For those who keep asking, I think we are not too far off. Bob’s editing seems to be getting towards the end

I’ve spent quite a lot of time here looking at mapping solutions for Mac OSX desktop environments but I haven’t looked much at Mac/phone mapping solutions.

Background

Not that long ago we had these new GPS systems. They were quite basic. They would give you a grid reference and would allow you to upload basic routes from a computer. They would also allow you make a track of your route as you walked. I still have a basic Garmin Gecko that I use when in Scotland. I use it to simply get a grid reference.

The we saw the emergence of PDF sized GPS machines that could display topographic maps that were loaded by a solid state expansion card.

And now we have maps on smart phones. If it isn’t here already we are fast approaching the point where we need only carry one machine with us on this hills.

MObile mapping solutions work best when working in tandem with computer mapping on your computer. Topographic maps are available on the iphone from a number of places including from mainstream companies such as Memory Map and Anquet. However, Memory Map is not available for Mac OSX. Anquet is now available but the Mac version is a port by a gaming company which is receiving very mixed reports from users. Routebuddy is the only truly Mac-native product. Routebuddy is a small UK company which is slowly building a functional and quality product. At the heart of the Routebuddy approach is the use of raster graphics for maps, rather than the bitmaps used by competitors. On my large desktop screen the quality of the Routebuddy graphics really show even if the product isn’t yet the ‘finished’ article. So, how does Routebuddy look on the iphone?

Routebuddy Atlas

The Routebuddy Atlas app is available for free download from itunes. It used maps bought from the Routebuddy store — more about that later.

First things first. Load up Routebuddy on an iphone 3 or 3g and you are presented with stunning map graphics. These raster graphics really seem to get the most out of the phone screen. Load up Routebuddy on an iphone 4 and you are presented with something that is even more stunning. The iphone 4 has a screen with four times the resolution of most smartphones. Apple reckon that the resolution is as good as fine print on paper, and they’re not exaggerating! Every now and then a product or combination of products gives you an insight into the future. Routebuddy Atlas on the iphone 4 is how mobile mapping will look way into the future!

The initial screen is simple and to the point. In the main window a list of maps loaded onto the system. Simply double tap to load the map onto the screen and to see those graphics.

At the bottom of the initial screen are three simple icons, maps (in which you are in), GPS and Settings. GPS simply carries a GPS function. You can upload routes, track routes and so on. Start tracking and the system will give your location, your speed of movement and altitude. This section is easy to use if you’ve ever used a GPS, indeed, it is easier than many GPS machines.

The final icon for Settings has a range configuration options which are important for obtaining maps (see below)

Using Maps

But it is the map screen where will spend most of our time.

As I said the quality is superb. The system very quickly finds your location and the electronic compass accurately points towards either true north of magnetic north. Zooming in and out os done by the usual pinch gestures. The screen can be used in landscape or portrait modes.

A few small icons at the bottom of the screen are easy to grasp. One simply locates your current position and two others allow you to turn tracking on or off and add waypoints. Two others take you to a list of waypoints and zoom out to show the whole map.

Just above the icons is displayed the reference to either the middle of the screen, your location or the selected waypoint depending on how you are using the system.

Usually this reference is in longitude and latitude. But tap this and you can run through a series of other options which include OS grid References; in effect you can change the default to OS references (in the UK). I mention this because Routebuddy for MacOSX presently does not work in OS Grid format (although this blog has been told to expect these in RB 3 which is out late summer/autumn).

A search field allows you to search for any location on the map. This function works well and quickly.

The Maps

Topographic maps are available for the USA and the UK at the moment. The UK maps are from the Ordnance Survey and include the 1:50 Landranger and the 1:25 Explorer ranges. These can be bought as individual sheets, as National Park collections, as regions or as the whole country.

As the computing power of smartphones increases we’re going to be able to store a lot of maps on our phones. My iphone 4 (32 gigs) now has the full 1:50 map of Great Britain loaded on to it, running in memory and not on a solid state card.

Maps are bought from the Routebuddy Store and you can use the map on both your desktop Mac and your iphone.

However, there is slight limitation is moving maps to the iphone (at present).

Maps are loaded from your computer to phone over a wifi network — so you will need wifi to do it. If you don’t have wifi at home you will need a laptop and some wifi spot to have a crack at it.

