State of Mac Support for GPS

This subject is the topic of the MacMap user group: <http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/macmap/>

At 11:06 AM -0700 7/9/07, Paul Schinder wrote:
>Kerry Smith wrote:
>> It has been a while since the last extended discussion of Mac- (and
>> driver-) friendly GPS units on Tidbits. I'm facing a cross-country drive
>> later this summer, and wondered whether much has changed since Adam's
>> December 2006 review article. Has Garmin followed through on their
>> promised commitment to the Mac platform, for example? Might readers have
>> recommendations for the best units currently on the market, with or
>> without MP3 support, Bluetooth and FM-traffic reception?
>
>Garmin has released two pieces of software for Mac OS X. Garmin
>WebUpdater updates the firmware on their GPS devices. Garmin POI Loader
>loads Points Of Interest (basically glorified waypoints) onto the
>devices. The holy grail, Map Source, which loads maps onto the devices,
>hasn't been released yet.

At Macworld SF 2006 (Jan 2006), Garmin announced that they were
porting their software to the Macintosh, and that all of it would be
available "by the end of the year".

Now it is July 2007 (18 months later), and Garmin has gone silent -
they have no data about when the rest of their software will be
available.

My advice is to avoid Garmin until they release the software they
promised for last year.

--
-- Marshall

Marshall Clow Idio Software <mailto:marshallidio.com>

Marshall Clow wrote:

> At Macworld SF 2006 (Jan 2006), Garmin announced that they were
> porting their software to the Macintosh, and that all of it would be
> available "by the end of the year".
>
> Now it is July 2007 (18 months later), and Garmin has gone silent -
> they have no data about when the rest of their software will be
> available.
>
> My advice is to avoid Garmin until they release the software they
> promised for last year.

But there aren't many alternatives. From a few months of reading the
Yahoo macmap list, it seems that only Tom Tom has Mac software, and Tom
Tom only makes automotive GPS's. So far as I can tell, only Garmin has
sports specific models (for running and bicycling). Garmin's not the
only one with handhelds for outdoors activities, but Magellan doesn't
have Mac software at all so far as I know. So there aren't many choices
if you want a GPS. People are annoyed at Garmin because of their
promise, but at least they now have some software for Mac OS X.
(Yesterday I forgot about Garmin Training Center, which is also now
available under Mac OS X. I can't use it because I don't have one of
the supported models.)

--
Paul Schinder
schinderpobox.com

Are there any considerations for GPS outside the US ?

I'm not a current GPS user but I foresee a personal business
need for GPS in Europe and later in China, Korea and Japan.

- Hank

I have a problem with Garmin because their design is so poor. Both the hardware and the software are ugly, often very ugly. The interface is a little nasty, and the sound is tinny too. Of course many Mac users are very concerned about these things, so it's worth mentioning.

John

if you have parallels and windows loaded already there is no real
issue with Garmin. Also, you only need Mapsource when you update the
map software... Once a year at the most. The rest of the time I
haven't needed to interface with the computer at all.

Bottom line: for most users a 2GB card and Mapsource once for the life
of the unit. I have an iQue 3600 and an etrex Cx for my bike. The
eTrex can mount as a USB mass storage device on the mac and the iQue
uses an SD card. Both allow the very in frequent track or waypoint
transfer when required.

Think of how you will use it... If you are a dedicated geek and
athelete the mac interface may be crucial, if you just want to find
your way in a new town, it may not really matter.

My 0.02.

Scott

If you are using a sports related Garmin GPS such as the Forerunner or Edge Cycling Computer, there is a Mac shareware program called Ascent (http://www.montebellosoftware.com) that beats anything Garmin or others have published - for Mac or Windows - hands down.

The GPS Passion forum for the Nuvi (and other GPS machines) is essential reading. (http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/default.asp and http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/forum.asp) is essential reading. It has EXTENSIVE info on how to do everything you want to do on a Garmin with a Mac.

As for the Nuvi in Europe, I just posted something to the forum above. In short, it was useful but the maps (provided by someone to Garmin) had some serious problems in Sicily--not knowing which village roads were too narrow, which were blocked and one-way, and even "roads" (gradia) that are just steps were not known to be impassible by the map. Outside of small towns or the medieval portion of cities, it was ok, and though not always effecient, it was pretty reliable.

One other problem: you have to choose a language, a single language, in which to operate. So if you want it to say "turn left" then it mangles--hilariously and often incomprehensibly--the Italian street names. If you want the street names pronounced correctly, then you have to cope with "gira alla sinestra." This seems like a flaw, since the data is in one file (use an Italian setting) and the directions are in another file (use the English direction-giving data).

