Review: Routebuddy 3 for Mac OSX

Update 2 December 2011 to cover 3.2

In 3.2 there has been a major overhaul of the way in which routes can be treated. Routes can now be continued, split and joined. 3.2 includes a large range of other improvements. A full review of 3.2 will be posted shortly and will supercede this review.

For hillwalkers, and those using topographical maps (especially in the UK) 3.2 represents a major development more significant than the numbering suggests. Between 3.0 and 3.2 we have seen the production of an almost new programme. Routebuddy 3.2 is now a major contender.

Updated 12th October 2011 to cover version 3.1

Routebuddy 3.1, now carries height data for waypoints and routes — currently for UK OS maps only but RB promise that this will be rolled out across the whole map range reasonably quickly

It’s amazing how times change. Go back not that many years and the Apple system was considered to be on its way out. One of the frustrations of this period was that many innovative programs were not available for the Mac. (Re) enter Steve Jobs and, hey presto, everything has changed. But even while Apple was on the way back up loyal users had to cope with the frustrations of a limited range of software. For outdoor people computer mapping was a particular problem. Here in the UK Memory Map and then Anquet sold well on the PC but both companies regularly stated that they had no plans to port their software to the Mac. Mac users were left to run PC emulation software on their Macs and to run these programs under Windows. Until Routebuddy that is.

Routebuddy was the first, quality, mapping software for Mac OSX. But despite having much going for it Routebuddy fell frustrating short of the mark for outdoor enthusiasts with features such as height and OS grid references missing from the program. Despite these failings I find myself using Routebuddy maps more often than any over system not least because the on screen rendering of the maps was better than that of the competition.

Many UK Routebuddy Users have waited patiently for the all-new Routebuddy 3 with the hope that these shortcomings will have been dealt with. Routebuddy 3 has now been with us for a month or so. So, how does it measure up? Does Routebuddy 3 now cut the mustard for the the outdoor adventurer?

Beginnings

Routebuddy is the brainchild of Neil Wilson Harris a long time Mac user who, on a cycling tour of Spain, was frustrated that he didn’t have access to computer mapping on the Mac. Neil could see the benefits of computerised mapping, of tracing your route on a big screen and of being able to annotate maps with notes, etc. Neil was so convinced that this was needed that he went and set up a company to produce such software, despite having no background as a programmer himself.

Routebuddy quickly proved itself to be a big hit, but maybe not in quite the areas that we would have expected. The program was a big hit in the US with the people who drive those huge motorised home vehicles. These users need to be able to for with computer mapping, on the biggest laptop screen they can, or indeed, on the screen of a full sized machine.

Nevertheless, Routebuddy made strides towards the outdoors world and were the first company to introduce topographical maps to the Mac, with OS maps in the UK and their USA equivalents.

As a small, innovative company, Routebuddy have sought to differentiate themselves through excellent customer support and service and, in my experience, they are head and shoulders above the opposition in this area. But, in basic terms — is Routebuddy 3 the grab step forward that many Routebuddy owners have ben patiently waiting for?

RB3 — The Vision

RB3 is designed to be your planning hub for outdoor route planning as well as for road trips. You can design your routes and then export them to almost any device, indeed I can’t think of anything that you can’t export to. Maps will easily integrate with each other, indeed eventually you will be able to see two completely different map systems on the same page if they are adjacent to each other. Ultimately, I will be able to take, say, ISGN maps of the Pyrenees and see them — seamlessly — side by side with Spanish maps of the Spanish side of the range. The French and Spanish maps are promised for the future but you can see this technology in operation now. For example, I have the whole of the UK on 1:50K OS maps. I also a few 1:25 maps on RB — The Snowdonia map sits seamlessly on the same screen as the 1:50K. Very cool. No need to ‘switch’ from one map to another.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seamless map merging — 1:50 and 1:20 scale maps of Fetteresso Forest (Double click to see original size)

RB3 has been completely re-worked and re-built from scratch. This is to ensure that the program is properly modular and that all kinds of add-ons for the future can be embraced. RB3 is now a Cocoa-native app working in 64 bit mode. In real world language, the program flies.

The final part of the vision is to provide users with excellent customer service. In my experience RB’s online support forums and online support is far superior to the competitors. (At the time of writing I am grappling with another system which — since upgrading to the Lion operating system — has decided to lock me out of my own maps; their customer service is — shall we say diplomatically — very sparse.) The cost of the native Routebuddy 3 app reflects the desire to provide full customer support.

I should point out that Routebuddy’s view of the future of mapping is not purely web based as Neil tells me some think it is. Connectivity is Routebuddy’s big thing. You can export to anything and transfer maps and routes to iPhones, but they feel that only a desktop computer can provide you with a comprehensive planning centre.

