Customer Reviews

Route 66 Route USA 2004 (Mac)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

As much as I want to highly recommend this software, I can't. After running the install (which took way to long for 3 CDs) and applying the latest update (3.6.0.3) I ran the software on my 1.33 Ghz 17" Powerbook with 1 Gb RAM; and it was slow. For some reason this application is slow in redrawing a window that is being resized; I'm talking a 1-2 second lag sometimes in the refresh when you resize or scroll a window. Overall performance is somewhat sluggish as well.

The GPS I have (TN200) was recognized and works fine.

Unfortunately overall usability could be better.

If you think about it, street-mapping software with a GPS is intended to be run on a laptop (duh) so you can track where you are and have the software assist in navigation. I have the fasted Powerbook currently shipping, loaded with RAM, and the software performance is tolerable (I suppose I could use a Dual G5 and get better performance but I haven't figured out how to attach a 2,500 mile extension cord to my car...maybe a small Honda generator).

I can get maps and routes faster and in a more usable format from MapQuest when I'm at home. Unless the performance of the software is improved this will only be usable on the fastest Macs.

In addition, the routes that are generated are not very usable. For example, I generated a map and route from where I live in Shingle Springs (CA) to Walnut Creek (CA) where I catch BART (local subway system) to go to the San Francisco MacWorld Expo, a trip I make every January. The software generated a very interesting route. I generally drive down US 50 to US 80 to US 680. The software sent me on the exact same path but it reported a very different looking street route. It seems that every time there's an overlap on a freeway of two highways (i.e. a local highway and a state/fed highway that share the same pavement) the software shows that as a route change. Using the above example here is what I got: US 50 to El Dorado Freeway to US 50 to Capital City Freeway to I80 Business Loop to US 50 to W Sacramento Freeway to Highway 113 to Highway 12 to US 680 to Luther E Gibson Freeway. That is technically correct but confusing as h*ll. Each of these "segments" are reported with their own distances and it looks like you're merging and changing freeways all the time. If I had never driven this route before I'd be in trouble looking for all these route changes when in fact there are only 2 (50 to 80 to 680). The rest are all those nice little signs you seen on the side of the road (not navigation signs but memorial signs) that say things like "Luther E Gibson" freeway, which is really 680.

If there is a way via preferences to change this behavior I haven't found it (see P.S.).

So, the software seems to slow to run effectively on many current Mac laptops and it gives very strange driving routes (the maps look fine), which doesn't make for very a useful product. Technically it does work, but come on!

And I haven't even talked about how it works or features it should have (like the ability to speak these routes as you travel with your GPS attached).

I am very glad that someone is producing map/street route software for the Mac and the Route 66 people should be congratulated for entering the Mac market space. But there is plenty of room for improvement with this software. I look forward to the next version!

I gave them an extra star for entering the Mac market...

P.S.

I did find that you can turn on "Concise route descriptions" which helps a great deal in removing the confusing route information. It still shows the local highways as the main route but the State and US markings are displayed as well. Also, the longer I've used the software, the faster the screen refresh seems to be. It may have to do with it loading maps from disk and once they are cached things speed up. Once I get used to how this application works it might be more usable than I first thought. I'll try and post an update after I've used it for a couple of weeks.

After reading all the negative reviews, I almost returned my copy without opening it, but I'm glad I didn't. If there was some better software out there it would be a different situation. In it's limited form it's still quite useful.

It took me a while to figure out the backwards interface, and there's not even any real documentation. It did crash on me when trying to print a turn-by-turn route, but I went to their website and installed the latest software update, and that fixed it. Its redraw speed is fine on my G4 powerbook, and it doesn't crash when zooming in like others have said. The redraw problems others have complained about only happen when your display is set to thousands instead of millions of colors.

I haven't been successful in using my Garmin Vista GPS with this software. I set it to NMEA mode, like it said, and it can see the Vista, but it just says waiting for information, even though the GPS has a satellite lock.

Another problem is that the points-of-interest are very hit and miss. In the Seattle area, it's missing a lot of big retailers who have been at the same location for a lot longer than the map data is old. It doesn't see Costco, IKEA, Safeway, or Albertsons, except but a few locations.

For the price, I think it's near or better the quality of similarly-priced shareware apps, but it's not quite commercial-grade quality yet. Hopefully they'll improve this with free updates, downloadable from their website. Your only other street-mapping option on Mac OS X is to run a Windows version inside Virtual PC, which I'm not about to do.

This product isn't perfect, but it's quite good considering this is the first time I've seen it and could not find any mapping software for OS X a year ago.

The interface is a little strange, but once you get used to it, it seems fine.

The detail of the maps seems very good, although some out-of-the-way small towns (with a few hundred people) may have little to no detail. It did, however, find two addresses that Yahoo Maps and MS Streets had no record of, which I thought was impressive.

One thing that most mapping software is horrible at is printing options -- the options for Route 66 I thought were very good.

The redraw speed while *scrolling* (not zooming in/out) was a little slow and could probably be easily fixed with an update that cached surrounding map details better. No matter how much detail I had turned on or what my zoom level was, it never took more than 1.5 seconds to redraw while scrolling. This may depend on how fast your computer is and how much memory you have -- I have 1.1gb of RAM and Route 66 was using 212mb according to "top" (command line resource reporter).