To transfer the maps you have to go to settings on the phone and enable server mode. This gives you an IP address of the phone. Go back to the desktop and connect to this IP address. Instructions for this are given on the Routebuddy site. On a Mac system this is easier than it sounds using two finder windows or a program such as Pathfinder. Instructions are also given for transferring the files from Windows to the iphone. I guess you could buy the maps and download them to a PC even though you can’t use them on the PC itself! But manly here we are talking about Macs.

The phone software does have a button to allow you to buy maps directly from the store to your phone. However, this is currently disabled but I can assume this feature is coming shortly!

Non Topographic Maps

The Atlas program comes configured for the OpenStreet Map system (and Open Cycle and OPen Piste maps). These work from a web server rather like Google Maps. The street map has far more information on it than Google Maps and its inclusion is a real bonus.

Summary

If you use Routebuddy on the Mac Routebuddy Atlas is a simple addition. The quality of mapping on the phone is the best by far. However, Mac using hillwalkers have been put off by the limitations of the desktop software which doesn’t think in OS Grid or display height information. However, these features will be coming to Routebuddy 3 soon.

When Routebuddy 3 is around Routebuddy Atlas will become the natural choice for mapping with Apple systems. As it stands at the moment the iphone app is superb and just waiting for the desktop version to catch up.

Routebuddy

When you’ve written a blog for a long time strange things can happen! One of the weirdest is that people seem to be able to pre-empt what you are thinking at any one time!

Comments seem to be particularly prescient. Regular readers will be up to date with recent comments. But the longer you have the blog the greater legacy of material you build up. I spend quite a bit of time corresponding on posts that are several years old!

Take David of the selfpowered blog for example. He appears on the thread for my review of the MLD Duomid. He wonders about the merits of an MLD tarp tent — the Supermid — over the Terra Nova Super Solar. Blow me down, I read this just as I was beginning to contemplate the same things myself.

The Super Solar is a proper tent with an outer, inner tent with bug mesh and ground sheet. It is made of the same lightweight materials as the Laser Competition. As a two person tent it weighs just above two kilograms (or just under 5 pounds). It is lightweight especially when I consider that on my first TGO Challenge I used a Hilleberg Akto which weighed only a few hundred grams less.

As my gear has got lighter there has been an increasing mis-match between solo gear and gear designed for two or us. We do have a double person tarp and that is fine for an odd night out in the summer. But there is no way that Kate is going to use one of these things on something like the Challenge.

Next year’s crossing might be a two person event. So, I’ve been thinking of lighter options.

The MLD Supermid is a two person (or more) affair, more like the size of a Shangri-la/Hex than anything else. Yet MLD’s sinylon is a much lighter fabric than that used by Golite. The Supermid weighs .7 kilograms. Put a two person bug net in and the whole package comes to just about half the weight of the Super Solar. It costs just under £300 which is not a bad price for such a product.

The Supermid is interesting me a lot. It doesn’t have the two vestibules of the SS and it does have a pole that runs through the middle of the sleeping area. But the 2 person bug — which Ron says can be tight for 2 — is actually bigger than the inner tent of the SS. And there is so much room in these teepee tents that it will feel positively spacious.

So, this MLD tent is a real alternative option. The materials might not be as robust although he SS is now showing a little ware!

I think this might be a serious purchase for next year’s Challenge and trip to the Pyrenees.

There are so many outdoor blogs now it’s difficult to keep up with them. Here’s a great one that I have missed out on for too long, Roman Dial’s blog — he’s the guy who did the Artic 100 trek/packraft a few years ago. Now planning a new trip. Worth checking out.

The Roaming Dials.

“TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE, BASED IN ALASKA, BUT EXTENDING AROUND THE WORLD. ESSAYS, OCCASIONAL PHOTOS, AND SOMETIMES INFORMATION.”

Tomorrow morning — so long as Skype obliges — I shall be recording a chat with Colin Ibbotson about his recent trek along the Arizona Trail. I’ll be covering all the usual ground, but I wondered if any of you had any specific questions for Colin? Send them in and I’ll see if we have time to ask them.

Bob and I have started one of our occasional conversations about how we could develop our OS programming and what we might look at for a programme over the next twelve months.

