TomTom iPhone - Stop Press - No sorry, as you were
An interview with TomTom in Macworld today covers their yet to be released iPhone app and hardware mount.
In the interview, Tom Murray, VP of Market Development, reveals nothing new, instead choosing to repeat details already confirmed.
Yes the mount has a GPS receiver, yes it has a speaker, yes it has audio out and yes it will charge the iPhone (really??). Yes it uses EasyPort and yes it can be used in Landscape and Portrait orientations. Do try and stay awake at the back eh! It will contain IQ Routes data although the presence of the much maligned MapShare is not known (and won't be missed here), nor is there any news on what if any 'connected' services will feature.
Surely TomTom wouldn't release without LIVE services on a connected device would they? Who knows, given they seem unaware that the app cannot be downloaded over 3G (Apple have a ceiling of 11mb for app downloads over 3G/EDGE). At 1GB it rather exceeds that limit!
So there you have it, all the news available, freshly re-packaged with the press image we've all seen a dozen times already. Still no release date, no announced pricing for the app or the mount and as each day passes no news means ever more customers will have given up the wait and jumped ship.
MacWorld Article
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 Posted by SSR on Mon Jul 06, 2009 8:39 pm |
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MapShare I could live without! Useless feature.
Let's hope they've found a way around the mulitasking issue though, and there is custom PoI ability.
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| Posted by marcol on Mon Jul 06, 2009 9:06 pm |
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Actually, I think IQ routes was mentioned in the WWDC keynote. So nothing new at all then...
I guess a charitable view is that they want hardware and software to release together and the former (which other companies aren't doing) is delaying the latter.
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| Posted by zebsogo on Tue Jul 07, 2009 9:43 am |
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I would rather TomTom took their time and got it right rather then rush it out and produce a donkey like Navigon
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Navigon 92 Premium Live,TomTom Go 6000,Garmin 2699 LTM-D and a TomTom Go 1005 Live ( For the wife )
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| Posted by gyre on Tue Jul 07, 2009 10:05 am |
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I'd rather they posted a time-limted free beta or something, and allowed us to send them comments on how we wanted it improved.
I'm not sure if the iphone/app store supports time limits tho.
-- gyre --
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| Posted by NickG on Tue Jul 07, 2009 11:06 am |
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I don't get why people are complaining about MapShare. It's fixed all the problems in my area (new no-through roads, change of 1 way (Very important!), incorrect road names etc). As far as I can see it doesn't really have any disadvantages, so whats the controversy with it?
Twitter: @nickg_uk |
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| Posted by SSR on Tue Jul 07, 2009 11:17 am |
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Loads of new roads and roundabouts in my area. Not a sausage in terms of updates.
I read elsewhere that most the updates it is capable of providing are very limited, and the remainder are used by TomTom to update and sell their new maps. Sounds a bit "conspiracy theory" but I'm sure there are clever folks here that will know.
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| Posted by NickG on Tue Jul 07, 2009 11:39 am |
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| SSR Wrote: | Loads of new roads and roundabouts in my area. Not a sausage in terms of updates.
I read elsewhere that most the updates it is capable of providing are very limited, and the remainder are used by TomTom to update and sell their new maps. Sounds a bit "conspiracy theory" but I'm sure there are clever folks here that will know. |
You can't add new roads with mapshare as users could never enter that kind of data - it has to be surveyed by a van. I think that's pretty reasonable and I would never have expected new roads to become part of mapshare. It was only ever designed for simple fixes... like spelling mistakes in road names, change of one way, etc, and I find it works perfectly for those.
| Quote: | | the remainder are used by TomTom to update and sell their new maps. |
Well yeah - you can hardly expect them to just give you new maps with new roads etc for free via MapShare!! They're not doing this out of love! I don't get why people expect everything for free these days, when they're not prepared to work for free themselves - it seems very one-sided. MapShare is designed to fix basic problems in the maps you already paid for - a worthy service you get for free. It's not designed for you to simply get new maps for free for the rest of your life.
