TomTom ditches map updates for some sat-navs
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
On its website, TomTom explains that "lifetime" means the "useful life" of a device: "ie: the period of time TomTom supports your device with updates, services, content or accessories. A device will have reached the end of its life when none of these are available any more."
Updates will be available for the lifetime, which is defined as until we stop providing updates.
(Unsure how to quote)
They don't need to ban these claims, they just need to define "lifetime", either the lifetime of the device or lifetime of the owner. Or, as with the Tilley hats I mentioned in another comment on this article, as long as you have one in your hand, whether you're the one that bought it or not. Oh, sure, have some well-defined exclusions for abuse and the like. Run your Tilley hat through a woodchipper, and no new hat for you. (But if you run your hat through an elephant, they'll honor it if you're willing to dig it out of the manure. True story, they claim.)
There was an article in our local newspaper about a dude who bought lifetime brakes for his Mustang in like 1970 from JC Penney (!). To this day, he’s still getting free brakes, I think Firestone took on the business. With tech stuff, they would declare the lifetime to the be average lifetime of a brake pad!
When repair is not possible or practical, Koss sends me a new pair of whatever is the current equivalent model.
/ I'm not sure if they're still honoring the lifetime warranty, as I think the last time I sent them in was about eight years ago.
Can confirm as an ex-Firestone mechanic from shortly after Firestone picked up Penny's repair business (in fact, the shop I worked at used to be a Penny's auto repair). If a car rolled in needing brakes, and they had the lifetime warranty, we put brakes on it. I was never tasked with trying to find ways to wiggle out of it. Nope, it was "hey, mikestew, '72 'stang out there, check the brakes. It's lifetime warranty, so if it needs anything we don't need to call customer, just put it on and let me know what you did." And because a "lifetime" job required that the customer buy calipers and rotors in addition to pads, Firestone covered everything. Rotors are shot? New rotors for you, no charge! Caliper frozen? New caliper, on the house!
Haven't worked for Firestone in about 25 years, but we still take our cars there for lifetime alignment (I can do brakes myself). No bullshit, no fine print, take it in once or twice a year, no questions asked. And I'll tell you why Firestone doesn't mind: they'll more than likely find something else that needs work (not trying to rip you off, folks, that's just the nature of mechanical things) and make some money off that. My personal observation was that folks also never took it back for an alignment until it needed tires, and therefore money in Firestone's pocket. IOW, Firestone's bean counters were counting on customers not actually using the warranty, and they were right.
Tilley clothing is another one who honored the lifetime warranty on two of their hats we had for twenty years. Filled out the form, paid eight US dollars shipping, new hats in a few weeks. My only complaint is that the new hats are...different. I dunno, maybe after some break-in they'll be like our old ones. Tilley claims to be like the Craftsman tools of old: if you're in possession of a hat, you're covered under warranty even if you didn't buy it. "Put it in your will!", they say. I assume that's true, because they never asked us for any proof of purchase.
Good luck to Tom-Tom with their definition of "life": "As long as we feel like it".
I'm a former mechanic, and usually astonished at what most shops get away with.
I've seen $1200 tune ups. (Six cylinder Ford Vallant, and the shop owner told my friend business was slow that week, and he needed money.)
To a Franchise owner at Aamco (San Rafael, ca) who told he the tranny was going into limp mode when he test drove it, and then brought me into the office to look at the cutaway model. (It was never even driven because he didn't have the key. Plus--when he realized I knew the lingo; he started kissing my ass. He knew he was caught. He was a new franchise owner, but that's no excuse.)
My point is there's some real business opportunities out there. An honest shop is gold. Its a very tough business though. I've even met some people who sware their "guy" is the best. They are usually the ones who are being taken the most.
You know, I've been seeing investigative reports about Aamco's crooked dealings since I was a kid watching Morely Schafer on Sixty Minutes, and I am not a young man (in fact, I think Morely's dead now.) So I am continually amazed when I see Aamco in the news again.
