| You should not trust your life on any one navigational technology, ever, which
is why aircraft have systems which are completely independent of GPS. If you are
in hostile terrain, you need to take similar precautions whether on foot or in a
car. Usually that only means having a map, and ideally a compass, as well as the
GPS. In suitable terrain, good weather, and with adequately detailed maps, which
you know how to read properly, the compass is not really needed, just the
map. OpenStreetmap is very good in the several parts of Europe which I know
well and have checked in detail (various bits of the UK, bits of the Netherlands
and Germany and an area of N.E Italy), because the relatively high population
density ensures that there are many people working on it. It is not so useful in
sparesely populated areas, which include large areas of the US and Australia,
because if no-one goes there it just does not get mapped. I would not use it as
my main or backup means of navigation in some of those areas, because it does
not, as yet, have full information, such as contour lines, to show the
topography of the land, but I would use it in conjunction with the map and
Google Earth for advanced planning. But it is in many areas clearly more
reliable than the Apple junk, which makes me wonder how Apple did actually
manage to do such a bad job. A relatively small amount of cash, in Apple terms,
buys the rights to use various maps and satellite photographs which have been
prepared by competent people, yet they still messed up. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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