<p>It is two years old and it was a higher-end model with voice recognition, traffic and construction information, five inch screen and lifetime maps. I don’t have the model number handy though (it’s in the car). It is possible that there is such an option; some of the menu chains in the thing are very long. It would be a pain in the neck, though, to switch back and forth while navigating. I have been through the voice menus and I didn’t find anything there that can change that setting.</p>
<p>The 3-D is definitely better when you are driving but not as good when you are planning.</p>
<p>The touch interface on the Garmin is really awful too compared to modern smartphones. The responsiveness is laggy - it does work but most wouldn’t accept that level of performance on a smartphone. It seems to me that the Garmin wasn’t designed for a lot of touch stuff other than pressing buttons. My Garmin Forerunner 610 is the same way, the touch works but it’s not great.</p>
<p>To me, the Apple maps thing is more a mark of how much scrutiny is put on everything Apple does. Google maps have similar issues with inaccuracy, though they’ve improved in the last few years. That is why people have stand alone GPS or buy GPS apps. </p>
<p>I really hope the obsession people have with their phones turns out to be a social phase. I’m disgusted by people, now of all ages, walking around with their eyes on a screen rather than life around them. I’m used to parents ignoring their children, losing the important time to communicate and bond in favor of meaningless phone calls, but now I see family groups together with the mom and dad each staring at their phones. Hideous.</p>
<p>The problem with relying on maps on my phone i have found is that where I really need it, there isn’t coverage/reception( w Verizon). I just allow extra time.</p>
<p>Once I am going I don’t start searching for restaurants and such. However, I often have a passenger (my S or D) who can do all that for me. I can also use voice commands to change address, google’s had voice commands for at least a couple of years.</p>
<p>One thing I use a lot is Google Maps on my desktop - plan trips that way, mark places I am going or want to stop. All that info is synced automatically with the Nav on my phone.</p>
<p>I also have my phone mounted. It can charge, play music through the car speakers and be at a comfortable spot for viewing Nav. The Nav also speaks out loud, of course, if I want it to.</p>
<p>I didn’t realize the Nexus didn’t have an SD slot. That’s something that I think is really important. My Incredible on Verizon and my Optimus on VM both have had one. I suppose it’s something to be sure to check if you are buying a Droid.</p>
<p>VM uses Sprint’s network. In some areas it’s better (where I live it gets a signal where ATT and VZ do not), but in NYC data is slower. For $25/mo with unlimited data/text I’ll deal with the occasional slowdown.</p>
<p>I already have a couple major issues with google maps on my iphone 4, I’d hate to imagine apple maps if its even worse. My google maps doesn’t do turn by turn or voice recognition, which is frustrating when you’re driving. It also doesn’t know what direction you’re traveling unless you hit the compass button, so it will often suggest a route that’s opposite the direction I’m traveling instead of immediately identifying my direction and quickly suggesting a u-turn, or providing the fastest route for my current orientation. I wonder if the new google maps on android has fixed this this issue.</p>
<p>Google intentionally did not provide Apple with voice navigation or vector maps because they wanted to make maps into a competitive advantage for Android. That is why Apple made its own program.</p>
<p>The dynamic I see is that people understand that any news about Apple can get picked up and “blown up” on the internet so they make a big deal out of whatever they can. Picture of a “melted” bridge is an image that was photographed before it fully rendered. The real issue is not misdirection, which Google maps is very capable of doing, but the relative lack of detail. I can see individual buildings with names on the Rochester campus with Google maps but only the area on Apple’s maps. That is a matter of data building, which takes time, though likely not nearly as much time as it took Google.</p>
<p>Another example is the “purple flare” issue with photos. Read the dpreview.com review of the Iphone 5’s camera. It’s an issue if you take a picture with a really bright light source right outside the frame and only then. That’s an issue for any camera; it will flare or distort and really the difference is this distorts a little purple rather than in other ways. I sometimes take pictures that way on purpose because I like the distortion, but to make a big deal out of bad picture taking because it’s Apple is just a way to get attention. </p>
<p>But then I watched the Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion with my wife. I still feel dirty but I believe one, Caroline, tried to say to Theresa: this is just 15 minutes of fame. On the internet, it’s more like “this is just 5 seconds of fame.”</p>
<p>Agree with Lergnom. And the thing I notice about the increase of usage of Garmins et al, is that people, especially younger ones who grew up with them, have absolutely no idea where anywhere is in relation to anywhere else.</p>
<p>A student in class last year noted that she hated driving on the NJ Turnpike when she was going to the shore. Knowing what town she lived in, I asked her why she took the Turnpike–it didn’t make sense as it doesnt go to the shore, so it would mean a very roundabout trip; there are easier ways. Her reply was “the GPS told me to.” So I drew a map of NJ on the board and showed how the Turnpike crossed the state (not near the shore), and the entire class oohed and ahed. Not because they saw it was a bad route to take, but because they were amazed I knew what shape NJ is, and approximately what route the Turnpike takes. It’s all an entire mystery to them, as they never look at maps.</p>
<p>I have known several people who followed GPS’s getting from NJ to Delaware or vice versa, and didn’t realize till they got to the ferry terminal that the device had taken them that route, rather than the direct drive route they were expecting. Nothing along the way gave them any clue, as they had zero map-knowledge to see the problem.</p>
<p>We are losing our moorings, geographically.</p>
<p>I thought kids were taught geography in school these days. I would hope that they would consult maps in high-school history. We took a lot of trips when the kids were young and I’d point out where we were going and where we were on maps. I like to look up locations on news stories on Google Earth to get more context and pick up geographic information there.</p>
<p>I typically spend a few hours on logistics before a trip. This trip I included demographic analysis of the towns that we would be passing though.</p>
