If you had a choice ......

[5tevie]

If you had a choice of what the Tom Tom programme writers should work on for the next upgrade, what would it be?

I'd like them to stick a hefty internal drive in there. Something like 64 gb along with 4 gb of DRAM memory. Then make it able to hold a conversation. There could be masses of after market SD cards with conversation topics built it. Maybe things like Football, TV shows, etc. Things that you could talk to it about on long, dreary journeys.

OK, maybe it's just a dream but what would YOU have them set to work on?
Cheers,
Steve

 

[canderson]

Frankly, I'd be happy if they'd simply address the problems and missing features in their existing firmware and applications. They're way behind schedule on so many things... Don't encourage them to do more!

 

[5tevie]

Yeah, I know what you mean.
My regular haunt for chit-chat is a place called The Round Table which is a discussion forum within eBay.co.uk. It's a forum where stuff gets talked about other than eBay. About 6 months ago, they had a mahoosive change to the software that ran the forums and it is absolute garbage. The 2 main factors that members keep complaining about are that the Opening post in a thread is always shown twice for some reason and the other is that no matter how long a thread is, and with some threads reaching 100 quite easily, when you click on the thread title, you are taken to post #1. (or 51 or 101, etc) and then you have to scroll down from there. In the olden, pre-change days, when you clicked the title, you were taken to the last post that you had read.

Were either of those issues addressed?
No, it was decided that it was much more important to change the colour and size of the "Reply" button which is now a slightly darker shade of blue and maybe a mil wider, if that.
Nice to see they got their priorities right.

 

[Gashog]

I think TomTom should work on divorcing themselves from Microsoft completely.
They should embrace GNU. Take a page from Android's book.

 

[canderson]

Since none of their units run on any sort of Microsoft platform (earlier units were on a Unix platform, and the latter ones on a platform you've probably never encountered before), I assume you are talking about the application on your PC? So TomTom should ignore all of the Windows users and stick with just Linux and Mac users for their application? Or perhaps I'm not following you.

Have you looked to see what licenses apply to your TomTom??? I guess you'd be surprised to see phrases like "...which falls under the GNU General Public License (the GPL)."

 

[Gashog]

Old news but....

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/20...ents_in_case_with_Linux_subplot_40305732.html

 

[dhn]

Yeah, very old news ..................

 

[canderson]

Gashog - that was a LINUX issue that could and should have been handled very differently. Anyway, that news is so old that it's now obsolete. All of the units running firmware 10.XXX and beyond have ceased to use the "file management" structure that was embedded in Linux and to which Microsoft objected.

So we're curious to know just what connection you think TomTom or its products have to Microsoft these days?

 

[Gashog]

I thought the reason TomTom hasn't ported "Home" to Linux was because of the MS lawsuit.

 

[canderson]

Negative. Home wasn't been ported to Linux due to body count needing that particular implementation. The ROI wasn't there.

You can write an application for Linux if you want and not run afoul of the Microsoft file system patents - as the application writer, it's not your file system, so the fact that Microsoft was complaining about the file system is the problem of the writers of Linux, not TomTom. TomTom makes calls to the filesystem with Home, but how it's managed below that level isn't TomTom's problem.

The issue with the filesystem was that TomTom was USING a Linux platform for their devices that included native FAT32 file system support. Being loathe to go to war with Microsoft, and since the Linux community didn't seem to want to do squat to help TomTom, even though it was their own product at stake, TomTom caved to Microsoft, and abandoned Linux altogether as a platform. We never did figure out why Microsoft singled out TomTom to beat up Linux. There was all kinds of speculation about WinCE devices with mobile GPS apps, etc., but I don't think anyone really ever did get to the bottom of it. It's NO different than all of the thumb drives you see out there that support FAT32, but don't seem to be being held hostage my Microsoft. They must have had something in mind at the time, but I doubt we'll ever know for sure.

No recently released TT products even use either Home, much less a FAT32 file structure, so it's all irrelevant, as I noted before.

 

[Gashog]

You can write an application for Linux if you want

Only if the source code is available.
Again, I thought it was the MS lawsuit that was stopping TomTom from publishing it.

I'd like to read TomToms side of the story as I've only read what Linux users had to say.

 

[Andy_P]

Wouldn't we all!
But I doubt we ever will.

 

[Gashog]

I have had a slow day and you've encouraged me to Google more on the Microsoft Linux TomTom war.
I'm starting to think that TomTom neglected to port "Home" because the Open Source community went after TomTom, early on, forcing them to publish proprietary source code and make a substantial donation to a German hacker club.
I suppose they felt they had "given back" enough!
After reading some more old news articles covering the litigation back and forth, my original statement regarding Microsoft seems very naive. There is apparently a very complicated story behind all of this (much more then any of us who were complaining about no Linux support were aware of).
Actually pretty interesting.