It's not like there isn't good money in running an honest shop. I wasn't a mechanic for all that many years, but of those years I've known one mechanic that I wouldn't send my sister to. The rest are just working class dogs like the rest of us, trying to make a nice middle-class living. The other Firestone I worked at while I was going to school, as a "tire changer" and not mechanic, the manager was a every-time-the-doors-are-open church goer, and lived it. There would be no ripping off of customers in that shop. That shop made plenty of money.
So I dunno, maybe transmissions are a different business. And there will always be those for whom the good living of auto repair isn't good enough. Sure, I make a ton more writing software, but there are days I'd go back to turning wrenches. Much like software, someone has a problem, and I got a great deal of satisfaction out of solving that problem for a reasonable price. Personally, I never saw any compelling reason to be dishonest.
I used to own a Kia Sephia that was known to have brake pad issues where they would prematurely wear at 15,000 miles or so, replaced the brake pads multiple times on that car like clockwork. The guys at AutoZone knew me well :P
But to twist it around again, that's the same as, "eventually you won't even be able to pay for updates for this device".
I have just driven the length of West Africa from Morocco to South Africa[1] using Open Street Maps loaded onto a $50 Garmin GPS[2]. The accuracy and completeness of the maps is nothing short of staggering. The tiniest town in Burkina Faso, Gabon or the DRC has every single road, walking track and intersection, perfectly mapped. It's the same for all the countries.
On the entire 40,000 miles I can count on one hand the number of times the OSM map did not perfectly reflect the real world. It happened so infrequently it was always cause for celebration when it did.
You can even edit OSM on your phone (e.g. with Vespucci), so you could drive along a road, think "this is totally wrong on OSM", pull over, get out your phone and correct it.
Contrast that with Harley-Davidson who is notorious for "nickel and diming" and charging outrageous amounts for otherwise regular products. I can just go to their website, download a file to a USB flash drive, plug the flash drive into my motorcycle, and it'll update everything -- including the GPS navigation system and maps.
It just seems backwards to me. I probably wouldn't pay anything for map updates for the car (and I don't for my truck, either), although I might if they were cheap enough. OTOH, I absolutely would pay for updates for the motorcycle but even H-D doesn't charge for 'em.
As long as navigation is available for free on everyone's mobile phones, I'm not sure how automobile companies expect to make much money from map updates.
Modern Harleys, however, have a lot of electronics available, if you want to take advantage of them. I've got a touch-screen unit that includes GPS (including turn-by-turn navigation), SiriusXM satellite radio, Bluetooth (for phone calls or playing the music on my iPhone through the bike's very well-equipped "Infotainment" system), a USB port (for updates and playing MP3s), a security system, a garage door opener, and so on. Other models might have CD players, CB radios, etc. The lower end/cheaper models typically don't have much more than a speedometer. Some of these are, easily, $50,000 bikes, though.
The software updates are dead simple, too. Download a file to a USB stick, plug it in, turn the ignition to accessory, and... wait. It shows the progress/status on the screen and takes maybe 10 minutes from start to finish. Someone like me (more "tech-y") usually gets the USB flash drive set up when an update comes out and then we all just pass it around when we get together for a ride or something. Others don't care and don't bother ever updating.
Even the "grumpy old-timey bikers" like their tunes. :-)
I’m not paying a few hundred euro per year to update them. Even if I did they probably wouldn’t be as good as Google or OSM, as currently the maps only have major roads and cities.
It would be cheaper and more effective to buy a replacement Android head unit.
You do not sell to consumers, but B2B. There are 2 maps on the market you can actually license: TomTom and Here. If you want a map, that is where you have to go.
The "new" maps were out of date - road alterations which had happened 2 years previously in my home town weren't on there yet. We found various other places on our trip where it seemed the road layout had changed since the maps came out, too.