<p>I use Google Earth as opposed to Google Maps for at home analysis (Google Earth is also available on iOS as a separate App). I find that performance is much better than the browser page version.</p>
<p>I read a story on the problems with GPS systems about ten years ago. This was in Europe where they speak and read different languages. Truckers were given delivery routes and they just followed their GPS systems. They couldn’t read the signs indicating that there were certain places that they couldn’t drive trucks because the streets were too narrow or there were obstructions in small towns so that vehicles above a certain height couldn’t pass through. Towns tried to convince the mapping companies to not route truck traffic through their small towns - of course this didn’t work.</p>
<p>Last month, a Slovakian truck driver arrived in Dover, bound for Wales with 22 tons of paper. But, directed off the highway and onto increasingly narrow roads by his navigation system, he ended up wedged on a tiny lane between two houses in Mereworth, a village in Kent, whereupon he had a panic attack, jumped out of his truck, and burst into tears.</p>
<p>“He got back in his lorry and tried to maneuver his way out, but he was starting to scrape against the front walls,” Mark Siggers, a resident, told a local newspaper. He also knocked down the village’s power cables, cutting off the electricity. It took the authorities several days to remove his mangled truck.</p>
<p>Since there are many experiened iPhone 5 users here, may I ask any of you a question?</p>
<p>If I walk into an Apple store (or Verizon store) today, can I purchase a (locked) Verizon iPhone 5 on the spot but activate it later? Or iPhone 5 is mostly likely out of stock now?</p>
<p>Our contract with another carrier, a family plan, will expire in November. Our S will be home for a few days only during Thanksgiving and we would like to switch his very old phone with iPhone 5 while he is home. We want to know how we can make sure that we will have the phone at that time. Can we purchase phone from an Apple strore several days in advance but do not turn it on before he gets home? Is there any better way?</p>
<p>Melted bridges are just a whimsical issue. The real issue is that the previous iPhone worked very well with the Google maps and that Apple decided to go solo before they had the capabilities or desire to build a decent product to replace the Google product. </p>
<p>It does not get simpler than that, and it is yet another testament to the arrogance and, at times, stupidity of this company. They will not always remain THAT lucky.</p>
<p>The same is true in the US regarding trucks. There are specific navigation systems that guarantee ‘legal’ routes for 18-wheelers. A lot of the attributes that are needed to calculate a ‘legal’ route for trucks are not available in the garden variety navi units.</p>
<p>(things like chemical hazard routes for example).</p>
<p>It is annoying to see a company put its petty rivalry with another company ahead of its customers. Apple is cutting off its nose to spite its face. There is no reason they could not have left Google maps on the new iphone even if it meant one of their competitors made money off of them. Apple has enough money already.</p>
<p>After you have used Nokia Drive (maps on micro-SD), cloud-based maps simply don’t cut it. A 2012 smartphone has much better hardware than any navi unit, but paying to download maps is not a good idea in my view…</p>
<p>I think that the problem Apple was facing was declining competitiveness in this program, besides the privacy issue for their customers. I think that their problem was not in doing a better job in execution. I’m fine with their decision on replacing maps - at least so far in how I’ve been using it. I’m a customer of both Android and Apple products but I chose the iPhone 5 for my smartphone and I’d still make the same decision today.</p>
<p>The impression that I have is that most of the people complaining about maps are either in the technical media or they are aren’t Apple users.</p>
<p>The company that could really do something far better in maps is Microsoft because of Nokia. Nokia gets the data from USPS and FedEx and has extremely advanced mapping capabilities that somehow haven’t become useful - because it’s Nokia. Nokia owns Navteq.</p>
<p>All we have is the experience in buying one or two phones so I wouldn’t call the people here expert buyers.</p>
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<p>Nobody can answer that. It depends on your store, how many people in your area and how many people in your area are shopping for them. Stores get a certain number of phones per day (and that number can be zero). If you get in just after they come in or they allow you to reserve one over the phone (I think that they aren’t supposed to do that), then you might get one. When the Retina MacBook Pro came out, I called the local store for information and they told me that there were customers that came in in the morning and just camped out at the store until the laptop shipment arrived and then immediately bought one. I was somewhat incredulous that people had that much free time on their hands - that wasn’t something that I was willing to do even though I could possibly work from one of their stores.</p>
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<p>I believe that the wait for iPhone 5s is 3 - 4 weeks from the online store right now. You could order online and get the phone within your timeframe though you’d have to commit to one of the three major companies. I think that there are other carriers with other plans but I think that you’d have to buy directly from them.</p>
<p>So one approach would be to buy it online and get it around the beginning of November and then check your store from time to time to see if they have it in. If it comes in, buy it and cancel your online order.</p>
<p>I waited about 12 hours before activating my phone because I was very busy that day. I’d guess that you could wait a few days if you wanted to.</p>
<p>I have a friend at Microsoft and he is uber-bullish on Nokia despite its stock collapsing. He raves about Nokia’s mapping software. Everyone I talk to says that it’s the best so I generally just agree that it’s the best. But I would need to buy a phone that isn’t on the market yet to get all of that goodness and I already have a phone for the next two years that I like. There are other problems with the Microsoft ecosystem that will take a few years to fix.</p>
<p>Unless I am mistaken, this is your first iPhone. Some of us complain about Apple because we have owned its products for a while, and are NOT afraid to drop the fanboy attitude. There are some great things about the iPhone but its progression since the 3GS has been simply abysmal. Just as Apple did with the heat issue on the iPad, the company fumbled the ball with the maps. Big time to boot.</p>
<p>They are about out of apologies. And out of innovations and imagination.</p>