TomTom iPhone Dock, anyone? (1 Viewer)

[Michael_K_Sr]

Traffic service is working again, so all is well in the world. Looks like people that want to try the traffic service can sign up for a month for three bucks instead of $20 for the year. Maybe that option was there in a prior update and I just didn't notice it. I've only had a few minutes with it, but I am already really digging this update. They made some little UI changes that are quite welcome and overall, the app seems a LOT faster, both in routing and moving around menus.

 

[Sam Posten]

Optimized for iPad?!?!?! That's just ridiculous. Who the heck would use GPS on a 10" tablet?

_Man_

Cmon bud, nobody here has said that. I think people doubt it is a system seller and a critical feature like you believe, but nobody disputes it could be useful and is an area poised for growth,
I've only got the 16gb iPad2 so I'm not sure I'll dedicate 1.5geebees to it permanently but I'm looking forward to testing this out this weekend. I still maintain that despite the initial investment of the software's cost this is the cheapest GPS I've ever bought because of how many devices I'm legally allowed to put it on.

 

[DaveF]

I may have said something along those lines. GPS app on a 10" iPad is obviously not the most broadly usable form of GPS-ery.

But my wife, as passenger, might use it in the future to help manage detours or finding a restaurant. We'll see.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Cmon bud, nobody here has said that. I think people doubt it is a system seller and a critical feature like you believe, but nobody disputes it could be useful and is an area poised for growth,
I've only got the 16gb iPad2 so I'm not sure I'll dedicate 1.5geebees to it permanently but I'm looking forward to testing this out this weekend. I still maintain that despite the initial investment of the software's cost this is the cheapest GPS I've ever bought because of how many devices I'm legally allowed to put it on.

Ummm... Nope. Most everyone else in these parts definitely had the naysayer mentality that its usefulness is highly suspect due to the size/form factor. There was *never* any hint that you guys thought it'd be remotely useful.

Meanwhile, your characterization that I believed it to be some sort of game changer isn't really true at all. Yes, I thought it had a chance to be very useful for people w/ big vehicles (and there certainly are a lot more of those than a decade ago), but I too agreed that it's probably not realistic to put too much faith into something like that as a game changer although it could probably make some diff in the long run if only certain tablets had it while others did not.

Honestly, almost nothing has been a serious system seller at this point when it comes to tablets anyway. Yeah, Apple moved the iPad at a fairly brisk pace under the circumstance so far, but the sales figures are still just a drop in the potential bucket and are essentially going to early adopters if we're talking about that. And as Amazon might end up proving (of something that's become increasingly apparent), there probably won't be just any one particular thing that will sell a particular tablet to mainstream folks. It'll very likely take a lot of different applications/services/coolness/easy-of-use combined into an affordable and likely highly portable form factor. But if we're just talking apps, I'd think a quality GPS app that's very well optimized for tablets could certainly become one of the top apps around (outside of the most basic stuff like a/v playback, web browser, email, PIM and such). That doesn't mean I think it'll be a game changer; just means it's something many folks (w/ big vehicles) will want to have (among various other things)...

_Man_

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by ManW_TheUncool /t/288862/tomtom-iphone-dock-anyone/180#post_3862699

Honestly, almost nothing has been a serious system seller at this point when it comes to tablets anyway. Yeah, Apple moved the iPad at a fairly brisk pace under the circumstance so far, but the sales figures are still just a drop in the potential bucket and are essentially going to early adopters if we're talking about that.

That does not match my experience. I see people who are decidedly not "early adopters" buying iPads. Middle class. Used to computers. Smartphone users. But not a conventional 'early adopter' of technology in any other way.

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

Glad to see the included iPad functionality, but I am definitely one of the people that feels that a 10-inch tablet is not the sweet spot for GPS units. I would think most users would have a hard time finding a place to mount such a thing in their cars/trucks. In a lot of states it's illegal to have anything mounted on the windshield, much less a 10-inch video screen. Honestly, the only thing I would really find it useful for is if I had someone riding in the passenger or back seats that wanted to see where we were going.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

mounted on the windshield, much less a 10-inch video screen. Honestly, the only thing I would really find it useful for is if I had someone riding in the passenger or back seats that wanted to see where we were going.

