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woaaah.
peace out tomtom/mapquest

Are you kidding? You think this hack job of a navigation solution even compares in the least to having a tiny GPS chip in your phone? Why would anyone want this? Who actually carries a traditional ipod without also carrying a phone at the same time. GPS and even A-GPS using cell towers is so simple, cheap, and convenient to integrate into cell phones that this is really a solution looking for a problem. Maybe if this was released back in 2001 it would have made sense.
 
Solution

Throw the SDK out, and let the market decide.
There will be a working GPS out for the iPhone by mid summer.

How?
Well, you make a iPhone GPS dock. For a car. Then add the GPS to the dock.
Boom! You get GPS navigation, the iPhone does the data crunching, Enlarged Google map to get you in. Celeb voices from Ratatouille do the voice overs (because Jobs hasn't plugged it enough yet)

2) Not driving? Then purchase the iPhone GPS dongle. Forerunner can do 10 hours before charging. i'd say that people usually recharge before that, or would be able to use their GPS or iPhone in an intermittent way to extend the battery until the next charge?

If Garmin can fit a GPS in the Forerunner 405 that's a nice watch size, I think a slightly enlarged iPhone could fit one in. There's nothing holding Apple back from making the iPhone in different shapes and sizes this year. They're scaling back production at the mo, Penryn chips awaiting, holdups with the Air, Tablet and other things. But, Apple will come strong on adding more things to the iPhone every month pretty much.
 
guys, relax. whenever gps gets included in iphone 2 (or even 3) and ipods, it'll need an interface. and i'm guessing apple won't go with any 3rd party software for that, instead trying to re-invent the whole thing. so podmaps might just be one element of something they're developing.

also, it sounds like they're trying to enhance the podcast thing. think location based podcast offerings. you enter the hotel, and be offered to download guest infos and the restaurant menu.
 
This would be great on vacation. Not only could you find where you need to go but you could learn the history and sites to see. Can't wait to see what it will finally look like.
 
Are you kidding? You think this hack job of a navigation solution even compares in the least to having a tiny GPS chip in your phone? Why would anyone want this? Who actually carries a traditional ipod without also carrying a phone at the same time. GPS and even A-GPS using cell towers is so simple, cheap, and convenient to integrate into cell phones that this is really a solution looking for a problem. Maybe if this was released back in 2001 it would have made sense.


iPhone has cell towers positioning.
and Wifi -positioning now.

Yet people keep demanding GPS or they won't buy (or will buy and moan 3 ways till sunday about how they were hard done by).

This isn't a nav solution it's a way of preparing content (either your self or others) to use within a solution, or a range of solutions that can be offered at various price points to suit users need and inability to know where they are and where they are going.
 
GPS will come to the iPhone, but this idea will work with any pointer, I would think.
And inside a museum the iPhone router ID positioning system would work better than GPS. They could put a signal at each position on the tour.
As you move outdoors, GPS could take over for the current cell tower triangulation. (Which works pretty well in a city).
 
The iPhone/pod could be the exact perfect GPS device. It could have road and topographic maps for both driving and hiking. You take it with you everywhere, so you aren't likely going to leave it in the car to get stolen.

It would be easy to incorporate the very desirable text-to-speech feature and would automatically down the iPod sound when phoning and when the directions are spoken.

This all would really increase the value of the iPhone/pod for the user and for Apple. Maps and points of interest updates could be sold thru iTunes and the update experience would be far better than what is available now.

GPS would be great for us. And GPS could take Apple into some pretty dynamic places that may not be obvious to everyone right now.
 
Could be fun for treasure hunt games.
You get clues not directions to a landmark or location.
At that location is a wifi-point that will give you the next clue.
 
Told ya so

fnr7nk.jpg



;)
 
out of curiosity..
how much hard drive space would an interactive road map of the continental united states take up?

Between 900 and 1800 MB, depending on the amount of Points-of-Interest included. That would be for US, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

Diode said:
Other than a walking tour I cannot see how this is all that useful. GPS units are so accurate and inexpensive these days, podmap seems sort of late to the game.