We’re interested in feedback about the TGO Podcasts — this year’s will be available for download shortly.

It has become increasingly difficult to run the podcasts as we have. everyone knows who we are now and many people simply run a mile when they see us coming! In this year’s contributions you’ll find a series of longer interviews with people who were happy to talk to us on that basis. This includes people like Cameron MacNeish, Henry Shires, Phil Werner (US Hiker) and a number of newer and younger hikers and trekkers.

The things we’re wondering about are:

Should we be doing them at all? Are we just covering the same ground? Should we have a year off? Are these past their sell-by date?

Do our personal diary pieces work for you?

Should we seek to integrate the TGO contributions into other OS podcasts or should we stick we doing something that is specifically dedicated to the Challenge and to Scotland?

And — as ever — any other ideas for subject matter are welcome.

Increasingly these days outdoor celebs are more difficult to pin down. However, we know there are many of you planning new challenges or tackling new challenges. If this includes you then get in touch. we’d love to hear from you!

I don’t know you spend week writing gibberish and then suddenly all hell breaks loose in a couple of hours!

My review of Anquet Maps for Mac, posted this morning, has already elicited and very interesting response from Neil Wilson-Harris the CEO of Routebuddy (the main competition). Neil is an interesting guy who really knows his stuff and who sets out to create world class products. He’s always been very helpful to me in the past and his comments to the post are worth reading here.

Neil — if you’re reading this — here are some thoughts.

Firstly, an apology. Sloppy writing made me suggest that Routebuddy cost £100 when it is nearly $100. You’re right; I was £40 out. However, I still need to lay out £60 for Routebuddy so the product needs to be good, of real quality and — importantly — have a lifespan beyond the immediate.

The review in question was of Anquet Maps for Mac and is such dealt mainly with the usability of that program. The bottom line is that Anquet for Macs is fully functional and works effectively. However, the review also reflect on where this product doesn’t score well:

* The interface which really does not make the best use of Mac Design;

* The annoying lack of information and data as Maps are downloading

* The rather outdated Map pop-up window.

What is good about Routebuddy?

I also hint in the review at those areas where Routebuddy scores. It has a better screen representation not surprising when you realise it uses vectors rather than bitmaps. Routebuddy’s view is that this is a better, qualitative system and let’s be clear — in many ways it is, both on a desktop and a laptop machine.

The comments about the interface can be extended into the use of the program. Plotting a route on Routebuddy is dead easy and intuitive. Personally, (and I think I said this) I prefer using this system than Anquets.

The problem is that despite all of this quality — at the moment — it is Anquet that does what I want.

What Price Quality and Future Development

Neil raises some fair points in relation to the Anquet port, and we’ve already seen a strong of people here complain about the lack of transferability from PC to Mac. To this we might add the unsatisfactory nature of support — which is also touched on in my review.

In essence Neil raises the issue of whether this program port will be supported well and developed effectively. I suspect he might be right give that VP have not really taken the opportunity to build on the core of what has been ported. As a company that is primarily a games producer will VP be committed to developing a product? Well, only they will know that.

Waiting Until the Autumn?

Neil has the biggest impact on me personally when he tells us that Routebuddy v.3 will be out late summer/autumn. Although he doesn’t actually say it the strong hint is that height data, route profiling and OS Grid refs will arrive in that version. It would be nice if this could be confirmed but that might be a bit naughty of me — I might be putting Neil on the spot here.

But, assuming that the hints are correct, should we consider waiting? I think probably we should.

Routebuddy is a higher quality product in many ways. If it can deliver what we want then the performance comparison with Anquet will be easy enough.

I think we can assume that Routebuddy does have a proper route map for developing its mapping products — Neil makes the point that this is their business; they’re not into games.

Over the last year or so Neil and I have corresponded regularly. I’ve give Neil an idea of international mapping that I’d like to see on the Mac. Without breaking confidences it is clear that Neil and his colleagues do talk to other national mappers regularly and thoroughly and this makes me think that we might expect Routebuddy to eventually offer much more than VP Maps.

The clincher here for me is the missing features of Routebuddy 2. If height and OS references do appear then it Routebuddy will be worth the wait.