Twitter: @nickg_uk |
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| Posted by zebsogo on Tue Jul 07, 2009 12:02 pm |
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So Hypothetically, If nobody submitted any data via MapShare what would Tomtom do. Would they have to employ someone to check on changes to one way streets ect ect or just do a yearly scan of the country. Sorry not sure if i have posed the question clearly enough
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Navigon 92 Premium Live,TomTom Go 6000,Garmin 2699 LTM-D and a TomTom Go 1005 Live ( For the wife )
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| Posted by SSR on Tue Jul 07, 2009 12:07 pm |
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I still think MapShare is oversold. It is described as giving, among other things, "The best and most accurate maps available – always". You don't get fully up-to-date maps though, just a limited set of changes (very limited in my opinion, as I have never encountered a misspelt road name, or error in direction). The other changes that you provide get used by TomTom for free, albeit they recharge customers a fairly costly amount for a new map.
Also TomTom's maps are often woefully out-of-date, despite all these supposed MapShare enhanvements. I have local roads that have existed for over 5 years, or major roads such as the interchange with Heathrow T5, which are still not on TomTom's latest maps.
I think that £40 for a map update is outrageous, when you're talking only a small number of changes and no way to verify what the map update contains.
| NickG Wrote: | | I don't get why people expect everything for free these days, when they're not prepared to work for free themselves - it seems very one-sided. MapShare is designed to fix basic problems in the maps you already paid for - a worthy service you get for free. It's not designed for you to simply get new maps for free for the rest of your life. |
Why not? For starters we are working "for free" providing TomTom with the MapShare changes. How about a discount on map updates for those who provide lots of changes?
If only there was a decent SatNav system that could use OpenStreetMap. Then I know where I'd be submitting my updates!
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| Posted by SSR on Tue Jul 07, 2009 12:09 pm |
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| zebsogo Wrote: | | So Hypothetically, If nobody submitted any data via MapShare what would Tomtom do. Would they have to employ someone to check on changes to one way streets ect ect or just do a yearly scan of the country. Sorry not sure if i have posed the question clearly enough |
Presumably this is the bread and butter of the likes of NavTeq et al.
I like the idea of MapShare (and even more so Open Street Map) but it doesn't compensate those who submit corrections sufficiently, and is an oversold service.
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| Posted by NickG on Tue Jul 07, 2009 12:22 pm |
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| SSR Wrote: | | Why not? For starters we are working "for free" providing TomTom with the MapShare changes. How about a discount on map updates for those who provide lots of changes? |
I don't think you've got this whole MapShare idea. It's about sharing your fixes with other TomTom users. TomTom make no money of it at all - they provide the service, and the updates for FREE. You receive updates that other people in your area have put in free of charge. I think it's a great idea and I hope they take it further. If you want to get paid for the fixes you upload, then obviously you will need to pay dearly for the thousands of fixes you download. Happy with that?
It's the same concept as HD traffic. You provide data as you're driving around that tells people behind you what the speeds are. It only works if the data is shared and lots of people are involved. Sure, in this instance TomTom makes money directly out of the subscriptions, but the whole concept wouldn't work if people didn't want it, or if everyone opted out of allowing their data to be uploaded.
It's a bit selfish I think to think that you should just get everything for free and then ALSO be paid for what you're contributing to other users and TomTom.
| SSR Wrote: | | If only there was a decent SatNav system that could use OpenStreetMap. Then I know where I'd be submitting my updates! |
At the moment, it's not possible to construct a "decent satnav" which is based on OpenStreetMap. The data is in it's infancy and woefully inadequate for a real-time GPS system. In my area the data is absolutely awful. Although it has new roads that TomTom doesn't have, there are hundreds of other errors. People keep adding their own drives and farm tracks as roads. I even found some purposely misspelt road names designed as a pun on the original road name. Very low quality data at the moment, but hopefuly this will improve.[/b]
Twitter: @nickg_uk |
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