Unless your iphone/touch gained some sort of gps functionality ;-)

I agree. GPS works better and more accurate. I'll just wait for tom tom or any third party to make a GPS accessory for the iPhone.
 
So all that yelling and exclamation points is your way of telling Apple, via us instead of feedback, that you want the next iPhone to contain a GPS Antenna, as well as a cellphone radio and WIFI unit? Will you also spew exclamation points when the price rises, the thickness increases and the battery life decreases?

You'll laugh, my /current/ phone has a GPS antenna, as well as four-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE radio, 802.11 AND Bluetooth. Also a touchscreen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Real-time REAL GPS navigation? You betcha. Still camera? Well, a little fixed focus one. Battery lasts between 2 and 4 days, depending on usage. And I paid $275 for it.

Statements like "EVERY freakin phone has GPS" make your entire post suspect, since I have yet to see one.

Every freaking phone HAS GPS, because it has been made mandatory by the FCC, for e911 purposes.

They might exist,

Just not in Apple La-La land.
 
Psh, GPS is so completely pointless. Some of us don't want unnecessary stuff like that cluttering up our phones.

Yeah, and some of us don't live in freaking Kansas, where you can watch your dog run away for 3 days :)
 
seriously gps?

i know i cant speak for everybody but how many people actually use gps? i have never used it, seen it, or needed it. actually come to think of it, there is actually no one that i know who relies on it as much as these people seem to express. no i dont live in the middle of kansas, nor do i need to find 102.4852376865245 street so i dont really see why this is such a big fuss. are google maps too complicated? maybe this new podmap will set things straight because as i see it, more people have ipods and iphones, than those who have gps.
 
it's a function of where you live .. as i live in a major city and sold my car 2 years ago, gps is pretty much useless to me - you can never really acquire a decent signal quickly enough when you bounce between tall buildings and a decent underground public transportation system - nor do i want to always carry around something the size of a small novel .. it would be much more useful to me to have a map of where i'm going and the spots i'm planning on hitting as i typically have to plan this anyhow before i'm out my apartment door - and having this on a portable device (i[phone|pod]) that i'm already carrying would be most welcome

car and gps integration is only really useful for an ipod if you spend most of your time in a car driving from building to building .. if you spend most of your time on your feet walking from place to place in a maze of tall buildings and twisty little passages (all alike) - then i think you can understand right away why a podmap would be most helpful - but i don't think this translates to most big sky americans quite yet ..
 
it's a function of where you live .. as i live in a major city and sold my car 2 years ago, gps is pretty much useless to me -

Well, yeah. If you're taking the bus, then you don't need one. The bus driver oughta know where he's going.

- nor do i want to always carry around something the size of a small novel

That would be a very small novel indeed:

1t0txu.jpg
 
Yes, please! This would allow the user to navigate even when not in a wlan area or when not having an iphone but an ipod (even if it's only for Touch).

Nice concept.
 
There seem to be a lot of posts stating that GPS would be better. Of course it would be! But this is an awesome alternative for people who don't have an iPhone. Almost everyone on earth owns an iPod of some sort, so this is a very accessible option. Instead of printing out directions from Google or MapQuest (which is what I do now), I can just sync directions to my iPod, which I'm going to have in the car with me anyways.
 
No they won't. The small, hysterical minority for whom lack of GPS is a deal-breaker will throw a tantrum, and everyone else will just buy an iPhone, because GPS isn't a big deal for them and they'll be quite happy with everything else the phone does.

Wasn't the iPhone supposed to fail because it didn't have 3G on launch?

So you call less than 200k units sold in Germany and France a success??? :confused::confused::confused:
 
Other than a walking tour I cannot see how this is all that useful. GPS units are so accurate and inexpensive these days, podmap seems sort of late to the game.

Imagine a walk tour in a big museum, you get accurate turn by turn directions because the museum has several hotspots and with a multi-podcast from the museum you also get audio- and visual feedback on each turn.

This can be so much more than a not-so-accurate GPS function.
 
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