Hope this helps Kevin

oshloel wrote:
> If you are using a sports related Garmin GPS such as the Forerunner
> or Edge Cycling Computer, there is a Mac shareware program called
> Ascent (http://www.montebellosoftware.com) that beats anything Garmin
> or others have published - for Mac or Windows - hands down. --

Ascent can import GPX files, so it's not necessary to have a Garmin
sports model. I use Ascent with my Garmin 60CSx, pulling the tracks off
into a .gpx file and importing the file into Ascent. Of course, I don't
get the heart rate and cadence information that I'd get from a fully
tricked out Edge 305, but on the other hand my GPS has an actual map
display, unlike the Edge. (If Garmin ever put out an Edge with a real
map display, I'd get one in an instant.)

Ascent continues to improve. They just recently let users control the
items in the various pop-up menus for things like activity, equipment,
etc. I'd still like to see it pull weather related information off the
Internet rather than have to fill it in, but maybe that will happen in
the future, too!

--
Paul Schinder
schinderpobox.com

At 2:57 AM -0700 7/10/07, Marshall Clow wrote:
>>Garmin has released two pieces of software for Mac OS X. Garmin
>>WebUpdater updates the firmware on their GPS devices. Garmin POI Loader
>>loads Points Of Interest (basically glorified waypoints) onto the
>>devices. The holy grail, Map Source, which loads maps onto the devices,
>>hasn't been released yet.
>
>At Macworld SF 2006 (Jan 2006), Garmin announced that they were
>porting their software to the Macintosh, and that all of it would be
>available "by the end of the year".
>
>Now it is July 2007 (18 months later), and Garmin has gone silent -
>they have no data about when the rest of their software will be
>available.
>
>My advice is to avoid Garmin until they release the software they
>promised for last year.

As I was checking out of the hotel just after MacWorld 2007, I got
into a conversation with a nice couple from the UK who were attending
Mac World for the first time. They were exhibitors of a piece of GPS
software called RouteBuddy. They had a tiny booth in the North Hall
on the wrong side of the Developer Tools kiosks and they said their
little booth was so swamped that they had run out of literature. They
were very happy about the whole show, even though they were exhausted.

According to the site: "RouteBuddy has developed the most advanced
GPS enabled road mapping application for the Mac. RouteBuddy provides
native Mac OS X support for Garmin and NMEA devices, and allows users
to manage and display their GPS data in conjunction with a set of
high-precision vector-based road maps."

<http://www.routebuddy.com/routebuddy/index.html>

I don't have a GPS device (yet) so can't vouch for RouteBuddy one way
or the other, but this appears to be a viable solution to the problem
of Garmin vaporware, while still utilizing Garmin hardware. It is a
Universal Binary, and the nice British lady said it is not a Windows
port but Mac software, and that their user base is very happy. FWIW.

DOD

dano wrote:
>
> As I was checking out of the hotel just after MacWorld 2007, I got
> into a conversation with a nice couple from the UK who were attending
> Mac World for the first time. They were exhibitors of a piece of GPS
> software called RouteBuddy. They had a tiny booth in the North Hall
> on the wrong side of the Developer Tools kiosks and they said their
> little booth was so swamped that they had run out of literature. They
> were very happy about the whole show, even though they were exhausted.
>
> According to the site: "RouteBuddy has developed the most advanced
> GPS enabled road mapping application for the Mac. RouteBuddy provides
> native Mac OS X support for Garmin and NMEA devices, and allows users
> to manage and display their GPS data in conjunction with a set of
> high-precision vector-based road maps."
>
> <http://www.routebuddy.com/routebuddy/index.html>
>
> I don't have a GPS device (yet) so can't vouch for RouteBuddy one way
> or the other, but this appears to be a viable solution to the problem
> of Garmin vaporware, while still utilizing Garmin hardware. It is a
> Universal Binary, and the nice British lady said it is not a Windows
> port but Mac software, and that their user base is very happy. FWIW.

No, it isn't. There's lots of nice GPS software for Mac OS X (not to
mention Unix software that runs on Mac OS X). I personally most often
use Ascent and Mac GPS Pro, with an occasional use of Google Earth.
There are all sorts of ways of moving tracks, waypoints, and routes on
and off your GPS (I use LoadMyTracks most often). By all accounts,
RouteBuddy is very nice software (I haven't tried it, since it seems
oriented to people who want to use maps on laptops in a car), but it
doesn't replace Garmin vaporware.