So, on the basis of the new information that has arrived today I would recommend hanging off from spending too much money on Anquet Mac mapping until Routebuddy 3 arrives. I just hope Neil is going to deliver what he hints at !!!

The final word, though, has to be on pricing. I said in my review:

“Routebuddy ask users to think about their map purchasing as their pricing can become more competitive the more maps you buy.”

To develop this a little, pricing does seem to change if you are going to be buying a lot of individual map sheets or regional maps. But this is an area where we all need help with price transparency.

I have bought two maps for Routebuddy. The first is the whole of the UK on 1:50 (£99.50) and the second in Stonehaven and Inverbervie on 1:25 (£19.95).

I have two maps on Anquet Mac: North West Scotland and North East Scotland and these cost £20.89. Should I have wished to buy the whole of the UK in 1:50 it would set me back £95.54.

The Routebuddy maps are better (other than the missing data). As I said in the review, they integrate absolutely beautifully. Moving from one map into the other (i.e. from 1:50 to 1:25) is done on the same screen seamlessly. Anquet doesn’t do this. Finish on one map and you (seem) to have to select the other separately. (There may well be ways of doing this but as others have said Anquet Support through VP maps is a bit weird and unclear.

But how many maps will I want to buy? Well, I might buy some 1:25 national park maps, Harvey maps or some international mapping (if it becomes available). Would this mean that I would by saving over time as against buying Anquet’s offer. Maybe. But who knows?

There may well be something of a classic choice coming over the horizon. Do you go with real quality design, good support and fully featured development paths? Or do you just buy the cheapest, more cheerful, option?

So, hold on to your purchases to see what Routebuddy do. It’s worth a wait of a few months or so. But I think there. is a price challenge for Routebuddy in all this.

But Neil, I wish you well!

Back to hillwalking and backpacking!

The new implementation of Anquet Maps for the Mac OSX operating system (implemented by Mac software house Virtual Programming) has taken a bit of stick here in the comments section of this blog. The main complaint has been that Mac users who have Anquet running under Windows are not able to transfer their existing maps to work with the new program. This highlights the reality that the new mapping solution is being sold direct by VP Mapping rather than Anquet itself.

To be strictly fair about all of this I thought it was a time for a review of the Mac product in its own right. How does it work and how does it compare to the existing competition?

Preferring Native OSX on Macs

I should make it clear at the outset that I have only recently joined the world of computer mapping, buying the Routebuddy system when it was announced. I know that a number of Mac users have been working with Anquet maps for some time, using Windows emulation programmes on intel powered Macs. I suppose the growing Apple user base in the UK means that it is now worth exploiting it. For many years the big PC programs such as Anquet and Memory Map happily announced that they had no plans to move to OSX — you could always use emulation. But emulation is not for many of us.

Like many Mac users I prefer to work in OSX rather than muck about with Windows. I do use Windows from time to time but generally find Mac OSX to be more intuitive and easier to use. My backpacking route planning utilises other programs that are only available on the Mac. In particular, most of my route planning is done with the aid of Devonthink. Devonthink is a free-form database into which you can throw anything, text, pictures, web snippets, URLS and multimedia files. Anything can be tagged with anything. But what makes Devonthink special is its use of Artifical Intelligence technology to learn how top catalogue things for you. Import a piece of data, click on classify and the program will know where to put it. This is superb technology as your database becomes bigger and bigger. And the same AI technology helps make searching results more accurate. (Devonthink is no cheap but any serious Mac user would be well advised to experiment with it).

I now have so much Scottish data in Devonthink that I really do not want to have to switch between operating systems.

In many ways Routebuddy is a superb system but it lacks some key features for hillwalkers, most notably the ability to calculate height and the cumulative, or total, height gain for any calculated route. Routebuddy also does not give you spot OS grid references which is really frustrating. While these features are due to be added to Routebuddy they are not on the immediate horizon, a reminder that hillwalking must only represent a small percentage of usage of computer mapping. More about the comparison of Routebuddy and Anquet later.

Getting Set up for Anquet Maps Mac

The Anquet program is free to download (as opposed to Routebuddy which will set you back the best part of £100). The installation process prompts you to open an Anquet account. I’m not quite sure whether this is a new Mac/Anquet account or not, not having used Anquet before. Once you have set up your account the program downloads completely and starts to download a series of demo maps.