Maybe I did something wrong somehow but it wasn't a very good advert for paying for maps. I've never used OSM on a drive but it's very good for walking in my local area as it has pretty much every footpath/cycle path (unlike Google Maps, which is very road-based), so I'll try it next time.
As for that older TomTom, I replaced it with a newer model because the battery life had gone right down and the touchscreen was failing, but the new model touchscreen is also very unresponsive, it already needed constant charging even when it was brand new, and the interface and directions aren't as clear as the decade-old model. I won't buy TomTom again.
This is very weasily legalise and quite contrary to what the customer is likely to interpret "lifetime" as meaning. They guaranteed the device would be kept updated for its useful life, but as soon as they stop updates the device's useful life is over so they can arbitrarily define what "lifetime" of the product is long after its sale.
If the term has not been adequately and obviously defined to the customer in this way they might be liable for refunds on the bases of the product not matching reasonable expectations. Even if it has been defined that way in EULAs and similar for all time, there may still be valid claims against them for deceptive advertising and bait & switch.
Of course they'll probably get away with it though, the same way for many years ISPs got away with using the word "unlimited" to mean "unlimited except for any limits we currently apply and might decide to apply at any time in the future", though not without losing some face.
I own a TomTom sports watch which I've recommended to people in the past. I will no longer give unguarded recommendations[1] and when it comes time to replace it[2] I will seriously research competing options and most likely discount TomTom products unless there is an astronomical cost/value difference in their favour.
[1] if any recommendation at all
[2] which will be soon due to an event involving unintended high-velocity contact between myself and the pavement which has resulted in a damaged screen and probably a reduction in moisture resistance
One example I know of is that Kathmandu offer a "lifetime warranty" on their goods, but that lifetime is their definition for how long that item is expected to last. As an example they might say "rain jacket x has a product lifetime of 5 years"; so a warranty claim at 4 would be covered but one at 6 years would not (if the staff act 100% in accordance with the policy). (These numbers are entirely arbitrary and not based on their policy.)
It's actually surprisingly inline with consumer laws, but consumer law has a "reasonable expected lifetime based on what you paid for the item" type clause (such that a $15 jacket has a different lifetime to a $800 one).
It's worth remembering for things like expensive TVs that only have a short warranty, because it often pans out that the expected lifetime (because of the price) is higher than the manufacturer offers, but they still have to cover the fault (because of consumer laws).
(It's not accounting for a retrospective change though...)
If someone bought one of those devices in the last year or few I would hope there is a case for it being returned as "not fit for purpose". You could argue that it still works with older maps, but in some cases this could potentially be dangerous. In the case of a sports watch like mine not getting updates wouldn't be a big issue (I might not get new features, but the old ones would still work, I could still use it as a distance tracker and to tell the time) but for a mapping the device up-to-date maps are an essential part.
For devices still on shop shelves, any sold near a statement that updates are a feature are actively being mis-sold. Who picks up the hit for having to sell these devices off cheap: TomTom or the retailer? Some retailers are going to be as irritated as the end users.
Every now and again I'll look at the screen and see my car floating across a barren landscape. That's how I know the road I'm on was built after 2013.
But on the countryside there is usually no usable signal for great stretches of road
I have no data plan on my phone, yet I navigate with Google Maps all the time in this way. I just download on WiFi beforehand.
OTOH, Waze is next to useless when trying to first pick a route when you have anything less than a great signal. 2G or patchy 3G? No hope. The dumb app will just give a timeout error after about five seconds or so and refuse to even consider plotting a route. It's like the developers never bother to test their code on anything other than a perfect internet connection.
Fortunately the cars I buy are old enough that they pre-date the introduction of screen-based controls.
Navigation much better on phone. Always up to date, no extra costs.
I do too. The curse of automotive UX are touch-screen soft buttons and menu-driven UIs. On a car, every major function that you might use while driving should be controlled by a dedicated physical control. This includes pretty much every function present in a car before in-dash screens became common and many things that have been introduced since.