There are three things, because of proprietary formats, that you can
only do with Garmin software: 1) update the firmware on the GPS, 2) put
"points of interest" on the GPS, 3) put maps on the GPS. 1 and 2 can
now be done by Garmin Mac OS X software, Web Updater and POI Loader.
They both work for me, although there have been reports that they don't
work for certain models. Everyone wants 3, MapSource, but that isn't
out (yet? ever?). People get around that by using Windows MapSource
(and I've read that it's a horrible piece of software, and that we don't
just want a straight port to Mac OS X).

Probably the fastest way for us quickly to get high quality GPS software
to do these three tasks is for Garmin to open their formats. I doubt
that will happen, though.

>
> DOD
>
>
>


--
Paul Schinder
schinderpobox.com

On 7/18/07 5:39 AM, "dano" <danowell.com> wrote:

> As I was checking out of the hotel just after MacWorld 2007, I got
> into a conversation with a nice couple from the UK who were attending
> Mac World for the first time. They were exhibitors of a piece of GPS
> software called RouteBuddy. They had a tiny booth in the North Hall
> on the wrong side of the Developer Tools kiosks and they said their
> little booth was so swamped that they had run out of literature. They
> were very happy about the whole show, even though they were exhausted.

That would be Neil Wilson-Harris and his sister. Very nice people.

> According to the site: "RouteBuddy has developed the most advanced
> GPS enabled road mapping application for the Mac. RouteBuddy provides
> native Mac OS X support for Garmin and NMEA devices, and allows users
> to manage and display their GPS data in conjunction with a set of
> high-precision vector-based road maps."
>
> <http://www.routebuddy.com/routebuddy/index.html>

They have just announced RouteBuddy 1.3 is available immediately and a free
demo can be downloaded from:

<http://www.routebuddy.com/download/>

> It is a
> Universal Binary, and the nice British lady said it is not a Windows
> port but Mac software, and that their user base is very happy. FWIW.

Yup - they are both Mac users. I met/interviewed them during the MacExpo in
London.
--
Shawn King
Host/Executive Producer
Your Mac Life
http://www.yourmaclifeshow.com

My dad will soon be driving cross-country with his Garmin GPS unit,
so this topic came up at dinner the other night. I notice that
Garmin has a couple of new-ish software releases relevant to the Mac
platform:

MapConverter for Windows
http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3897

MapInstall/MapManager for Mac
http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3825

So, GPS folks, can a Mac user yet purchase and install new maps into
their Garmin GPS, using only a Mac?

Thanks,
Andrew

--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu

On 29 Apr 2008, at 14:44, Andrew Laurence wrote:

> My dad will soon be driving cross-country with his Garmin GPS unit,
> so this topic came up at dinner the other night. I notice that
> Garmin has a couple of new-ish software releases relevant to the Mac
> platform:
>
> MapConverter for Windows
> http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3897
I have used this, and it works beautifully. I run it under VMware
Fusion and output the files directly to a Mac folder where Map
Manager can see them.

> MapInstall/MapManager for Mac
> http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3825
Same. However, the Windoze version has a lot better feature set and
is easier to use, so far.

> So, GPS folks, can a Mac user yet purchase and install new maps
> into their Garmin GPS, using only a Mac?
As far as I can see right now, no, as the only thing missing is
native Mac format map files, but I haven't looked at Garmin's site
lately.

Hold the press. Here it **appears** that City Navigator NT is
available in native Mac format:
http://www8.garmin.com/cartography/mapSource/citynavnt.jsp


The Garmin software updater also appears to work well. I've run it on
the GPSMap 76Csx with no problems.

Dan Hinckley

On Apr 29, 2008, at 8:44 AM, Andrew Laurence wrote:

> My dad will soon be driving cross-country with his Garmin GPS unit,
> so this topic came up at dinner the other night. I notice that
> Garmin has a couple of new-ish software releases relevant to the Mac
> platform:
>
> MapConverter for Windows
> http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3897
>
> MapInstall/MapManager for Mac
> http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3825
>
> So, GPS folks, can a Mac user yet purchase and install new maps into
> their Garmin GPS, using only a Mac?
>

Yes. I've done it. They've released TOPO 2008 for Mac and City
Navigator 2009 for Mac. Just be sure you get the "for Mac" disks.
Forget about MapInstall, since all it does is copy (not just link) the
enormous map directory from /Library to ~/Library. I've put a
symbolic link from one to the other, and I don't even think that's
necessary.

I've been using the TOPO 2008 maps I installed on a 2Gb MicroSD chip
using MapManager for about a week in my Edge 705, and my copy of City
Navigator is being delivered today. There's no DRM to fool with.

So far as software for Mac goes, there's also Bobcat (currently in
beta), which is a routing tool, and for those with the running/cycling
Garmin models, there's Training Center. Online they have Motion Based
<http://trail.motionbased.com> , which is soon to become Garmin Connect.

