It's a tough field for Garmin to plough. I wish them luck as with any iOS developer but I would not want to be trying to compete against free integrated apps from Apple with a $32 version in any field. I suspect they might feel they have a shot after all the iHater's comments about Apple's maps but I suspect that is to be a shorted lived issue.

I don't think anyone hates Apple maps $32 worth.

Do any of the other nav apps allow offline navigation? This is Navigon's huge advantage IMO. I've been using it since before Garmin bought them and still like it. For my daily commute I use Waze for their traffic info plus I get to feel like a contributor to that info, but anytime I'm going far I use Navigon. One of the other nice things about Navigon is that you can pick and choose which state's maps to store on your phone.

Actually, I dislike Apple Maps $49 worth. So I have StreetPilot for iOS. I'd had a NUVI for years, and it was wonderful. It took some trauma to the charging port about the time I got my iPhone 4. Granted Apple Maps isn't full-featured on the 4, but after trying Waze (cute, but somehow thought my office was 4,200 miles from my house) and MotionX Drive (best voice by far, but too-small interface elements for driving) it was a shot at Garmin - as Street Pilot (mostly) uses the same interface as a NUVI. There are some surprising quirks - searching for POIs does not live-update the found list for distance and direction - you have to go back and just re "OK" the search - annoying and dangerous. And some interface elements are smaller than their NUVI counterparts, but not as bad as MotionX. As for the social aspect - couldn't care less. I'm trying to get somewhere not shmooze while driving. I'll likely get traffic added, though with Waze and MotionX it often seemed that they knew when a traffic issue started but not when it was over. More than once I took a detour only to look at the supposed traffic crunch parallel to me - and there was none. The traffic on the local radio was at least as good if not better.

Foursquare has always been a meh to me. But if they could figure out a way to be able to send alerts about bad traffic, accidents etc and then offer to route around them, that could be a useful 'social' trick.

I had Navigon well before Apple maps, and while Apple's directions work fine in some cases, I really do like that Navigon has the entire maps on the device - MUCH more useful in cases where we're on vacation in areas with spotty cell coverage (Colorado, Wyoming, Montana in the past year, Europe as well - and I certainly don't want to be paying for roaming or a European data plan on AT&T and be chewing it up with maps!).

So you don't really have to hate any other mapping solution to find Navigon useful... and I actually hate the Navigon address entry piece more than I hate any of the other solutions (but the rest makes up for it)!

Apple Maps and Google Maps are brilliant if you can guarantee a reliable data connection but absolutely useless without one, such as when I'm in Europe without data roaming or up in the Scottish highlands where a voice signal is rare enough and 3G data is practically unheard of outside the bigger towns.

Offline usability is why I was happy to pay for TomTom's Western Europe app  - loads cheaper than the equivalent separate sat nav system and you even get free map updates when the app gets updated.

I must be missing something here. If you don't have a data connection, how does the app know to tell you when to turn a corner, or if you've made a wrong turn?

Quote:

Originally Posted by joseph_went_south 

I must be missing something here. If you don't have a data connection, how does the app know to tell you when to turn a corner, or if you've made a wrong turn?

The iPhone and iPad w/cellular have built-in GPS receivers.