> Navigation much better on phone. Always up to date, no extra costs.
This is true. Carmakers have realized this any many new cars support technology for your smartphone navigation app to display on the center console screen.
Try to drive across continent like that. Google maps and similar will not allow you to pre-cache that much data and once you are out of cell phone coverage, you are stuffed. And by Murphy's law it will be in the middle of nowhere where you need the GPS the most.
I am driving about 3000km back and forth across Europe every summer - from France to Slovakia and back, i.e. crossing France, Germany and Austria before I arrive in Slovakia. One would say - civilized countries, no problem. Except in many places you don't have even 2G signal on the motorway, even less 3G/LTE.
Oh and I am not even mentioning the roaming charges for data. Until recently it was exorbitant - the above mentioned trip would have costed me about 300 euro only in roaming charges if I have used a phone. It is less now after the EU forced the networks to lower the charges but it is still isn't free.
My TomTom doesn't have any of these problems. I certainly wouldn't buy a car with a built-in satnav, that's a pure waste of money and a colossal ripoff on map update costs, but a standalone satnav is still pretty useful if you ever drive outside of a large metro area.
And often even in cities - I have tried to use Google Maps and had Waze on my phone while driving in Paris, but it was so cluttered with advertising crap on the map (especially Waze!) that I couldn't see the route. Not cool when you are relying on it to know which street to take!
I need a satnav solution to drive, not to hack on.
Funnily enough, I used the TomTom app with offline maps on my Treo 650, and then it was released for the iPhone a year or so after native apps became available and I got that too. I used it for quite a few years, but eventually Google Maps overtook it in quality and data got cheaper (and stuff like factoring traffic into travel times is a good feature), and I only then used it when there was no cell service at all, which is becoming rarer.
You inspired me to fire it up again just now. TomTom discontinued the original app last year and moved to a subscription service for the new one, and at least they've given everyone 3 years of updates (and it's usually $20/yr), so I'm pretty happy with that. And the old app still works at least until it breaks with iOS updates beyond 11.
Not bad for a $70 purchase, 8 years or so ago.
(I also use OSM maps for my time off-road.)
No. OSM is kinda decentralised and the project prefers to not have "official" or "blessed" apps or services, and instead takes the approach of letting there be a constellation of services, companies and apps in the OSM ecosystem. So there is rarely one official way to do something, and instead allow the community (which often includes people who run various OSM things) to make things with OSM.
There's also OsmAnd, which lets you download OSM maps for offline use, complete with elevation contour lines and hillshading, and even Wikipedia articles associated to locations. It does offline navigation, too.
Now a neighborhood driveway or Walmart parking lot, even the rear view mirror in a older car isn't good enough for me.
Ought to be mandatory equipment, along with reverse sensors. The latter have the advantage of working passively (your hearing doesn't need active focus).
More common are kids drowning in backyard swimming pools.
I still miss the ability, occasionally, to adjust the volume on the car stereo before I turn on the car. (I recall that I was blasting some music while alone, but now don't want to deafen a passenger, e.g.) On my year-old Honda, the volume knob doesn't start responding for about 15 seconds after I hit the ignition button.
I know I'm romanticizing him, but the story of how Steve Jobs designed the click wheel on the original iPod is how I wish every product was designed: insistence on zero lag and immediate feedback. The above volume knob also has a lag in it's use: turn too quickly and you'll get unreliable or delayed results. I hate that every time I use the knob, I'm kind of second guessing whether it's working. The stereo was seemingly designed with the steering wheel volume buttons as the primary controls.
I've moved on to magnetic mounts with adhesive bases for any of my cars that have a good surface to stick them. Cheap and quick to install. In my girlfriend's kitchen we made a little electronics charging station out of a couple short-depth Ikea shelves and stuck 5-ish inch wide magnetic mounts to the fronts -- real handy for holding the phones and tablets while charging with the screens visible, along with keychains and various other ferrous junk.
