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TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

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Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#41

Post by rob74 »

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…

I can trace the history of TomTom GPS devices: my first one was bought in 2008 at BestBuy in Seattle during a US trip (we called it "Dave" after the voice's name, grew kinda fond of it and even used it in Germany despite or maybe because of it reading German place names with a funny US "accent"). Of course it was limited by the technology available at the time: the touchscreen was low-res and reacted sluggishly, and the memory was limited, so you had to constantly swap between maps that you could store on the device and those backed up on your PC. I kept around a Windows installation just for updating this TomTom, because I wanted to avoid the hassle and was afraid of losing the maps when trying to transfer them. Then I finally bought a new TomTom in 2019, and it was much better: bigger, better screen, could fit a map for the whole world in memory, free lifetime updates, could connect to Wi-Fi to update itself, so no more fiddly PC software needed etc. But unfortunately TomTom's maps were extremely lacking in the very first country we wanted to use it in (Ecuador).

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#42

Post by 363849473754 »

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…

Despite using Google maps I like having a separate GPS navigation system like this running in the background as a backup. That’s in case if something happens to my phone and it no longer works, then I have a secondary GPS device.

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#43

Post by Semaphor »

tim_hutton wrote: post #38
Semaphor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you are on android, there’s a super simple and easy, lightly gamified, app to help improve their data: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete

This is an excellent app, it works very well. Thanks for linking.

I’ve been using it to update the > 4 years out-of-date streets around my apartment, it really makes it super easy just when walking somewhere.

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#44

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

brnt wrote: post #12
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!

A two-line text display is still a screen.

My dad's early-2000s Peugeot 407 also had a similar set-up: a red/orange monochrome dot-matrix display, with a surprisingly hot backlight, capable of displaying only the most rudiminary of roundabout diagrams and now-and-next directions. It did use TTS to pronounce street names with the wrong inflection and an overemphasis on "yAAARds" as units-of-distance for some reason. It was controlled by an easy-to-lose infrared remote-control D-pad: entering an address meant picking each letter one-by-one from an A-Z list until it could autocomplete the street name.

I was always envious of kids whose parents had contemporaneous Mercedes with their full-color 3-4" LCD screens - until they'd told me of how bad UX was across the board: stuff like sub-usable frame-rates, overpriced map-data updates, etc - and this never got better over time until Tesla showed-up with 17" full-screen 60fps Google satellite imagery right there. And still the rest of the car industry doesn't "get" good UX. Le sigh.

(Yes, I drive a Model X and I'll decide the next car I buy squarely on the car's software UX - because if they can't get something as simple as smooth framerates right then what else are they getting wrong in the car?)

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#46

Post by kleiba »

izacus wrote: post #34
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…

I find your post funny, since I'm regularly using TomTom on my Android phone because it has a better UI and some nicer car navigation features than Google Maps. Based on the number of downloads and TomTom's financials, I'm not even close to being alone. I've also seen it as a default navigation provider in many car brands so I find your bubble biased post pretty funny - and kinda sad, because we see a lot of those he…

Well, obviously TomTom is still in business but only because they adapted their original business model drastically. I think the original article is also along the same lines.

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#47

Post by gambiting »

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…

I have a modern car with a built-in satnav as well as Android Auto support, and yet I still use my TomTom 5000 - it's just better. Definitely better than crappy Google Maps, definitely better than volvo's built-in maps, and it's without any kind of comparison how much better it is than Apple Maps. You get in the car, it auto-selects the destination based on the patterns it learnt(so if you get in at 7am on a workday, it automatically selects "work" as your destination. Then around 4pm, it will select "Home". At 8pm it doesn't select anything because it has no record of you going anywhere around that time usually) - something super basic that no one has ever done.

And it has a lifetime subscription to traffic updates with a built-in SIM card that works internationally as well. Drove with it across Europe several times and it's still the best satnav you could have.

Re: TomTom’s new mapping platform and ecosystem

#49

Post by molly_radstowe »

fs111 wrote: post #10

I worked at Tele Atlas/TomTom until 10 years ago. There is literally nothing new in this announcement except that they are going to "steal" data from OSM now. sensor derived data, user generated content, camera vans all of that is not new. All this existed when I left, so did the people mentioned in this announcement that are still running the show. I always hoped they would eventually realize that they need a fresh…

How is it stealing data? Most geospatial companies use OSM data, with OSM's permission, and it's a smart thing to do b/c they have a great map. Why wouldn't a mapmaker work with OSM data?
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