Getting Started

Routebuddy is available online from routebuddy.com. Routebuddy 3 costs £39.99, inclusive of VAT. You can download a demo from the site.

Load up Routebuddy and you will be presented with a standard Mac interface. The main window is the map window and on the left is an iTunes-like navigation bar. A third menu can be ‘pulled up’ from the base of the window — this contains waypoints, routes, etc.

When you first load up Routebuddy you will more than likely be presented with a map of the world. This reflects Routebuddy’s ambitions. On my world I can see that there is a topographic map available for the UK. If I had , say, USA maps installed I would be able to see these as well. In effect you are always working with a ‘one world map,’ for the most part you will be viewing a zoomed-in version of the whole.

Buying maps

Maps are purchased from the Routebuddy Store. In my view these are competitive with other online offerings but have some advantages in that Routebuddy maps are usually more up to date. I also have the Scottish Highlands installed on Anquet for Mac but although I bought these a whole 12 months after my Routebuddy Maps I have found that these are ‘older’ maps. Not all maps are equal! Neil tells me that the OS updates its maps on something like a six month programme and RB will be striving to ensure that their maps are as up to date as possible.

Two types of maps are available at the moment, topographic maps and vector-based road maps. The two can work very well together and make a brilliant combination for working pout cycling routes — they can present some difficulties to walkers, which I will come to later.

Operating Topo Maps

Load up your maps and you will see a lovely, smooth animation, that brings loads up the graphic ’tiles’ that make up your map. The rendering of maps is fast and smooth. I have Routebuddy installed on both my desktop machine — a Mac Pro with 12 gigs of RAM — and my laptop — Macbook with 3 gigs; Routebuddy works smoothly and quickly on both machines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Routebuddy 3 desktop (double click to see larger scale original)

One of the nice features of Routebuddy is that the window is not too cluttered. The left had navigation pane can be removed to resized. A top menu bar has a minimum set of key tools, for selecting points, moving the map, selecting a temporary ruler, placing waypoints, starting routes and searching maps for locations. There is also a ‘navigate option’ which is useful for those travelling by car and which can give you turn by turn instructions when Routebuddy is connected to a GPS (I think this is one of those features that large motor homes use!)

Zooming in and out of the map is easy using a simple on-screen scaling tool, and zooming is quick and smooth.

On the right side of the tool bar are three other icons which are now only useful but give a window into Routebuddy’s future.

Ariel Maps

The first of these options is labelled Ariel.

This is a superb feature and one which was demanded by Routebuddy’s beta testers. Simply, imagine you have a map of the Cairngorms on your screen. Click Ariel and a crisp and clear ariel satellite map fades in. The satellite images are downloaded from Bing and they are very, very impressive. They will no doubt be of real use to those planning hikes and treks in the more remote back country. (You need a broadband internet connection of this feature.) Place names and road names are superimposed on the screen.

Recently I was contemplating a couple of days backpacking in the Rhinogs, in Snowdonia. I worked out my route on the 1:25 map. There were a few places where I assumed a path would continue, even though it wasn’t shown on the map. I clicked to ariel view and I could see a couple of small paths and trails.

The magnification of the ariel view depends on Bing’s rendering. Some places — like Snowdonia — have amazingly crisp, high resolution pictures but more remote parts of Scotland have to make do with more modest resolution.

I should add that Routebuddy doesn’t just tie you a general ariel view but fixes the screen to almost the exact coordinates that you have been looking at on the top map. Here is an example. The first screen shot shows part of a route through the Fetteresso Forest, including the stopping point for the night. The second screenshot shows the ariel map of the same point — blown up somewhat. The blue line is my route.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Festteresso Route (Doble click to see original)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fetteresso Ariel shot — featuring exact route location (Double click)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fetteresso at large magnification — superb (Double Click)

This level of resolution is not available throughout Scotland, especially not yet in the North West, but you can see the potential and the power of this feature.

 

Web and Earth

The two remaining icons do similar tricks with other service. The web option opens up a browser window and brings up the current site on Bing Maps. The Earth option fires up Google Earth, with your route automatically displayed by the program. You can change the defaults of web view to use Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, etc.

This combination of topo map and high resolution ariel photos is superb. I can see how this will be useful to me over the next couple of years as more and more international maps become available. Planning treks in the Pyrenees will never be the same again.

These services indicate the principles of modular design that underpin the new Routebuddy — this desktop programme will be able to suck in more and more useful information as and when it becomes available.

So, so far so good. But things are not always quite so wonderful as we begin to move into route planning mode.

