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Comment by Ididntdothis | Hacker News Reader

If they only could provide offline maps like google maps. That feature is fantastic in the desert areas in the west where you have no connectivity. Even the search function works great when offline.

Also search still works better in google maps. Apple Maps doesn’t find the Office Depot near me but one 100 miles away for example.

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It’s sad that technology has actually regressed despite exponential increments in processing power and storage capacity.

It used to be that you could buy a mapping software and install it on your PDA/Pocket PC and it would run fine despite a CPU speed in the megahertz.

Nowadays offline maps is some niche advanced feature despite even low-end devices have enough processing power to come preinstalled with an offline map.

Have you used offline maps in Google Maps? And compared it to the old mapping software you're talking about? It's kind of amazing, and frankly I often don't notice the difference between online and offline.

The maps sync on a regular basis, it's got detailed information about businesses including hours open, and it will route you different ways based on anticipated traffic at that time of day. It's also surprisingly not niche, as the app automatically sets up zones for places you visit frequently; odds are the majority of people use it without even realizing it.

I used that PDA software back in the day, and frankly it was pretty lacking. Route finding never took that much CPU. We moved to the cloud because the benefits of serving the data vastly outweighs the drawbacks for most people.

But google has demonstrated that an offline cache can work great.

What's amazing about it? It just has a local copy of the data. Big deal.

Not true. Search works pretty well offline too. Much better than any other offline mapping app.

My point was that offline isn’t the default, which means most people don’t even know about it or wouldn’t have it enabled for the times they actually need it.

That makes sense. It's well hidden and a little awkward to use.

So it's a local copy of the data and the search algorithm. Again, big deal.

OpenStreetMaps has some good apps with offline support but their search function is usually pretty bad. If they could crack search OpenStreetMaps would be a winner.

Check out MapFactor Navigator. Has a good single-line global offline search feature, usually two search terms (such as street/POI name and city or postal code) suffice. Also very good turn by turn voice navigation, an intuitive touch UI and other things one likes to see in a GPS app. Completely free on Android with OSM offline maps (which they distribute in a heavily compressed but rather complete format). Not affiliated but wouldn't drive out of town without it. You can also buy and use commercial TomTom maps within the same app if preferred. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mapfactor.... There is also an iOS version.

I have had this app for a long time. First on android, then on iOS. From what I see it has a google online search and then search through state, city and street. I can’t just you “Broadway , New York” or “Indian buffet” while offline. Otherwise the app is great.

Well the current Android version (don't know about iOS) _does_ have one-line offline search functionality. Perhaps you just need one or two more search terms.

Check the OSM Scout Server & related apps:

https://github.com/rinigus/osmscout-server

It's a local service running on your device that handled offline data updates (all data packs are generated from SOM data) and then provides various services (routing/tiles/geocoding/advanced PoI search) based on this offline data to navigation apps running on the device.

I really nice concept IMHO, but I'm a bit biased as I'm the author of one of the navigation apps (modRana) that make use of OSM Scout Server if available on the device. :)

There is an app called "Here maps" (free) which lets you download map data for individual states and countries for offline usage.

This is what I use. My argument is that this basic feature should be part of default navigation apps.

The annoying thing is that google maps is still much better :(

We use this when traveling abroad, it's extremely helpful to know exactly how to get from A to B before you buy a local sim card.

Yes it seems kind of comical that a simple offline cache wouldn't be included as an easy to tick off thing to include in this huge undertaking.

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