Route 66 Route USA 2007 (Mac) Description:

Route 66 Route USA 2007 (Mac) review:
4 stars (It works with OSX Tiger, but...) - Seller says this doesn't work with Tiger, but it works. All GPS road map doesn't give the shortest route and this is no exception. Mine came bundled with a GPS receiver that I was surprised worked very well. I just wish I can just install US roads without installing Canada and other non-essential that takes up hard drive space and slows down the search. I'm sure Canadians would want the same if they want to use this and not have to install US info unless they want to. Could be made simpler and faster intuitive locate of streets. I don't need every thing that says San Antonio like a bake shop when I am looking for the city map of San Antonio or just a street. 2007 is almost over and I don't see any updates on their website. Overall I would give this a nod if you want to bring your iBook or PB and use it as a GPS road map, otherwise, spend an extra $300 and get a handheld black and white screen GPS.
1 stars (Embarassing) - Route 66 should hang their developer heads in shame for putting this product out.



The app seems to be a bare minimum port from its Windows version. The first indication of this is the ugly port of the "help" contents (which are an obvious attempt at mimicking the Windows help system, via a Java applet)



UI - No keyboard shortcut to go between zoom in/out and drag. No way to convert GPS coords to decimal, or to search by lat/lon. The UI is a clunky artifact of the mid-90's, if not before. Type in a search and hit return... nothing happens.. you have to click on "Find". Compare and contrast simple navigation to Google Maps! Case closed.



Speed - I'm running on a 1.33 ghz PowerBook, with the most recent Route 66 patch. Using 16mb of cache (in the preferences) doesn't help much. This is 2007.. surely you would expect a dedicated app to outperform Google map. Not this one. I am not kidding when I say this is slow. You may say "well, run it on a dual processor G5!"... and I would counter with "I want to use this on the road, and I have a fast laptop - that should be sufficient".



Having written that, I'll note that it's possible to get some use out of the program, and the GPS status works fine (I got the Polstar PGM-111 via Delou bundle). I don't like the feeling that I have no other choice for a consumer GPS / Mapping app.



Hopefully the resurgence of the Mac as a platform will encourage more capable companies to put out a mapping program that's better thought out. The problem with Route 66 is that they appear to need some serious competition in order to shame them into putting out a quality product.



Please, Apple, put out an "iTravel"!
1 stars (Avoid bad software like this.) - Assuming that you've read the other reviews, I'll try not to repeat too much. I used to think that Street Atlas was a little clunky. Now I just wish there was an OSX version.



This software is inexcusably slow. Launching, zooming, redraws and GPS tracking all require actual waiting periods. It's not unusual to wait 10-15 seconds for the beachball to stop. If this were just an initial load time or caching issue, I wouldn't mind as much, but everytime you move the map at all, there's the long wait again.

On any machine I've used, Google maps is a wonderful thing. This software had the whole 2.4GB of maps on the hard drive, and it's painful to use.



This software in anything but intuitive. Where the simple "from" and "to" functions to get directions. Entering points to be added to a route is just plain difficult.



GPS users: You cannot locate a point on the map using coordinates. You cannot get the coordinates from a point on the map. Though the software does respond to an attached GPS, and therefore must use coordinates internally, they are not user usable in any way.



Basic software techniques like pulldown menus and text boxes are clunky and poorly implemented. I haven't seen that level of bad software in years.



As a rule, purchased software on my hard drive should at least be as good as using a website like maps.google or mapquest.



If this is the only mapping software you can get for OSX, just do without.