I use a Quadlock mount case on my phone so I can attach it to the bike, but the wife likes slightly more fashionable cases :), so I want something dock-ish I can just drop a phone into.
I'm keen on a Qi charging dock for the car now that it's on iPhones, and am looking to get something that'll last a few years.
Doesn’t seem to have caught on though.
I was going to try and use MirrorLink on an aftermarket head unit I bought.
"Step 1. Go buy a special cable"
Well, now I now why no one talks about MirrorLink.
Apologies if my memory’s rusty; I may be getting some of the facts slightly off. But at one point (2012/13-ish) I wanted to build my own in-car entertainment system. ML seemed like a great way to build the part I wanted to build while still having an amp and basic FM for when that didn’t work correctly. It all came to a grinding halt when I found out only certified stuff would interoperate.
Even so, there could have been a standard hardware interface for this, if it was a requirement. But as it is, why would they bother, if they can sell you the car anyway?
(currently in a 14 year old car whose maps will never be newer than 2015, and that's OK with me.)
It's a default action for me and takes less than 5 seconds to plug in and drop into (or practically nothing for shorter journeys since I don't bother to plug in), and I'm going to get a wireless charging dock some time now that my phone supports it.
I'm glad our 2009 car doesn't have sat-nav. :)
That's odd to me. We have GPS in our Outback, but we use our phones. I'm pretty happy having the backup that works if we don't have a cell signal, so being glad you don't have it is odd... it's not like it adds significantly to the price.
I have a Nissan Altima SV with "all the options", including the built-in unit with touch-screen, Bluetooth, GPS navigation, rear-facing camera, etc. It started "acting up" a while back and pretty much doesn't even work anymore. The dealership quoted me ~$1200 USD for a new one.
My girlfriend drives the car, not me, and she just uses her phone (Pandora, Maps, etc.,) instead.
> Many of the affected sat-navs are still available online at a number of retailers.
Well OK then. No more buying TomTom.
Without that there's little point in using it.
Had one in a rental car recently, after battling with it for a bit reverted to trusty iOS Google Maps.
This may be an advantage of a dedicated GPS device over Google Maps, but it's certainly not an advantage of a dedicated GPS device over a smartphone.
A dedicated device with a predictable and unchanging UI could be very useful. The problem is that the convenience of the phone still outweighs the drawbacks for me.
Plus the advantages of a large, external antenna. Instead of holding my phone out of the sunroof...
Android Auto also has access to the car's wheel speed and steering angle sensors so it can use dead reckoning when underground. GPS units can't do that.
Hah, that's pretty interesting. To make a flippant joke, imagine if Facebook had this info, "Hey $AUTO_INSURER, 30% of people who visit your portal and log into it (we have this info because you added a 'Like our page on Facebook' iframe in the page) are bad drivers, you want to know who they are? Pay us and we'll tell you!".
Depends on your location. In my whereabouts, Google Maps routinely routes to "shortcuts" on dirt roads. They seem to use 70km/h legal limit for those roads. Thankyouverymuch, but I'll take next exit, do 10km extra and take fully paved route...
- A call or text at an inopportune time doesn't inhibit navigation.
- The dedicated UI is simpler and doesn't change; my GPS is about 8 years old and has stayed the same the whole time. Every Maps app I've had has changed a dozen damn times since then; I value the stable interface more than the bullshit bells and whistles. It needs to show me directions and be otherwise unobtrusive; a phone doesn't do that.
- Sometimes I turn my phone off to eliminate distractions
- Sometimes I'll hand my phone to my kid to play a game
A phone does a thousand things, but none of them as well as a dedicated device can do 1 or 2 items from the list.
This. I just spent the entire weekend outside of cell range. And I can't always download maps in advance because I rarely know where I'm going from day to day.
Can’t you download offline maps for the whole country?