Nobody claimed that 10" would be a "sweet spot" (or that everyone would want that). As I said (elsewhere) before, it's really just an assumption that 10" won't work well at all for GPS app. Obviously, there will be limitations like it probably won't work in a small vehicle, but try thinking a little bit out of the box, you know? Lots of folks/families, particularly those who might afford a tablet, have one or even two large-ish vehicles that could fit a 10" tablet somewhere -- if they can install a display for DVD playback, then why not an iPad (whether verticlely or horizontally) somewhere? It doesn't necessarily have to be installed the way you normally install a 4-5" GPS, and the tablet doesn't necessarily have to be running a GPS exclusively either in the ideal situation. It could potentially replace certain other functionalities that may have traditionally used up some of your dash space for instance. Also, seems like (turn-by-turn) GPS works best when the voice part is done well so that you don't need to look at the screen most of the time, and it'd be nice to see what you need quickly and easily at a glance on a bigger screen whenever you do need to look.

Of course, having it provide multiple simultaneous functions while being used as GPS might not be doable w/ what's available at the moment, but I also wasn't suggesting it can all be done already. In my original posts about this aspect (for the Android offerings that have Google Nav), I was mainly interested in finding out more about it and what kind of potential there is (and where things are currently at) for it to help give tablets some extra appeal. But everytime I brought it up, people seem to think it's just a loopy idea or something and more or less dismiss the possibility of it being useful at all.

BTW, most of the discussion had revolved around 10" tablets before, but as the tablet world evolves, one has to remember there will also be smaller tablets, including Amazon's 7" Fire, which looks like it'll quickly overtake the iPad in future sales figures. And there are definitely 7" standalone GPS units out there in the marketplace already, so...

Anyhoo, clearly, if TomTom's bothering to "optimize" their GPS app for the iPad -- whatever that actually means

_Man_

 

[Sam Posten]

Man-Fai, I think you are conflating two very different arguments.
Does anyone think more than a couple thousand people might ever mount a 10" tablet in a car as their daily GPS? No, that seems to be exclusively your domain. Hence judging Tablet OSes by their included GPS app (or lack thereof) is a non starter for the vast majority of people.
Does anyone here at HTF think that a 10" tablet might make an interesting GPS device? Clearly we do. There's some fun things that could be leveraged on that, like Find My Friends and Loopt. But it's not a killer feature.
Also, I don't recall anyone saying the Kindle Fire will have any kind of GPS chip in it, tho you might be able to use the boomerang or whatevr triangulation tech with it. If you can point it out on a spec sheet let me know, I've got at least one on order so far so that would be a nice bonus. Assuming you can stream maps and don't have to dedicate 1.5 gigs of the Kindles very small storage allotment to a GPS app.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Sam,

The whole tablet thing is still pretty much in its infancy (or perhaps, toddler phase if you really prefer), so it's odd to be so limiting on such discussions to just what can be done now (or next month) instead of where things might lead down the road. Furthermore, the whole thing about using anything other than a standalone GPS unit for GPS app is really also an early adopter thing at this time anyway. It's not like we're actually seeing lots of folks using their smartphones for GPS so far afterall whether you're talking iPhone or Android.

And just because extremely few people (at least here) can envision using a 10" tablet for GPS, doesn't mean it should be considered a non-starter. But in any case, I doubt many folks would want to use the 1st iteration of the Fire for GPS since it's pretty clearly not designed to be able to handle that (or Amazon would probably have touted that). The point wasn't that the very first Amazon tablet will do that. The point was that we should be a bit more openminded about what's possible going forward and where things may lead, and if the mainstream market adopts 7" as one of a couple or so prefered form factors, then that certainly can make GPS app more appealing for that segment in the long run.

Amazon's proposition so far is a rather unique one and can certainly pioneer some new trends or may well completely set the tone for the mainstream tablet market going forward. If they want their tablet to offer GPS capability down the road -- probably needing to wait for the next, perhaps moderately higher end, hardware version -- maybe that will involve something akin to Google Nav rather than the more traditional approach w/ all maps data pre-installed (w/ infrequent updates). OR maybe it'll be more of a hybrid, which also seems like where Google's headed w/ their maps caching for offline navigation. OR maybe they'll end up patching things up some w/ Google and fully support Google Maps/Nav in the future.

There had been plenty of rumors that some 2nd, higher end version of the Amazon tablet is expected sooner rather than later, so maybe that one will actually come w/ the GPS hardware w/ wireless data perhaps -- or maybe those will be options for their next wave. Either way, there's probably no need to lock ourselves to the notion that Amazon will only cater to the lower end market indefinitely just yet.