Route Planning

On the face of it route planning with Routebuddy is pretty simple. Click on the Route icon in the top menu bar, and then click on your start point and continue clicking on the route as you build it up. One of my favourite Routebuddy features is seen when your route gets to the ‘edge’ of the window. Simply click on the move/hand icon in the top menu bar and scroll the screen on. Then click on route and hey presto you are back in route mode and continuing with the route you are on. When it is time to end your route simply double-click and the route will be created for you. The route is shown in the pull up window at the bottom of the screen as a collection of waypoints and routes. These can be renamed and then moved into a place folder in the navigation pane.

So, reasonably easy? Well, route planning is where I — and others — seem to be having the most problems.

Firstly, the double click to end a route is nice and neat but can be very frustrating as it is too easy to do this by accident! I think the problem is to do with the way walkers plan routes. I tend to follow the track pretty acutely  and when it is particularly bendy two nearby waypoints can be interpreted by Routebuddy as a double-click. You are left with a route that has fallen short. And this is where things get very messy.

You might think that it is easy to continue with a route, or add to it but sadly this is not the case.

In Anquet you can simply highlight a route and find a Continue option in a contextual menu and this will do exactly what you expect it to do. But there is no such feature in Routebuddy.

You can move the position of waypoints on the screen and you can add new points to a route but this is so damn complicated as to be useful. It does’t help that a Routebuddy route consists of loads of waypoints all called ‘middle’

Adding one waypoint or a couple is easy enough but using this system to add substantially to routes is at best very clunky and at worse a real nightmare! And the manual is hardly clear and helpful here either. In an attempt to be objective about this I’ve just gone off and tried to merge two small routes together and I got completely lost!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Confusing waypoint/dots 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Confusion on full screen

The next problem area with routes is height. Most mapping programmes gives you not only the height of individual waypoints but cumulative height gained for an entire route. Routebuddy still does not deal in heights.

In some ways I don’t need height, I tend to plan routes and think, “This is a big day” or this is an early day”. But there are some points, both before and after a trip, when you want to be able to calculate height.

Routebuddy’s position on height data strokes me as being a little curious. Neil tells me that their users were asked to vote on features they wanted to see in RB3. Users chose ariel views over height which seems odd to me. However, he tells me that they are working on height and that we can expect this in a future release.

Routebuddy’s Route planning feels (almost) like a deal breaker at times. For this program to be taken seriously amongst outdoor adventurers route handling must be improved. It should be easy to either continue existing routes or merge two routes together. And that height data is really, really needed.

… But I Still Use the Program

But despite all of these route problems I still find myself using Routebuddy as my main planning tool for a trip. The smoothness of the graphics and the resolution of the maps keep bringing me back.

Connectivity with IOS Devices

I can’t comment on how Routebuddy 3 works on Windows but I have used my maps on both my iPhone 4 and with my iPad.

Apparently, Ordnance Survey licensing conditions allow you to install a map on two devices but I have them installed on a desktop, laptop, iPhone and iPad without any difficulties.

The IOS devices are more basic but in many ways are fully functional. The retina display on the iPhone 4 renders the maps in superb quality. And the big screen on the iPad is very useable, indeed it is so good that routes can be planned on it.

Routebuddy deserves some credit in creating a platform that allows you to purchase one map and use it acres a range of platforms. This is how things should be done.

Your iPhone can be used to track position like any GPS and waypoints and routes can be exchanged with computers via. A wi-fi link which is pretty easy to set up.

Summary and Conclusions

Play with Routebuddy 3 for only a short time and you will appreciate that there is a very powerful new engine underneath the hood. The integration with ariel maps, and the seamless joining together of different maps and map scales, is superb and points the way for a great future.

But for full topographical/outdoor use Routebuddy 3 is still not quite there. At the moment I reckon its a much better partner for long distance cyclists than for hikers.

Recommendations for improvement

• Allow an option to finish a route without double-clicking;
• Do something about all of those waypoints with the same name — can we have waypoints that are named route name Number, i.e. snowdon 1, snowdon 2.This will make it easier to find you waypoints in a mass of confusing points that are all numbered the same;
• Allow the user to re-start/continue an existing route
• Make it easy to join two routes together
• Add height data as soon as possible — Ed: height data has now been implemented in version 3.1

I don’t want people to think that I don’t appreciate the development work that Routebuddy have done, I do. But Routebuddy is, in effect, a new platform, on which new services will role out over time, rather than being the finished deal.

That being said, if you own a Mac and are regularly planning hikes in the UK and the USA, you should explore Routebuddy now. And also remember, the Routebuddy offers the guarantee of great customer service and a product that will be consistently developed over the years — concepts the opposition are struggling with.

Ultimately, Routebuddy 3 is probably the first in a new generation of desktop products. I just hope the get on with finishing the missing top features asap!

Routebuddy.