Paul Schinder
schinderpobox.com

At 05:44 -0700 2008.04.29, Andrew Laurence wrote:

  [snip]
>So, GPS folks, can a Mac user yet purchase and install new maps into
>their Garmin GPS, using only a Mac?

I would like to amend that question to read:

   So, GPS folks, can a Mac user yet purchase and install new
   maps into their Garmin GPS, using only a Mac
   THAT LACKS AN INTEL PROCESSOR?

Thanks. Some of us who need Classic are still running G4s and G5s.

Art Evans

Now that I've received my City Navigator NT disk, some corrections.

>> On Apr 29, 2008, at 8:44 AM, Andrew Laurence wrote:
>>
>>> My dad will soon be driving cross-country with his Garmin GPS unit,
>>> so this topic came up at dinner the other night. I notice that
>>> Garmin has a couple of new-ish software releases relevant to the Mac
>>> platform:
>>>
>>> MapConverter for Windows
>>> http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3897
>>>
>>> MapInstall/MapManager for Mac
>>> http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3825
>>>
>>> So, GPS folks, can a Mac user yet purchase and install new maps into
>>> their Garmin GPS, using only a Mac?
>>>
>>
>> Yes. I've done it. They've released TOPO 2008 for Mac and City
>> Navigator 2009 for Mac. Just be sure you get the "for Mac" disks.
>> Forget about MapInstall, since all it does is copy (not just link)
>> the enormous map directory from /Library to ~/Library. I've put a
>> symbolic link from one to the other, and I don't even think that's
>> necessary.

I got the names switched. Forget about MapManager, which just does
the big copy from /Library to ~/Library. MapInstall is what you use
to install the maps on your GPS. And the symlink I originally made, /
Library/Application Support/Garmin/Maps to ~/Library/Application
Support/Garmin/Maps caused problems, because it wanted to put a file
containing unlock codes in that directory. Now there's an actual ~/
Library/Application/Support/Garmin/Maps directory with symlinks to the
*.gmap directories in the /Library/... As I said before, I don't think
it's really necessary, but I did it anyway.

Incidentally, if you're using case sensitive HFS+, you'll need to fix
the Info.xml in the *.gmap directories. The software itself is
looking for info.xml. I just made symbolic links (ln -s Info.xml
info.xml), just in case some of the software is looking for one and
some for the other. Garmin is now aware of the problem, and say the
software will be fixed.

>> I've been using the TOPO 2008 maps I installed on a 2Gb MicroSD
>> chip using MapManager for about a week in my Edge 705, and my copy
>> of City Navigator is being delivered today. There's no DRM to fool
>> with.

There's no DRM for TOPO 2008, but there is for City Navigator 2008.
The procedure to get unlock codes is online, and not particularly good
since there's little indication that you've succeeded. The box you
type the serial number of your GPS and the City Navigator code from
the back of the jewel box go blank, and the indication that it worked
is not very evident. But it does work, and if you go to your account
on my.garmin.com afterwards you can find your unlock codes. You enter
them using any of the Garmin software, and then the maps are unlocked
for use on your Mac and (I hope, since MapInstall is still grinding
away on my Powerbook) on your GPS's.

Tomorrow's ride is going to be on a road bike rather than today's
mountain bike ride, so I'm going to pop the City Navigator chip into
my Edge 705 and see how that works. One weird thing I noticed when
looking at a route in Bobcat is that detail using TOPO 2008 shows in
in larger views than detail in City Navigator. I was looking at a
route beginning at my mother's house in Ohio, and when I switched from
TOPO to City Navigator, her street disappeared. But City Navigator
actually knew about it if I just zoomed in.

Paul Schinder
schinderpobox.com

Well, I have a Garmin 360 and effortlessly installed the new 2008 set
of maps, using only my MBP, so I believe the support for Mac by Garmin
is essentially complete. The only question I would have is the
sourcing and installation of POI, which are really neat on a long trip.

Murray

On Apr 30, 2008, at 7:31 AM, Murray Kastner wrote:

> Well, I have a Garmin 360 and effortlessly installed the new 2008 set
> of maps, using only my MBP, so I believe the support for Mac by Garmin
> is essentially complete. The only question I would have is the
> sourcing and installation of POI, which are really neat on a long
> trip.

If you're talking about custom POI, Garmin's "POI Loader" will do
that. Installing CIty Navigator means that I now have a huge list of
POI (restaurants, gas stations, etc.). Some of them in my local area
are out of date, but most seem to be correct.

> Murray
>

--
Paul Schinder
schinderpobox.com

I am used to update by POI al the time.

Never had a problem.

I use the dutch database from www.flitsplaat.nl