In any case, getting back to the actual TomTom app, I am kinda curious why they bothered to "optimize" it for the iPad since the notion will probably seem at least a bit far-fetched to most folks at this point. Did they really have all that many folks asking them for it? There probably aren't even quite *that* many iPads out in the wild w/ GPS hardware built-in -- IIRC, only the 3G iPads come w/ GPS hardware. OR maybe there are more 3G iPads out there than some of us were led to believe? OR maybe they're just grabbing at straws in trying to expand their iOS market, ie. maybe very few folks are using their app on iPhone, so any little bump in sales would help (and perhaps, "optimized for iPad" is nothing more than a simple recompile of the code w/ a couple param/config changes or maybe even less than that)?

_Man_

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by ManW_TheUncool /t/288862/tomtom-iphone-dock-anyone/180#post_3862817

Tablets are not exactly conventional, and early adopter can come in all forms. The label should really depend on what we're talking about me thinks although it most likely precludes folks who are relatively averse to new technologies.

Early adopters bought the original iPad in March of 2010. Normal people are buying an iPad 2 today.

The iPad is the new "conventional".

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

Version 1.10 is out. Appears to me that the only new items are a crappy new app icon and a bunch of worthless Facebook and Twitter integration. But hey...at least the map updates are free.

 

[DaveF]

And the juggling begins to get it on my iPhone...

 

[DaveF]

Did the app shuffle to get TomTom installed*. The original icon, while pretty abstract, was distinct and attractive. This new while, while more obviously related to "GPS", is ugly. The internal menu system seems cleaned up a bit, though it's not obvious at first look how to get an address from Address Book. I've not spent enough time with the latest version to know if it's otherwise much different.

I am bummed that the NavNow app still feeds address to TomTom as lat-long coordinates, rather than the actual address. That was a change for the worse in the past year (whether it's TomTom or NavNow). And it represents an iOS6 opportunity for Apple to bring, a la "Contracts" in Windows Phone 7 / Metro.


(*the first try it caused Audible app to go into "cleaning" mode and dump my audiobook. how annoying. I understand now why app developers have been so annoyed by Apple's policy on downloaded content. there's nothing user friendly about that.)

 

[DaveF]

Oh ho! It's got red-light camera alerts!

 

[Sam Posten]

New round up:
http://www.imore.com/2012/06/04/navigon-scout-telenav-tomtom-iphone-navigation-app-shootout/

 

[DaveF]

From the review:
Navigon, now part of Garmin, has a standard interface and is exactly what you'd expect from a GPS app. Unlike previous versions, the maps aren't hard coded into the app any more (no more 1.5GB downloads.) Instead, upon launching the app for the first time, you're asked to download necessary files and the maps you'd like, including the option to download all maps. After all your initial files download you can start using the app.
Does that mean the iPhone will auto- delete your maps when you try to update apps on a nearly full device, leaving high and dry and needing to download 1.5 GB over 3G?
In concept that's a better design. Updating TomTom is a major endeavor, where I must delete all my music, install TomTom, then re-sync my music.
But in practice, Apples policy on auto-obliterating downloaded content at its whim makes this a disastrous idea for a GPS app.
So I will definitely not consider upgrading to Navigon.
And on Scout:
Scout by Telenav doesn't seem to store any maps locally, and so depends on an internet connection in order to function properly. If you don't typically travel to places that have spotty coverage you should be fine with Scout, but may want to download an atlas or maps app to compliment it in the event you do get lost in an area with little service.
That's great for big city folk. But I sometimes travel to backwater places with bad cell coverage, like San Jose or San Francisco. I can't rely maps-by-data.
So I stay with TomTom. It works. It's a shame their ui is so clunky. Manipulating the maps is a terrible experience, thought better than actual GPS devices. But so much worse than google maps.

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

Eh...I like my TomTom app. VERY appreciative that they included red light camera notification in the last update.

 

[DaveF]

My wife and I have been using TomTom regularly for two years.

But spend some time with Apple's Maps application and then go back to TomTom to examine a route, or look up a location online...TomTom is quite outdated in its UI and simple map drawing methods. If it had the responsiveness and ease of use of Maps, it would be a whole new application.

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

I'd hardly call Maps "responsive"...especially in any area with spotty data coverage.

 

[DaveF]

Which is why I have an app not reliant on data coverage

Like how Safari will "scroll" that checkerboard pattern when there's no data, Maps takes an approach that feels much more responsive and faster, even if it's not in absolute terms. TomTom's approach of blanking the screen momentarily before redrawing, every time you slide or zoom, feels very slow and is an aggravating experience. To me, I increasingly notice how bad TomTOm's map user experience is compared to Apple Maps or Google Maps.

It's another example of an older company being locked into outdated and inferior products. You'd think that TomTom, whose raison d'être is displaying maps on digital devices, would have absolutely the best best map interaction. But instead they're worse at it than Apple and Google, who do it as a side effort.