Route 66 Route USA 2004 (Mac) review:1 stars (Embarassing) - Route 66 should hang their developer heads in shame for putting this product out.

The app seems to be a bare minimum port from its Windows version. The first indication of this is the ugly port of the "help" contents (which are an obvious attempt at mimicking the Windows help system, via a Java applet)

UI - No keyboard shortcut to go between zoom in/out and drag. No way to convert GPS coords to decimal, or to search by lat/lon. The UI is a clunky artifact of the mid-90's, if not before. Type in a search and hit return... nothing happens.. you have to click on "Find". Compare and contrast simple navigation to Google Maps! Case closed.

Speed - I'm running on a 1.33 ghz PowerBook, with the most recent Route 66 patch. Using 16mb of cache (in the preferences) doesn't help much. This is 2005.. surely you would expect a dedicated app to outperform Google map. Not this one. I am not kidding when I say this is slow. You may say "well, run it on a dual processor G5!"... and I would counter with "I want to use this on the road, and I have a fast laptop - that should be sufficient".

Having written that, I'll note that it's possible to get some use out of the program, and the GPS status works fine (I got the Polstar PGM-111 via Delou bundle). I don't like the feeling that I have no other choice for a consumer GPS / Mapping app.

Hopefully the resurgence of the Mac as a platform will encourage more capable companies to put out a mapping program that's better thought out. The problem with Route 66 is that they appear to need some serious competition in order to shame them into putting out a quality product.

Please, Apple, put out an "iTravel"!1 stars (Avoid bad software like this.) - Assuming that you've read the other reviews, I'll try not to repeat too much. I used to think that Street Atlas was a little clunky. Now I just wish there was an OSX version.

This software is inexcusably slow. Launching, zooming, redraws and GPS tracking all require actual waiting periods. It's not unusual to wait 10-15 seconds for the beachball to stop. If this were just an initial load time or caching issue, I wouldn't mind as much, but everytime you move the map at all, there's the long wait again.
On any machine I've used, Google maps is a wonderful thing. This software had the whole 2.4GB of maps on the hard drive, and it's painful to use.

This software in anything but intuitive. Where the simple "from" and "to" functions to get directions. Entering points to be added to a route is just plain difficult.

GPS users: You cannot locate a point on the map using coordinates. You cannot get the coordinates from a point on the map. Though the software does respond to an attached GPS, and therefore must use coordinates internally, they are not user usable in any way.

Basic software techniques like pulldown menus and text boxes are clunky and poorly implemented. I haven't seen that level of bad software in years.

As a rule, purchased software on my hard drive should at least be as good as using a website like maps.google or mapquest.

If this is the only mapping software you can get for OSX, just do without.4 stars (Support Good Software for Mac OS X) - Route 66 is not the best software of it's kind but it is the best for Mac OS X. Prior to this I used DeLorme Street Atlas USA which was a better product but not updated for OS X.

Route 66 has a confusing interface and forces you to do trip routing their way instead of doing it your way. However once you learn their way the software becomes quite usable. The routing interface needs work.
The aquafied buttons, while very pretty, aren't very intuitive.
The Appearance and quality of the maps are excellent.
The speed of the program while not optimal, is usable(15" PB 1.5Ghz, 1GB RAM).

I have high hopes for this software. Hopefully the developer will realize that the Mac market is starving for this kind of thing and Apple's notebook sales are going to continue to create more demand.
Route 66 Route USA 2004 (Mac) Features:
Computer software (programs)
Reference
Maps (Mapping)
Travel Planners (Planning)
Route
Map Info (Mapinfo)
Hobby Hobbies
Mac Macintosh Machintosh Apple
CD
Multi-lingual user interface including Spanish
Door-to-door route planning for the United States and Canada
Over 7,300,000 miles of road; 4,000,000+ points of interest
Over 6,500,000 streets; 75,000,000+ house numbers
GPS-compatible; new up-to-date maps

Route 66 Route USA 2004 (Mac) is the CD-ROM version. The full version can be purchased by clicking on the "CLICK HERE TO ORDER" button below for around 34.99USD.