appledata VS eraser-map

Apple does quite a lot of improvements on OpenStreetMap: https://github.com/osmlab/appledata

And, they also have a data team that contribute to OpenStreetMap!

Apple does contribute to OSM quite a bit, see around 4:00 in https://2020.stateofthemap.org/sessions/SPRQVZ/ for details of corporate contributions: "Apple is currently doing the most work on the map".

Here is the base repository of their contributions on GitHub: https://github.com/osmlab/appledata

And if I see this correctly, the #adt hashtag (for Apple Data Team) contains already +100000 changesets for this year alone: https://osmcha.org/?filters=%7B%22comment%22%3A%5B%7B%22labe...

Apple has an active team editing OpenStreetMap and their maps use OSM data in many countries. I see them making edits in my country regularly (they tag changesets with “#adt” so they’re quite visible). More info on the OSM wiki and their GitHub repo:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Apple

https://github.com/osmlab/appledata/

(Former Mapzen employee here).

I _think_ you're talking about Eraser Map(https://github.com/mapzen/eraser-map) right?

It was awesome! It's the closest I know of to "Google Maps, but open source and based on open data". It was an app built for _end users_, not OSM editors. And it worked pretty darn well. When it didn't, any problems could (at least theoretically) be addressed with improvements to OSM data or the Mapzen open-source projects.

There was a team of at least two people working on it full time, plus lots of work on the design, product, and integration with geocoding, routing, transit etc. The multi-modal (switching from walking to transit to car, etc) transit directions were particularly awesome.

I used it as my daily driver for much of my navigation around NYC, and as time went on only had to fall back to Google Maps maybe 25% of the time, usually for missing POI data.

Unfortunately I think it's one of the few Mapzen projects that hasn't seen new life after the company shut down, and like you said it would take quite a bit of work (read: money) to keep it going. It might be possible with some work to find grant money through a couple organizations. The OSMF has done some awesome work lately with the micro-grants, but this would definitely be a level we haven't seen (yet).