On my phone I have two sets of offline maps for my + neighbor countries. Microsoft is free, Garmin was one time purchase. Both work OK without Internet.
Honestly, the way Google changes the goal posts and rearranges the furniture within its own apps, I stay well clear of that mess when I need consistency and reliability. My phone remains a phone when I'm driving and need an uninterrupted, non-internet, non-phone navigation device.
Downloading the data at a level of detail required for my needs would be many GB.
Technically that’s indeed many GB, practically modern phones have many more GB available, e.g. my one has 32GB flash memory.
- Privacy. A dedicated device with a one-way incoming signal (GPS) and no out-going signal cannot track you. This is not true of any smartphone app no matter what they claim or what their settings are.
I'll grant that the privacy benefit is pointless for the overwhelming majority people since they will leave their universal tracking device[1] turned on anyway.
As an aside: I was impressed that my really ancient Garmin, which displayed only latitude, longitude, altitude, and recorded waypoints, had a special button combination to instantly and securely erase everything it remembered.
[1] cellphone :)
I don't want people trying to call or message me on my "satnav" when I'm driving.
Google maps and whatever app on my phone is never going to be as easy to use, consistent, reliable and stress-free as a dedicated device. My Garmin doesn't try to up-sell and tell me about things I don't want to know every 5 minutes. Smartphones are a constant echo chamber of "do you want fries with that" micro-bullshit and irritation.
Unlike a phone, you also don't need a data connection to navigate anywhere in North America.
I may have to buy a cheap phone that does nothing except Google maps, and leave it in the car (but fear of thieves means I can't leave it on the windshield all the time, unlike a GPS which no one seems to steal anymore).
Good job killing your market TomTom - why would anyone buy a device from you ever again?
I actually have a built-in device in the car, but I don't use it, and instead use the TomTom device because the car one blocks input if the car is in motion. I guess whoever made it has never driven with a passenger.
The UI in my car categorizes points of interest then shows me a list sorted by range. It's a lot easier to parse while driving but the Google Maps functionality is good. Over a long distance I could see it being a bit hard to decipher. I believe my car also allows filtering by top-tier stations only.
I did not notice this functionality because I have learned to be very afraid of touching the screen while navigating with Google Maps for fear that the navigation will be cancelled and I will have to start my search over again.
Strap your cell phone to the dashboard of my 1200cc on/off road motorcycle, take it down the Dalton Highway from Fairbanks, AK until the Arctic Ocean stops you (more accurately, British Petroleum will stop you). When you return, I'd like to know 1. how your navigation experience was with no cell connection until you get to Deadhorse and 2. After being beat to death bouncing down 900 miles of gravel road, does the phone even still work?
I have lots of applications for GPS usage that have nothing to do with military use or an airplane, and I only use my phone in the car. Otherwise I probably need something with offline maps and less delicate than an iPhone. Without an unwieldy Otterbox case, phones are delicate little things not suited to harsh environments.
I suspect these UI elements are patented and Google/Here don't want to pay to incorporate them into their apps. After having and Android head unit, I think I'd rather go back to a Pioneer dedicated nav unit with Bluetooth connection to my cell/music.
They have no good options. They can send the update, and break the device. Or leave the old data be and let the device slowly downgrade. Or pay a fortune to replace who knows how many devices. Or try to maintain two versions of their data indefinitely.
Yes, that's some work. But a build pipeline to produce varying qualities of assets is not something TomTom should be a stranger to.
Not the lifetime they think it is, but the same "lifetime" that every manufacturer of products uses. It's not like you're going to get a much longer life from a phone as they also turn off updates at some point.
What is a little surprising is people still haven't learnt to a) distrust all MarketingSpeak and b) Google before purchase to find out how long the "new" product has been out.