If your completely new to digital mapping this is where you might have the first problem. These are big files and they take quite a long time to download. But there’s not much of a clue that this is happening! Open the Maps window and you be presented with a pop-up with a number of tabs on it. Explore these to find a graphic representation of download progress — similar to that which Apple uses for system downloads.

The demo maps are quite impressive. You get demos of both 1:25 and 1:50 OS maps., plus a demo of the A to Z Guide for Birmingham and a number of other maps (including some antiquarian maps which might be of interest).

Play with these for a while and you’ll quickly see how the system works. Waypoints and route planning are all pretty intuitive, especially if you use the right-click mouse button for on screen options. You’ll then need some maps!

The VP map store (note VP and not Anquet) is available from the Maps pop-up. A wide range of UK maps are available including complete coverage of the country in both 1:50 and 1:25. OS maps are available individually or in popular bundles. You can also buy the complete country in both scales. Aside from OS you will find some of Harvey’s Maps, most notably the Lake District collection. These are the traditional Harvey’s series — the new BMC 1:40 collaborations are not available at the time of writing.

I bought two maps, the 1:50 OS collections for North West and North East Scotland. The combined cost of these was £20. This compares well to Routebuddy who’s equivalent maps are about the same price — but you will have had to pay for the program download. Routebuddy ask users to think about their map purchasing as their pricing can become more competitive the more maps you buy. However, for my use their is little competition. I have the entire UK in 1:50 format on Routebuddy; the Anquet equivalent map collection would cost the same — about £100 (but remember the program cost on top).

Downloading the maps took a long time, which it always does on any system. As I mentioned earlier there is not really much indication from the main program window of a download in progress. At first I kept finding that I couldn’t reach the download window, or rather couldn’t remember where it was. The trick — I think — is to play around with the demos more thoroughly. In any case, make a real effort to remember which tab of the Map Window shows download progress. For me, the Map window is not an intuitive as it could be but then this seems to be the way Anquet has always worked on PC.

If you get lost the ‘Map Manager’ is bought up by clicking the Download button in the tool bar. You should do this whether or not you have an internet connection. If there is no internet connection you will get a ‘login error’ but then the Map Manager pop-up will appear. At the top of the pop-up is a list a buttons that include the Map Store, My Maps and the Download (progress) tab. This is all very clunky and — I hesitate to say — not what you expect these days from OSX!

I would like to see some additional download information available from the main window. Perhaps a simple status line could show up on the bottom of the main window, perhaps showing Apple’s ‘moving cog’ icon to demonstrate that something ‘is happening’ out there on the net. Apple users instinctively look for the cog these days.

Using the Maps on Your Mac

Having downloaded your maps you’re ready to go. The main window is split into three or so panes in the standard Apple style. The map is shown in the main pane on the right and on the left are various other details — such as waypoint data, file database selected and so on. If you have used Routebuddy the effect is similar although Routebuddy seems to be closer to a typical Apple software interface.

Plotting a waypoint is easy. Just move your mouse to your chosen point on the map and right click. The mouse menu will give you the option of inserting a waypoint or beginning a route.

Insert a waypoint and you will immediately see one of the benefits of Anquet over Routebuddy. The waypoint pane will immediately display the full OS co-ordinate (include the alpha characters at the beginning of the reference.).

Adding to your route is a simple process of them mouse clicking at regular intervals. The right click menu gives you the simple option of ending the route.

Routes are listed in the pane in the top left. It is worth playing around with this a bit as it’s not always clear (to me at least) what you are doing. This pane lists ‘databases’ although it creates a default called Unfiled_Database. Your route will show in this pane. Right clicking on the Databses pane allows you to do extra things. Right click on the database name and you can create a new route. Right click on an existing route and you’ll see that you are creating a subset of it — which is indicated by tabbed text. This has taken me a little while to get used to but once mastered it is quite easy to add to routes, join routes together or to create multi day routes under one route heading.

Play around with this on the demo. The program allows you do do everything you want, but it is not always that clear as to what you are doing. Routes and inserts take a bit of practice.

Once you have plotted your route you will want all of the data associated with it — and this is another area where Anquet scores over  Routebuddy.

