Playing With Google Maps And Apple Maps

Playing With Google Maps And Apple Maps

Byrichard

A few days ago I was driving from Switzerland to Spain via France when Google Maps told me to get off the motorway and drive on normal roads. When it made this mistake I switched to Apple maps, and was not led astray again.


Google Maps leading me astray was a surprise. Google Maps and Waze are the same, and yet Google Maps behaved differently. I don’t understand why it led me astray.


On short trips I wouldn’t hesitate to trust Waze, google maps, TomTom and Apple maps. On long distances Waze and TomTom have been good. It is just Google Maps that I question.


When I looked at the price of Citroën onboard maps the cost is 99chf per region and 205chf for Europe. I didn’t expect it to be so high. TomTom go is 12 chf per year. I don’t understand how onboard map software can be priced so differently. I see the value in it being on the onboard system but with mobile phones and CarPlay etc we are justified in going for the better priced option.


Over the years navigating when driving has become really easy. I now find that I never get lost. You hardly need to study a map. Set the destination and the gps does the rest. I know the route I drove well but I still like a gps as a backup, and as a way of keeping track of progress.


Apple maps has resolved the teething problems that people discussed. Now it is a good driving option, and it adjusts the display to day or not, making it less of a distraction when driving before sunrise or after sunset. I would use it again, on the way back later in the year.


With its errors in navigation google maps might have lost me as a user.

Apple Car Play and Roaming

Apple Car Play and Roaming

Byrichard

Several years ago I needed to download TomTom and I needed the latest map updates if I wanted to drive from Switzerland to England or from Switzerland to France, or to Spain. Thanks to roaming I now have a much broader choice.


TomTom was good in another era, when we had to pay roaming fees. We downloaded the relevant maps. We set off, and the GPS would guide us from A to B and that was that. I tried doing the same with Waze, hoping that the entire map would be downloaded when I set off, only to find that eventually I went off of the downloaded map and I had no more information due to a switch from Spanish to French roaming on a Swiss contract. I made it home, but it showed the limitation of roaming at the time.


Recently I drove from Switzerland to Spain, using roaming, but this time with 30 gigs of data on the current contract. I used just 200 megabytes, according to my recollection, with no issues. This was with Waze. Waze and Google maps are the same today, so I could just cut the middle app, and go straight for the behemoth. I can also play and experiment with Apple maps. They have had time to fix teething problems.


The issue that I have had with both TomTom and Waze is at night. Neither of these apps automatically switches to night mode. I couldn’t find that option. Driving at night, with a map in daylight mode is inconvenient. This is a good reason not to use both of the traditional apps, and move towards Apple Maps and Google Maps. Both have plenty of settings to make navigation less distracting.


I want to support TomTom Go because it is 12 CHF per year, and it’s European, but I can’t find a way to pay them directly, rather than going through Apple so I may drop them when the contract runs out. As to Waze, I lost interest the moment it was bought by Google, since it meant that we were helping a wealthy behemoth, rather than a small startup.


I have been playing with GPS since I was a child, but initially I was using hiking GPSs with no proper display. I then played with car GPS before moving on to mobile phones, and since a few weeks I have been playing with in-built GPS. I find the in-built GPS experience is easy, and I like that the passenger, I haven’t had a passenger, since we’re in a pandemic, can set up the routing options from the comfort of the phone. Concurrently, I can set off the nav system from my home, and then walk down, plug in the phone, and then use it for navigation, from A to B.


Back in the day I sometimes printed out instructions, to navigate… things have really changed since then. When you’re used to GPS apps navigation is simple. Now to play with two new apps, and see how they compare to the two apps I have prioritised, until now.

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TomTom Go and the diminishing cost of live traffic data when driving

Byrichard

Today with Tomtom Go you pay 20CHF per year for the maps and traffic information. When I first bought the TomTom Europe apps for iOS and Android they cost about 170CHF an operating system. If my memory serves me well traffic information would cost an additional 100 CHF per year.

As a result of the high cost for traffic information I was in the habit of using Waze. As long as you have a data connection you get maps and traffic information for free. It would save you 270 CHF initially.

When you live in the french speaking part of Switzerland you are just minutes from France and within hours you can be in Germany, Austria and Italy. As a result having maps pre-loaded in to your navigation is useful. That’s where Tomtom at 20CHF per year becomes interesting. The maps available are for individual countries, for Western, Europe, Eastern Europe, the whole of Europe, The Caribbean, North America and South America. Each of these maps can be downloaded ahead of a trip and used.

This means that once you’ve paid your 20 CHF you have maps for the world, not just for your daily commute.

I am so convinced by Tomtom’s new philosophy that I have uninstalled Waze and will now use Tomtom primarily and Google maps as a backup.

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The N95 8gb, google maps and navigation

Byrichard

If it’s something geeky you’ll see me learn how to use it. The most recent thing I’ve played with is the n95 8gb and google maps. This time though it was from a car rather than on foot and as a result it was far quicker to correct a mistake. I took care to locate the satellites before leaving home so that when I arrived to Lausanne I could stop by the side of the road, load google maps, press 0 and the gps in the phone would automatically locate me within 30 kilometers.

I then had to type the address of where I wanted to go and confirm it was correct. Within seconds I had a track. I looked at it. Saw where I was and where I needed to go and that was that, very easy. Once or twice I overshot but within just a few seconds I knew and finding the place was a piece of cake.

Of course I didn’t use the device whilst the car was moving. I made sure to keep both eyes attentive to the road conditions and only when I was stopped did I check. It worked really well.