MacMuser
CoPilot Live’s Wheels Within Wheels
Dawn and I are the only Mac users in the office. We struggle with Windows, trying not to fight it. Instead, we attempt to engage with a different operating system. After all, its interface was ripped off from Apple many years ago, so it can’t be that different? Can it?
Nevertheless we both spent a frustrating hour trying to find the memory stick she had just plugged into the USB port. There in front of us is the desktop with icons for the main hard drive and networked servers, so where is her memory stick? Surely it should mount automatically and appear as an icon on the desktop, just a double-click away?
We gave up going round in circles and asked Debbie, our office administrator, to show us. She went straight to the Control Panels and clicked on something (My Computer?). Up popped a window for the memory stick. This was obviously one part of the Mac OS that Microsoft forgot to copy. Or is it just that Mac users have different expectations?
CoPilot Just Got Better…for Free
CoPilot Live for the iPhone has had me going round in circles recently, just past my old clients at Parexcel, circling the series of roundabouts in Uxbridge. Luckily, the street names are clearly marked--otherwise, Debbie and I would have been heading off for goodness knows where. We were en route to see the new Lotus Notes database we shall be using shortly. As Debbie is currently in New Zealand and I am off to France, April 1st as the start date is looking like a joke.
Most, if not all, satellite navigation devices can get caught out by fast changes of directions. Our Garmin does, just as regularly as our daughter’s TomTom. We once circled the Saga building in Folkestone half a dozen times as the Garmin tried to get its bearings. CoPilot Live, on the other hand, has become our first-choice sat-nav, especially after it was updated in the past few days. The iPhone’s assisted GPS means it can find your location quickly by using cellphone information, even indoors.
If you have an iPhone, this is one of the best value for money applications available at the iTunes Store. It is every bit as good as a dedicated sat-nav and a lot cheaper and easier to carry outside of a vehicle. The improved iPod and weather screens mean you don’t need other single-use applications. Updates are free as well, so it makes sense to get the whole new CoPilot Live rather than update a map or speed camera database on your dedicated sat-nav.
Keeping Streets Ahead
The new and improved Live elements to Copilot are especially worth the money. Live Traffic information is the only extra Copilot charges for, and that is at a reasonable $30 or thereabouts per year. Apple’s iPhone interface is streets ahead of any other touch-screen sat-nav device, and CoPilot Live makes good use of it.
My only complaint is that you can’t buy individual maps. When I bought CoPilot Live, I accidentally clicked on the UK and Ireland version, costing $40, instead of the Europe version. This leaves me the choice of buying a whole new version of CoPilot for Europe, costing $75, or just France maps at $38 to add to my existing CoPilot Live. Choosing just France will be as costly as buying the whole of Europe but will be missing all the rest of the maps.
Oh well!
Copyright © 2010 Mark Tennent.
Also in This Series
- What Trick, What Device, What Starting-Hole… · May 2012
- Do Androids Dream? · April 2012
- Our Macs Are Under Attack · March 2012
- The Best and Worst Christmas Presents · February 2012
- The Best Use for a Kindle · January 2012
- It’s Got No Blinking Light · January 2012
- Box-Shifting Causes Migration · December 2011
- The Best Thing About the iPhone 4S and How to Cope in Clink · December 2011
- Death of a Salesman · November 2011
- Complete Archive
Reader Comments (1)
Add A Comment