Once the route has been completed you will find all of the route information in the pane on the bottom left of the window. This gives you everything that Routebuddy does not, including:

Start Point (OS Grid Ref)

Finish Point (OS Grid Ref)

Flat length

Max & Min height

Height ascended and height descended.

One word of warning. I keep finding a kind of bug when I plan routes without saving them first in the databases pane. Here the height information does not come up immediately and is only visible after jumping through different windows and menu options. I’ve not had this problem at all when planning a route properly using the database window. Start a route in this window and when you move to the map and right click the menu will give you the option of starting on the route that you have just named.

It is worth opening routes and folders in the database window with a bit of thought. Routes that are subsets of routes in the database pane will show you route stats (including height) for both individual days and for the total route. Select any route and the Route Profile button in the main window will being you a pop-up with the profile in it.

Printing routes is easy, via. the print button in the main window although note that the dialogue box does not give you an option of previewing or printing to PDF — again features that you take for granted on Mac OSX.

Screen Use

The maps look good on the screen and scale pretty well. You can zoom in and out, zooming up to 600%. At 600% the quality begins to suffer a bit although up to 200% everything is pretty sharp. The bigger magnifications are usable though and really useful to anyone with a visual disability.

I’ve used Anquet Maps Mac on both my desktop and laptop machines. My desktop has a large 24 inch screen and this shows off the maps brilliantly. My laptop only has a 13 inch screen, although Mac screens are superb. The program is very useable on 13 inches and at 50% zoom you get a lot of legible map area.

In Summary

Anquet Maps Mac work very well and give me everything a want for my backpacking route planning in the UK. Those moving over from PC versions will have no problems using this program. Those using Anquet for the first time might find some niggles with it and they might find it takes a while to plan with real confidence but the learning curve is not too sharp. Support though is a bit clunky also. Help and support are available from the menus as you would expect but these are not always that easy to navigate and you can find yourself back at the Anquet PC site in a rather mysterious way!

I have no hesitation for recommending this program for hillwalkers in the UK.

Anquet maps are also available on the iphone with the iphone app being downloadable from iTunes (around £20). Your downloaded maps and routes can be synched with the iphone version. And of course, you can export routes and waypoints to any GPS — although you need to just check export formats to do this successfully.

But before I go it is worth reflecting a little on the competition.

And the Competition?

On Mac OSX we are really talking about Routebuddy. Routebuddy is not a cheap program although I guess competition might have an effect on pricing. While Routebuddy does not offer the hill walking functions of Anquet there is much about it that I prefer.

This might be a bit subjective but the maps look a little crisper to me on Routebuddy. Despite the route planning functions not having OS grid references and height data there is much in their route planning approach that I like.

Routebuddy really scores in the way it patches maps together. On Anquet when I get to the end of my NW Scotland map I have to select the NE map and then start in a separate screen (I have yet to see how this effects global route planning). On Routebuddy maps integrate more effectively. For example, I have a 1:25 map of the Fettereso Forest. On screen the program seamlessly blends the 1:50 and 1:156 data together in a really impressive way.

I shall still use Routebuddy when looking at routes around the country but for planning things like the TGO CHallenge I will automatically move to Anquet. Routebuddy may yet give us the features we need although I fear that — for hillwalkers at least — Anquet will simply become the default OSX program. It is worth allof us bearing in mind that these companies — Routebuddy and VP — are small companies and progress will be slow. Routebuddy seem to have their eyes on other markets and other uses.

There is, of course, still competition on the PC side of things.

Memory Map is a serious competitor even though it has no plans (as far as I can see) to port to Mac OSX (it has been ported to the iphone). Memory Map score because it is beginning to open up non-UK mapping — they are now producing maps for the Pyrenees (and other areas) that are of real interest to me. For some users international mapping might just enough for them to stay with a PC program run under an emulation program like Parallels which — after all — performs at full PC speed.

If you’re using any of these programs I’d welcome further feedback.

The announcement for Anquet on Mac OSX has been trailed for some time now and it has now finally arrived!

