Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

tomtom.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 477 posts

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#11

Post by kleiba »

LightG wrote: post #9
kleiba wrote: post #3

For the youngens here on HN: TomTom was once one of the leading manufacturers of GPS navigation systems for cars - purchased as an accessory that was stuck to the wind screen. This was in a time before every car had a screen built in, and before everyone had a smart phone with Google Maps in their pocket. I guess that product is a prime example for becoming irrelevant by society progressing. I actually still use an o…

Care to elaborate on 'since I don't have a smart phone'? That was probably the most interesting part of the whole comment!

I wouldn't know what to elaborate?!

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#12

Post by brnt »

kleiba wrote: post #3

For the youngens here on HN: TomTom was once one of the leading manufacturers of GPS navigation systems for cars - purchased as an accessory that was stuck to the wind screen. This was in a time before every car had a screen built in, and before everyone had a smart phone with Google Maps in their pocket. I guess that product is a prime example for becoming irrelevant by society progressing. I actually still use an o…

> old car that doesn't have a screen (well, it does, but didn't come with a GPS built in

I used to pick up and deliver lease cars from/to customers, and I'll never forget the Audi which had navigation, but no screen! There was a two line text display, which would show textual directions. It was an interesting experience!

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#13

Post by ShivShankaran »

kleiba wrote: post #3

For the youngens here on HN: TomTom was once one of the leading manufacturers of GPS navigation systems for cars - purchased as an accessory that was stuck to the wind screen. This was in a time before every car had a screen built in, and before everyone had a smart phone with Google Maps in their pocket. I guess that product is a prime example for becoming irrelevant by society progressing. I actually still use an o…

>since I don't have a smart phone

holup. what do you mean? like you don't own one or don't use one?

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#14

Post by lukeqsee »

nevi-me wrote: post #8

It sounds like TT will be a net taker from OSM, I hope they contribute as much as they benefit, as otherwise it would sound like they're giving up on prop-mapping by cutting costs. It's a press release I suppose, but saying the world lacks an open platform, and processing to use such open platform, sounds a bit weird

Every company starts as a "net taker" until they find their contribution niche, so I'm not concerned. Besides, the positive effect of more eyes seeing OSM and more companies caring about its quality cannot be understated. (I can point to dozens of examples of this.)

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#15

Post by rob74 »

lukeqsee wrote: post #5

Welcome to the party, TomTom! A little more healthy competition never hurts. :) Seriously though, the prestige of OSM and the companies building on it is only growing—a success story of epic proportions to the open source and open data communities!

Yeah, we were in Ecuador in 2019 with a TomTom device, and the newest maps were years behind "ground truth" - at one point we ended up on a bypass road and the GPS kept telling us to "turn right" when there was no intersection anywhere to be seen. We then turned to OpenStreetMap (OSMAnd app) and it was a lifesaver...

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#16

Post by beardyw »

kleiba wrote: post #3

For the youngens here on HN: TomTom was once one of the leading manufacturers of GPS navigation systems for cars - purchased as an accessory that was stuck to the wind screen. This was in a time before every car had a screen built in, and before everyone had a smart phone with Google Maps in their pocket. I guess that product is a prime example for becoming irrelevant by society progressing. I actually still use an o…

TomTom without GPS - what did it do?

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#17

Post by 6stringmerc »

So who is going to be the first to merge street data with a driving sim so I can race around familiar streets at my wont?

Of course it’ll eventually lead to GTA VR ugh but I can at least get what I want…blasting a Jesko on the Dallas north tollway at full chat

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#18

Post by kleiba »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #4
kleiba wrote: post #3

For the youngens here on HN: TomTom was once one of the leading manufacturers of GPS navigation systems for cars - purchased as an accessory that was stuck to the wind screen. This was in a time before every car had a screen built in, and before everyone had a smart phone with Google Maps in their pocket. I guess that product is a prime example for becoming irrelevant by society progressing. I actually still use an o…

My father in law had a TomTom and maps were always years behind reality (and he paid for several updates as they promised the changes would be in there, but no), so updating or not does not matter.

Good point. I've certainly run into situation where my TomTom got confused with reality, but on the other hand, just a couple of weeks ago the built-in GPS in my wife's car was totally unaware of some high-way in France and thought we were going cross-country through some fields for quite a long time :)

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#19

Post by kleiba »

beardyw wrote: post #16
kleiba wrote: post #3

For the youngens here on HN: TomTom was once one of the leading manufacturers of GPS navigation systems for cars - purchased as an accessory that was stuck to the wind screen. This was in a time before every car had a screen built in, and before everyone had a smart phone with Google Maps in their pocket. I guess that product is a prime example for becoming irrelevant by society progressing. I actually still use an o…

TomTom without GPS - what did it do?

I think you misread - I was talking about the screen in my car which is used mostly for the in-car entertainment system (formerly known as "radio") and some other controls. But it is not connected to a GPS, so I'm using an external TomTom device for the rare cases where I need it.

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#20

Post by tannhaeuser »

kleiba wrote: post #3

For the youngens here on HN: TomTom was once one of the leading manufacturers of GPS navigation systems for cars - purchased as an accessory that was stuck to the wind screen. This was in a time before every car had a screen built in, and before everyone had a smart phone with Google Maps in their pocket. I guess that product is a prime example for becoming irrelevant by society progressing. I actually still use an o…

> a prime example for becoming irrelevant by society progressing

There's still the use case of driving in remote areas with less-than-ideal or expensive connectivity (though probably those spots don't really require sophisticated nav), and also that you might not want to tell ad monopolies your location data.

Post reply on HN