Wish i could rely on alternatives like OSM. But every time i try its horrendously bad. Search is near useless. Dont have an exact address? That sucks you won't find anything. Directions are basic, roads that no longer exist are used, and ofc it can't take current traffic into account.

This is all in Seattle, WA so it's not lile its a density problem. I have learning disabilities that specifically make navigation in unfamiliar areas nearly impossible for me. I need my GPS to be reliable, while Google does occasionally do something stupid OSM does it every single time i open the app.

Which is a shame because its way nicer looking and uses less memory/cpu then google maps, stays snappy and has some cool extra features. But i need to be able to search abstract concepts like grocery, restaurant, ramen, hardware store and have it actually find locations. Hell even if i search a specific name like Safeway it usually cant find it. Needing an exact address only makes a map worthless.

[–] unglueclass23@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago

Yeah search is definitely lacking I noticed as well. You need to give a specific address then it finds it. I would guess at least partly it's because they don't track you. Also some apps built on OSM are better than others for this.

I'm also annoyed that countries' borders are not obvious in OSM as the name of the country is not emphasized well enough and the outlines sort of blend together, there's also too many cities displayed. I have found this also to be the case in Cartes and Facilmap

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[–] joostjakob@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

There are many OSM apps, results may vary a lot. For search and adresses, Magic Earth might be your best choice. They also integrate some open data sources to improve address search, and there's some live traffic data. Of course, if the road data is simply wrong, there's little to be done about that. But some fixes are easy enough to do yourself without previous experience, or you can just drop a map Note on OpenStreetMap.org describing the issue and someone will fix it for you. OpenStreetMap in the US doesn't have the same level of detail as in Europe, but it is evolving quickly. So even if it is not perfect now, don't give up on it forever.