The GPS compatibility is nice, but haven't tried it yet -- I need to find a USB cable for my eMap GPS.

This software is very much worth supporting since I know of no other mapping software for the Mac currently and this software costs $35-$40. In my opinion, it's worth every penny of the $40 I paid for it.

I anxiously awaited my copy of Route 66 for MAC. As a recent convert from Windows XP, I have been spoiled by Microsoft Streets and Trips maping software. I was at first very pleased with this program as it has very complete and accurate streets and directions for my area, (a suburb of Los Angeles). It is not completely intuitive and the user instructions are somewhat difficult to follow. It does not come with any manual or written directions and the website has scant information. The FAQ section is worthless. However with a little patience one can use it without too many problems by trial and error if you have ever used Microsoft Streets and Trips, it is very similar.

However, now for the down sides. It will not print directions or strip maps. I have a new copy of Panther, (not an upgrade) on a new G5 with top end everything. I have tried it on laserjet and ink jet printers with the same results. Every time I hit the print command, the program either freezes and must be forced to quit or it will quit unexpectedly and all your directions are lost so you must then again open the program and find all the streets and so on over and over. It will Print the map using the current view command but you must manually write all the directions.

I have tried to contact the company for support but they do not list a phone number and the only way to contact them is by email. I have written them several times over the last two weeks and all I get is an automatic response saying the email was received by Route 66 and channeled to the proper section. The have not responded and they have not apparantly fixed the bugs.

There are a few other more minor problems, for expample, when you put in all the destinations you want to map out it will sometimes pick a less desireable or illogical route than you might if you analyse the streets for density and traffic controls. However it will get you there and you an alter the route without too much difficulty.

Overall I am mixed on the program. For the moment, there is nothing to compare to Microsoft Streets and Trips other than this for MAC and it has potential, but I need to print out routes quickly and easily without all the problems I am now experiencing. I would say wait to see if they work out the bugs and then you will have a great alternative to the PC programs available.

Like many of the other reviews I found the software to run a little slow. I haven't had any problems with crashes. Works with my Garmin GPS. User interface takes a little getting used to. It is a good start but updates are needed. I am also just glad to have a product for the MAC, so I will support Route 66 for that. Hopefully we will see continued improvement.

It's unfortunate that this is the only street mapping software currently available on the Mac. I should have kept my money.
The entire program is awfully slow on my PowerBook. I can't believe how long it takes to zoom or scroll. No really, it's slower than what you're imagining right now.
The user interface is very confusing and clunky. They need to read up on Mac user interface standards.
The GPS interface seems to be a 2nd thought. You can't add waypoints with GPS coordinates. The program doesn't update your itinerary as you progress along. All it does it draw your position on the map. That's it. Never mind vocal turn-by-turn directions.
Outdated maps! Holy cow. It's missing roads, and old roads are still there. It wouldn't be so bad if you could plan routes where the roads should be, but the program restricts you to the roads in it's database. It makes route planning on new roads impossible.

Pros: Mac OS X native support

Cons:
1) Streets that should exist and have existed for many years do not appear in your application (out of date maps)
2) Addresses on this streets are not in the map database while other addresses appear with no streets if you run the curser over the area
3) printing of driving directions only print a picture of the route not step by step directions
4) sometimes while driving, the GPS location marker disappears from the map
5) the refresh rate of the GPS marker on the map is slow to update.
6) no speech support
7) the step by step directions that appear in the application do not progress based on GPS position.

One last note, you can not return the product to the company for any reason. I tried because of the 7 issues above any was sent the following email.
----------------------------
On Feb 18, 2005, at 5:06 AM, ROUTE 66 Customer Support wrote:

Dear customer,

Unfortunately I have to inform you that ROUTE 66 does not make refunds for the purchased products.

Kind regards,

ROUTE 66 Customer Support
-------------

This goes to show you how much the company really stands behind their products.

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 2005.. 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"!

I bought this software because, well, it was the only one available for OS X. This is beta stage software at best - it doesn't tend to crash, but the UI is really poor. It is as if 12 different people wrote different pieces of the program and then tried to cobble them together. Nothing is very intuitive, and things that should be simple are cumbersome. The routes are sometimes often adequate, but not infrequently poor choices or just wrong. For instance, I tried to plot a route from Durham to Salisbury, MD. I had a nearly impossible time 'forcing' it to choose the most logical/shortest/fastest route. It continually tried to send me 100 mi. out of my way. Even when I roadblocked all of the roads it wanted to send me on, it sent me 250 mi out of my way rather than the most direct route.
I hope this software improves. If the company is motivated, it could be the basis for a really good program. However, any company that would put something this haphazard on the market with almost a complete lack of documentation AND no competition is unlikely to put much effort into this. After all, why should they?

In summary, if you need a map program for your mac that has a lot of points of interest, a good database of roads (although poor search engine), GPS input capabilities, doesn't require a CD in the drive, and 35 bucks doesn't seem like too much for slow, unintuitive, occasionally counterintuitive information and interface, go for it.

This product is terrible. Create a route from Alabama to Colorado and the generated route uses US highways without Interstates. Also in preferences uses gallons/100 miles instead of miles/gallon. Obviously this was not reviewed by any US citizens prior to release. The only plus is the map data is decent so they MIGHT update the executable.