Tyre and other alternatives to RoadTrip/MapSource

[silvermog]

OK, planning a forthcoming trip (this weekend, Route des Grand Alpes, Monaco, Route Napoleon) has been the straw that broke the camels back ... I love the Garmin devices (on my third, a BMW branded Zumo 550), but their software for the Mac for planning sucks ...

I started out pre Mac using MapSource on a PC, then in VMWare on Mac, then switching to RoadTrip ... frankly they all lack a good dose of usability, but I think RoadTrips blind adherence to crappy approaches that were poor in the PC products 10 years earlier irks the most. Route planning in Google is 10x better than this

So, rant over ...

What else are people using that they find worthwhile? Tyre (www.tyre.tk) seems to get good reviews, any direct experiences? At this stage I'm happy to experiment with anything, but preferred would be Mac, net, PC tools in that order.

Looking forward to some recommendations ...

 

[Redboots]

Looking forward to some recommendations ...

Not actually a recommendation as I have not used it yet, but what about Basecamp

John

 

[silvermog]

Not actually a recommendation as I have not used it yet, but what about Basecamp

John

As best I understand it BaseCamp is the same codebase as RoadTrip, but targeted St non road users and using the 3D mapping, so not sure it's going to be much better ... Will try it tho to make sure ;-)

Cheers

 

[Redboots]

As best I understand it BaseCamp is the same codebase as RoadTrip, but targeted St non road users and using the 3D mapping, so not sure it's going to be much better ... Will try it tho to make sure ;-)

Yes, I saw it was for the Topo series. However, I put CN EU 2011 map segments AND Topo segments on the same datacard. I "think" Basecamp will will work with that. My datacards are only a miserable 256meg (276c), but I have several of them and just swap them in and out for different regions.

Cheers,
John

 

[red1]

I'm in same position as you - PC/Mapsource - then moved to iMac.

Basecamp (latest version) is the best of a bad bunch, but it's not too bad and 1000% faster than Roadtrip.

 

[GSwadd]

Can someone tell me just what is the problem with Mapsource for the Mac? Does it just not exist or not run properly? After trolling through the recent post on Mac vs PC and how wonderful Macs are (I have my own opinions) I thought EVERYTHING was better on a Mac?

I'm quite impressed with it on the PC really!

 

[red1]

Can someone tell me just what is the problem with Mapsource for the Mac? Does it just not exist or not run properly? After trolling through the recent post on Mac vs PC and how wonderful Macs are (I have my own opinions) I thought EVERYTHING was better on a Mac?

I'm quite impressed with it on the PC really!

No such thing as Mapsource for Mac.

Basecamp is the best at present from Garmin for Mac.

Yes you are correct, the Mac isn't from the "land of milk and honey" and is is certainly not a PC "killer".

Now waiting for Apple "Fanboys" to comment ........

 

[silvermog]

More a case that map source is really the product of an earlier era, it's interaction is quite poor and quite clunky in places. Don't get me wrong, I know you can persist with it, become very competent in using it (aka bend to it's foibles) and plan huge overland trips ... but it's design and interaction pre-date much of the MS windows era ...

Although Garmin chose to use it's codebase as the root of the Mac port, that meant they spun off much of the utility aspects (updating, maps, POI, etc) into separate apps, but the core map source function of route planning and tracking got dumped into a port called RoadTrip.

Mores the pity, it's a very un-Mac like experience from the moment you launch it and now just jars incredibly with the rest of the experience. As I said, even Google maps pales it's basic map and search functions into insignificance and that's based on a net load of maps, not the local store that RT has. Search and homing in on targets is extremely clunky, given it's range and single threaded approach as the app hangs until it's exhausted the search, meanwhile you probably saw the match within the first second or so, but can't select it as the app is locked up ... I know search is Googles thing, but it's pretty ridiculous that it outruns RT both for speed and interactivity.

It's also the slowest piece of software imaginable, I have a fully loaded iMac, effectively 8 core w 12Gb RAM and an ssd and it still beach balls and drags along like a wounded dog ... Everything is very '90s about the experience as it takes no advantage of the machine capabilities.

Anyway, off to grab a copy of Basecamp to see if it's core programming is any better (more recent) and to fire up my ancient XP VM image and try out Tyre ... Will report back if I survive

 

[silvermog]

OK, had a bit of time on train this morning to do some background ...

It seems that the reason I'd previously dismissed BaseCamp is that my experience was an earlier release which ignored all maps without DEM data (digital elevation mapping---topo maps in other words), but supposedly as of v3.0.1 BaseCamp will use any maps it finds, even if they are only on the device.

So CityNav maps as loaded in the Nuvi/Zumo devices should be fine.

So, I'm downloading v3.0.2 as we speak to take a look, bit late for this trip, but hopefully will prove more satisfactory. Also looks like further development of RoadTrip is pretty unlikely as BaseCamp is becoming the more mainstream product ... if nothing else it sounds like it restores track to route conversion which was one of the nicest features I missed from the original Mapsource.

Good discussions on AdvRider BTW, at http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=564859 and also the Mac uber thread at http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=331421