Macs & TomTom

[greal]

I'm currently looking to buy a new laptop - my main laptop is 5 1/2 years old and, while it still is a pretty nice machine, it's starting to wear out. I've been looking around for a replacement machine for some time now, with less than encouraging results: each and every laptop out there seems to be manufactured in China (or Malaysia, heh...) these days. I'm very reluctant to buy such laptops: I'm an IT pro and I use my laptop many hours a day; my wife uses hers only sporadically, for browsing and other similar activities; still, I bought her two made-in-China laptops (although, marketed under some brand name) in the past three years and they both had major physical problems (burnt backlight, cracks appearing in the casing, dead pixels, power supply problems etc). Worrisome was the fact that those were not super-cheap laptops ($4-$600), but supposedly expensive ones (~$2,000).

I am, thus, reluctant to buy an expensive machine (yes, I really need non-standard things like a WUXGA 1920x1200 resolution) which would be so badly manufactured, made from cheap materials etc. So - one of my friends suggested a Mac: apparently, their overall quality is much superior to a normal laptop. As I'm looking to buy another machine to last me 4 or 5 years, I said to myself "why not?" I'm not a gamer (at all!), there is a version of Office for Mac for exchanging corporate documents with others, my usual open-source tools are there (mostly)... hey, but what about odd little programs, like TomTom Home? I used to read - without much concern, sorry - about TT Home behaving quite erratically under OS X; is this still true? do Mac users out there face limitations and problems with their TT Home? I won't go that far as to say that the lack of a proper, well-behaved TomTom application would stop me from getting a MacBook (I could always use my trusted old laptop to deal with the GPS), but it would certainly be an annoyance, especially in the long term.

Comments and similar personal experiences are very welcome.

 

[dhn]

I'm not a MAC user but the biggest issue for those with Macs and TTHome was the fact that the emulator function (Operate My Go) didn't work. Apparently that has been rectified with a file download for the recent Home version.

 

[pianoCM]

Just make sure that your new MAC is not Made in China. If it does, what the point of switching, right?

 

[greal]

Just make sure that your new MAC is not Made in China. If it does, what the point of switching, right?

Absolutely. I was going to check, unfortunately no one is using a Mac around me right now, so I'm waiting patiently for a kind soul a) using a Mac and b) reading this forum to kindly enlighten me on this matter...

 

[swfreeman]

TomTom for the Mac

I'm using a 15" Macbook Pro (Intel) and TomTom Home works just fine including the Operate My Go function which you need to set your security code on the device. HTH

 

[Steve Boultbee]

Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro are manufactured in China. It's been this way for years - my 5 year old PowerBook G4 was also manufactured in China.

I would argue that it's not where it's manufactured, it's the quality control that's implemented by Apple. They're not going to accept shoddily made products and put the Apple logo on them. That's not to say that Apple notebooks (or desktops) never have problems. They do. But, Apple consistently gets higher grades for quality than other manufacturers. As I recall, the MacBook and MacBook Pro are manufactured by Quanta and Asustek.

In my opinion, the TomTom Home software is pretty buggy. It crashes a lot, and sometimes it takes several tries before it'll get through the process. I've never had it mess anything up on my TomTom (it usually will crash checking for updates, not while performing them), but the frequent crashing can get annoying. It's the only program on my computer (PPC G5 Quad running Leopard) that crashes with any frequency.

 

[fcz1]

I'm fairly new to TT Home, but I run it on a G3 iBook. It is my main home computer and is 7 years old. I can attest that after 7 years it still runs very well, I've had very few problems with it. However, because I'm still new to TT Home, I can't attest as to how well it runs...I haven't had any problems with installing it and updated/loading items on my One XL.

 

[greal]

Thanks fcz1, Steve and swfreeman for your comments!

I would argue that it's not where it's manufactured, it's the quality control that's implemented by Apple. They're not going to accept shoddily made products and put the Apple logo on them.

Makes perfects sense to me.

In my opinion, the TomTom Home software is pretty buggy. It crashes a lot, and sometimes it takes several tries before it'll get through the process. I've never had it mess anything up on my TomTom (it usually will crash checking for updates, not while performing them), but the frequent crashing can get annoying. It's the only program on my computer (PPC G5 Quad running Leopard) that crashes with any frequency.

Well... I can live with that (Argh!... I can't believe I just said that!) I would be using my MacBook for work mainly - and I just wouldn't want to keep around another laptop, just because my Go 720 needs a Windows environment to get updates & stuff. This could be a short-term solution, but, as I need my new laptop to have a lifespan of 4-5 years, it definitely isn't a long-term one.

 

[chatin]

I have a white macbook 2.4 C2D which I bought in March and have been using TT Home for about 3 weeks with no problems. (just got a TomTom)

The only problem that I had with my TomTom that was related to me using my macbook was fairly small, how to delete hidden files from my TomTom while under Leopard. http://tomtomforums.com/showthread.php?t=10600

 

[Jdmguam]

The only other thing that hasn't been mentioned is that at times, TomTom is slower to update the Mac version of TomTom home. But again, that has not hampered the usefulness of the program. I believe the Operate my go problem was probably do to this issue.

Been using my macbook for over 2 years with my Tomtom about just as long. No real problems between the two.

 

[GVbucher]

I have just purchased a 15in Macbook Pro. Today I loaded the latest version of TomTom Home and the Operate my GO function doesn't work. What version of Home are you using?

Thanks

 

[mvl]

I have just purchased a 15in Macbook Pro. Today I loaded the latest version of TomTom Home and the Operate my GO function doesn't work. What version of Home are you using?

Thanks

You're the first to reporte Operate My Go issues in a while.

Did you update your Tomtom firmware to the latest version? Have you done a pin reset since the update?