open maps and is FOSS. Takes some getting used to though. The time estimates aren’t accurate (it doesn’t account for traffic) so always add time to the estimate, and you can’t really search for things by name you generally need to input addresses (except for maybe your airport. This also varies based on where you live because folks might be updating it more for you locally).
Basically it’s a solid option but not good enough for me to ditch Apple maps completely (I trust apple slightly more than gmaps but not by a large margin lol).
Is Organic Maps better at navigation than OsmAnd?
Haven’t tried OsmAnd so I can’t answer that. Sorry!
I’ve been using Organic Maps for my navigation. It uses the same OpenStreetMap data, but navigation (as well as searching for e.g. “food” as opposed to a specific place) works flawlessly and routing happens offline.
Seems ok, but seems to struggle w/ long distances. Works better than osmand tho, thanks