The Anquet system software for Macs is free but (obviously) the maps have a cost to them. As usual Anquet maps can be bought as single maps or as collections. You will have to download the free application before you can find details of these maps and (importantly) pricing. Once you download the software — and create an Anquet account — the software will automatically download a series of sample maps. the sample maps include and A to Z guide page (B’ham which might be a cool piece of location), an OS Road map, and OS 1:50 and 1:25 maps.

I haven’t had time to really play with this but everything looks good and professional. Maps scale ver well and are readable.

I’m not sure whether the pricing is in promotional mode at the moment but, for example, the 1:50 map of NW Scotland is £10.00 and the equivalent for NE Scotland is just under £11.

OS 1:25 are more expensive — the equivalent NW Scotland is just under £400. these you will probably ant to buy on a sheet basis. SHeet 388 — Lochnagar — is £21.15

Harvey Maps are here as well although the pricing is more of what you expect — the Lake District map is about £40.

A full collection of OS 1:25 and 1:50 can be your for £2,345.44!

There is a large range of mapping here, including old and vintage maps. At the moment only UK maps would seems to be available.

Anquet has now given Routebuddy some competition. For walkers the main advantages seem to be an easier route creation system and route details including height ascended which is currently missing on Routebuddy.

I’ve asked for a proper review copy of a map and if that comes through I’ll be able to not only write a full review but able to compare these two systems back-to-back.

Finally, the Mac world has some real competition. It will be interesting to see how these alternative systems pan out over the next year or so.

To Website

The Anquet Press Release says:

VIRTUAL PROGRAMMING MAKES UK EXPLORATION EASIER WITH ANQUET MAPS FOR MAC OS X AND iPHONE

- Innovative Applications Let Hikers and Bikers Plan and Edit Routes, Find Locations, and More on Mac OS X or iPhone -

July 8, 2010 – Exploring the UK by bike or on foot just became much easier with Virtual Programming’s release of Anquet Maps Mac and Anquet Maps iPhone applications, which offer the same features as Anquet’s popular mapping software for Windows. Users can easily plan and edit routes, look up points-of-interest along the way, and more. GPS functionality in the iPhone version lets mobile users easily navigate routes while on the go.

“Whether you want to hike through a national park, plan a multi-kilometer bike ride, or simply figure out the best path for a daily walk, Anquet Maps Mac and Anquet Maps iPhone are at your disposal,” said Virtual Programming CEO Mark Hinton. “These are far and away the most robust mapping applications we’ve ever seen.”

Both applications let users replace their bulky paper maps with powerful digital versions. Users can carefully create and edit routes in perfect detail, with the ability to see maximum and minimum altitudes along the way, as well as estimated travel time and other information. In addition, they can easily look up locations by National Grid coordinates or longitude and latitude, with the option to add those places as waypoints along a route.

Anquet Maps Mac is free software. Maps are purchased separately, but users only need to buy the coverage they require. Maps are available in definable parcels or as specific popular areas, such as national parks.

Maps and route profiles can be printed out and exported to Anquet Maps iPhone, which is available separately. This handy app offers the same route planning and editing features as Anquet Maps Mac, with added GPS functionality that lets users make sure they’re properly navigating their routes. Anquet Maps iPhone also enables users to track their routes and save average speed, distance traveled, and other data, along with text notes for handy reference.

Anquet Maps iPhone is available now at Apple’s App Store. Pricing is £19.99, and free digital maps are included to help users get started.

Anquet Maps Mac is free to download, although there will also be a box product version available at £29.99, which includes Map credit to the value of the full purchase price.

Additional map prices start at £10.00.

Anquet Maps iPhone requires iPhone OS version 3.0.

Anquet Maps Mac requires Mac OS X version 10.5.8, any Intel processor and 512Mb RAM.

More information, including screenshots and tutorials, is also available at: http://www.vpmaps.com/

About Virtual Programming

Virtual Programming, Ltd. publishes many of the most exciting games and utilities available today for Mac OS X, iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. The company develops unique properties and works with some of the top developers around the world to bring gamers of all types top-quality entertainment. Its digital download service, Deliver2Mac <http://www.deliver2mac.com/>, serves content to hungry players 24 hours a day, while the iTunes App Store offers its best-selling games and other apps for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

OK, decision made. I now have a new twitter persona for the outdoors stuff:

@mustbethisway

Feel free to continue to follow the other stuff if so really are that sad