Hey gang! Hope you all have been well. Thanks for the kind messages you have sent during my “time off”. It is good to know people actually read this blog :). Aside from the few MINIacs who hang out with me in person or those that I chat with regularly, I haven’t really talked much about my switch to the iPhone late last year. At first, I will admit, I thought the iPhone was stupid. Why? Because you could not add any 3rd party applications. Well once Apple opened up the App Store, the iPhone platform just exploded. There are sooooooo many cool things you can do now on that little device, it is just amazing!
So what does this have to do with motoring? Well Apple allowed the first turn-by-turn application into the App Store in December. The only problem (aside from the more-than-fair $20 price tag)? It is lacking voice prompts. Kinda silly if you ask me (Note: Apple is at fault here as they are the ones who will not allow a GPS app to include voice prompts). Enter the world of Jailbreaking. For those who don’t know, Jailbreaking your iPhone basically opens up the phone to allow the owner to install applications that are not in the Apple App Store. I refused to “jailbreak” my phone for ages, until recently. If you have a jailbroken iPhone, you are in for a treat.
Just a couple of hours ago, the first turn-by-turn GPS app with voice prompts was released for the iPhone. It is called xGPS and, oh yeah, it is FREE! The developers have done an amazing job so far. The product is in its early stages, but what they have so far is very impressive. It uses Google Maps, but saves map data locally to the phone as you encounter new areas on the map. You can also save map data from where you are going through a “map download” utility included in the application. While you may not want to throw away your Garmin just yet, if you have an iPhone, I highly recommend you check it out at the link below!
If you “jailbreak”, will the iPhone still work normally with iTunes, and the App store?
Yep – that was my biggest fear as well. Basically the iPhone works EXACTLY as it did before and iTunes sees it just like it did before. The only difference is you have a couple new icons that are basically application installers that all you to add some pretty cool stuff that allows the iPhone to really shine. One of my favorite apps is “Backgrounder” that allows you to select any app to run in the background. I can now have Pandora streaming in my car through my stereo even if I have to navigate away from the Pandora application (before it would just close). I have a post I am working on regarding my iPhone setup in my MINI that should be interesting.
Look forward to it …
There should be a way to allow Pandora to take over external iPod control, so it’ll work with car stereos 🙂
Ian – I listen to Pandora using the standard MINI iPod adapter – sounds great through the MINI car stereo :). I’ll touch on this as well.
I went to the xGPS website, english must not be their primary lingo?
I worry about losing my warranty if I install this Jailbreak thing, plus I wonder if it works on 1st gen iPhones?
I hope all is better in your life, Robert
I just watched the vid… find the voice very bad, hope that gets better.
Modding of any kind (MINI or iPhone) always assumes you take responsibility for your actions, of course. For the most part, if you screw up your iPhone in a jailbreak, you can restore to factory defaults with iTunes though (which will completely remove any trace of the jailbreak). I suppose the possibility always exists that you could really hose things beyond repair as with anything. I have not heard of that happening, but I guess it is possible.
As for the bad voice – like I said, don’t throw out your Garmin just yet, but you have to admit, for FREE, it isn’t bad. Also, it is a VERY early release of their product. They are actually working on a better text-to-speech engine.
Overall, I think for the price (FREE), this is quite a slick app for a “cell phone” :).