I am not an Apple fanboy. In fact, I detest everything Apple, because if it's different from what I'm used to, it can't be any good.

That said, if Apple were to acquire its own map/navigation system that ran full screen on an iPad with maps as good as Google Maps, and if the navigation worked in Mexico (!) and through regular GPS satellites and internal maps, not through some cell network (not a lot of cell phone coverage around here) I would stand all night in the rain in front of the nearest Apple store to buy one. Price would not be a consideration.

My experience here in Mexico with GPS navigation has been... spotty. My Garmin GPS (with aftermarket Mexico maps) has been useful, in that eventually it will get me where I'm going, IF I can give it an acceptable address. That's a lot harder than it sounds, because I can't just put in "1819 Avenida de Las Americas, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico" because... do I want to get into this? Sure, why not. Guadalajara grew from a bunch of smaller [towns][villages][neighborhoods][suburbs] each with their own street numbers, but the street names are common. These areas are known as Colonias. There might well be half a dozen different "1819 Avenida de Las Americas" in greater Guadalajara. So, with the Garmin I have to first give it the name of the Colonia. This information is not easily come by. The best (and so far only) solution I have found is to feed the address into Google Maps on my computer, and it will flag all six (or however many) matching addresses there are, labeled A B C D E F, and I'll look at the map and make my best guess as to which of the six is the one I want. Then Google will tell me the name of the Colonia, I can put that into the Garmin along with the street address, and the Garmin will get me there. Sort of.

The maps I have for the Garmin are pretty much unaware of such trivialities as one-way streets (about half the streets in Guadalajara are one-way), and with those maps the Garmin is perfectly happy telling me to make a left turn onto Hidalgo from Lopez Mateos Sur when Lopez Mateos is a limited access divided highway and no left turn is possible. At that point, Ms. Garmin tells me in a slightly disgusted tone of voice (I love that, no doubt whoever put that into the voiceware was subsequently fired for having a sense of humor!) "Recalculating..." and tells me to make another impossible turn a quarter mile down the road. When something like this happens, I just exit Lopez Mateos anywhere I can, get off onto side roads, and let Ms. Garmin try and find the way without making impossible demands.

So, on a whim we bought a TomTom GPS unit, on sale at Amazon for something like $89 complete with Mexico, US, and Canada maps. The Mexican mapping is far less complete than the Garmin's. For example, where I live (third-largest town on Lake Chapala with nearly 20,000 people) is mapped only to the extent of showing the Carretera (highway) through town, no other information is given. Roads on the outskirts of Guadalajara are frequently not shown, and even on major roads street address number information is frequently not available so I have to shoot for the nearest intersection. But... I don't have to know the name of the Colonia (the TomTom shows all the matches and I pick the one I think is best) and the GUI of the TomTom puts the Garmin completely to shame with options like avoid toll roads, avoid unpaved roads, select an itinerary that matches the route I want to take instead of the shortest distance.

As much as I dislike Apple, I strongly suspect that I would very much like their idea of navigation software, and if it ran full screen on an iPad, where I could actually see in great detail what was going on, I would be a happy first-time Apple customer.

tanstaafl.