I hear you, it’s frustrating that companies keep getting away with this. On the other hand: people don’t live forever. There are many thousands of new people each day. Each of whom have to relearn all the unwritten rules of society, while tribal knowledge withers with every changing of the guard. This is an inherent inefficiency in a market free of regulations, where consumers learn whom and what to (dis)trust.
I think, at some point, it’s more zen to accept certain behavioural quirks of the market as axioms and focus on how to work with them, instead of against them.
Sorry for turning this into yet another anti libertarian rant :)
It was also woefully (and I mean extra-frustratingly) out of date in Dunedin. And yet it was online with a fast 3g connection 8 hours a day.
Point being - looks like maybe they skipped map updates a while ago. :-P
Is there much point in buying. A dedicated sat nav anymore? It’s literaly cheaper in the long run to use an app
I haven't used the TomTom app in years although I've had it since the Treo 650 and then iPhone. Fired it up again. Subscription fee is now $20/yr but they gave all owners of the old app 3 years free. That means I've got 11 years of updates for my original $80 purchase. Not too shabby.
When I worked at TomTom around 2007-2009, they had just gone deep into debt buying Tele Atlas to acquire those maps for a hell of a lot more money than they originally expected to pay:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13747015
>The stunt that Garmin pulled of was, in my opinion, an ingenious head-fake that cost TomTom an enormous amount of money, almost a billion euros, and at the same time saved Garmin a whole lot of money by enabling them to renegotiate a better deal with Navteq, who was faced with losing their major customer if they didn't lower their prices.
TomTom was paying Akamai a lot of money in bandwidth charges so customers could download subscriptions of bigger maps more often. So I developed and tested a prototype using BitTorrent DNA to distribute them, but Akamai ended up lowering their prices because they didn't want to lose all those fees to BitTorrent.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7601083
>It turned out that BitTorrent would save TomTom about a million euros the first year, and more each year, since TomTom was distributing larger and larger maps, more frequently by subscription, and of course they hoped to get more customers over time. (See: http://www.sadtrombone.com ...)
>But then all of a sudden, out of the blue, Akamai unilaterally lowered the prices they were charging TomTom, saving us a lot of money immediately, presumably to prevent us from switching to BitTorrent (after I had made a bit of a scene at Akamai's GDC booth, in front Travis Kalanick and their sales people, about just having talked Bran Cohen and acquired a quote and beta testing agreement from BitTorrent, and insisted that Akamai tell me what their prices were and when we could start testing -- that may have motivated them to unilaterally lower their prices).
>So in the end, TomTom middle management decided to can the BitTorrent project, in spite of the fact that it was the TomTom founder Pieter Geelen's idea in the first place, and he'd been micromanaging the entire project and user interface all along, to make sure it would not just save us money, but also not have a negative impact on usability or customer perception.
(Or I will, at least until I get reasonable data costs internationally.)
I've got a Garmin and can see where they are coming from: A few updates ago my unit demanded that a SD card be installed before it would load an update because the internal memory wasn't enough.
I do feel a bit for TomTom. Bought a €120 nav set 3 years ago and the thing still works like a charm. Haven't spent a dime because of free updates and the road network here is already matured so nothing changes much.
'turn right on such and such a street' which is then un-intelligeble because the synth doesn't understand the local pronounciation.
Vs tomtom: turn right in 150 meters
shorter, and much easier. Besides, if I knew what those streets were called I'd likely not need a navigator in the first place...
Bought my grandmother the most expensive TomTom model (GO 6200 for approx $400) last year, great big display, hands down the worst voice assistant I have ever used. „Landsberger Street, Munich“ was turned into „Luxembourg“ or similiar. Google Maps voice recognition seems far superior to me.
I'll consider this a warning to wait as long as I can with upgrading my oldie, it's still working well though. 7 years and counting...
> Note: Downloading offline maps isn't available in some regions because of contractual limitations, language support, address formats, or other reasons.
https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/navigate-and-search-...
[0]: https://gspe21-ssl.ls.apple.com/html/attribution-94.html