Casual Conversation

I bought a garmin specifically to help me navigate moving on my own halfway across the USA. It was my first time moving out. It was my first time on such a long drive by myself. Lots of firsts. (I actually forgot my phone back home, since the garmin was its own device, I was more focused on having that than my cheap ass phone. Wound up pulling into a Walmart to buy a Tracfone lol)

Prior to that I used MapQuest a lot

Yup, was a Garmin. Part of me has been a little worried cause i can't find my way anywhere without GPS anymore, and Google has been getting shittier every day.

Hell, I remember the first time I used maps on a computer to plan and print a route, and the first time I could do it online with MapQuest.

Those were moments that the Internet really felt like the future.

It tells you which direction something is in, but can't help plot a route to get there.

I still remember printing out google maps directions, then missing one turn and then being completely lost.

Yes. I was prepared though, I had directions from Mapquest printed out and ready to go in case it messed up. I was using an early-gen Garmin GPS that was just a GPS. It did mess up quite a bit, and I had to take it inside, plug it into my computer to update maps. It also could only hold so much, so I had to limit the maps I had available to just my city.

I'm in the US but I bought a TomTom in 2008 instead of Garmin because at the time, their maps of Europe were better and we were still traveling there a lot.

One of my favorite memories was the time TomTom had us drive through someone's sheep pasture in Scotland. The day before we had driven a paved road that went through pastures, and online comments mentioned that the road was indeed open to the public and you had to get out, open the gate, drive through, then close the gate.

So when it said to do it again, I trusted it. But the road was not paved. It was rutted and muddy. We were in a sedan, not anything with adequate ground clearance. And we totally got stuck in the mud. It was very likely not a public road. I'm so glad the farmer who owned it didn't come out to yell at us. I rocked the car enough to get us unstuck. We came out the other side of the field, back onto pavement, and I didn't let TomTom try to send us offroading again!

This TomTom also struggled with extreme northern latitudes. Wherever we went in Alaksa, it assumed we were about 100 yards off to the side of the road, sometimes out in the middle of Turnagain Arm 🤣, and constantly fussed at us to navigate back to the marked path.

Internal thought process: "psh, it's not just over-35's who remember the dawn of GPS, I'm only... thirty... six..." 😩

I don't have deeply shocking memories about using GPS for the first time, it was just this gadget my dad got for road trips so we didn't have to deal with an atlas. However, I still remember being a passenger in a moving car using my first smartphone, watching our progress on Google Maps and feeling like I had gained the ability to see around corners. Technological progress seemed unambiguously positive and my phone just kept getting more useful.

Yep. Seemed pretty shiny compared to printing off directions from MapQuest. Then we figured out how to customize the voice, and it was shenanigans from there.

I'm 37, and yes. Along with the laptop I took to college in 2007, I bought a copy of Microsoft Streets & Trips that came with a USB GPS receiver. The software itself worked fairly well, the GPS receiver worked badly twice and then completely gave up. Used that software for several years to print maps and directions on paper to refer to on the road until Google Maps surpassed it.

I don't make the cut since I'm 33 but I remember being 10 and my dad had a directional only GPS where you could put down coordinates of a place and get the direction needed to go towards it.

I had the GPS and my dad was winging it without a map and me asked his friend if it's left or right and I said the GPS pointed to the right or whatever when they would he guessed left. They went for it and I navigated couple of roads and found a shorter path.

It's a pretty nice memory I have of my dad which passed away 8 years ago. Thanks for reminding me

Alternate question: do any of you (maybe a bit older than 35) remember the last time you bought an updated paper map for your area, or one for a road trip? They used to be at most checkout lanes in many stores.

I can already hear the "maps on paper? How could you find anything?"

Yes. I took a trip to Ireland and rented a car. I had a Garmin GPS unit which I purchased for the trip and was extremely helpful.

I remember the first time I saw GPS units at the electronics store. It seemed like some crazy military grade thing from a movie.

I remember shitting on a friend 3ndlessly for his dependency on his Garmin style GPS. The go to was that he couldn't find his own dick with out his GPS. One day it's just the two of us coming back from the city. He's yelling at me to use the GPS as I was the passenger but being the asshole I am refused to turn it on and told him if he cant find the two turns to get on the expressway than we weren't meant to go home. We'll fuck me if he didn't fuck up missing every on ramp which then led to him trying to just stay under the overpasses hoping to run into another on ramp. Finally I decided to fold and give him directions when he actually turns onto the walking path that takes pedestrians along the water front 🤣🤣🤣 fucking worth every minute we wasted. Motherfucker could lift a ton, but was too dumb to spell it.🤣

I remember how tedious using maps to get anywhere was.

Last week I traveled through some rural desert backroads and Apple Maps got me there no problem, but it had taken me on an indirect route. As I was driving I discovered that it was because a number of the roads were completely closed. If I had been using maps I would have had to stop and figure out the detours on my own.

I had some sort of black and white screen Garmin handheld back in the early 90s. You would have to plot the location it gave you on a map to see where you were. I would get maps from Industry Canada for 250k:1 and 50k:1 of the areas I wanted to backpack in, and carry them with me. Worked well, I didn't get lost I guess, but there was also a lot of dead reckoning when the GPS couldn't get enough satellites to work.

Yeah, it was one of these when I was in the army: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_Lightweight_GPS_Receiver

This didn't necessarily precede civilian GPS devices, but this was during the accuracy "embargo." Certainly though, GPS devices available to the public were cost prohibitive at that time. Later, someone bought me a Garmin for because they thought it would be useful to me in the military. I didn't have the heart to tell them I'd never need it because of the existence of very accurate military GPS devices. It was a very thoughtful gift from a family member who was a veteran

Garmin nuvi 250, and then shortly after that a Garmin Nuvi 500, which I still use almost every day when I drive.

Almost 20 years old.

A friend of mine insisted on bringing a GPS for our bicycle trip through Europe.

From the beginning, the GPS took center stage.
At every fork in the road, instead of broadly riding in the right direction, we had to stop so he could determine which was the correct path on the tiny black-and-white display.
And half the time, he was wrong. The punch line came when a bike path he found on his device turned out to be a stair going up a 200m high hill. Took us 2 hours to get up there cause we first had to carry our bikes up, then our luggage.

The first half of the trip he spent hours trouble-shooting the connector he had built himself to keep the GPS batteries charged off the hub dynamo.
The second half of the trip we had to book camp-sites or hostels most of the time, instead of just sleeping under the stars, because the charger still didn't work, but THE DEVICE NEEDS POWER.

tl/dr: it sucked a lot of fun out of the trip. And it made me avoid all electronics on bicycle trips ever since.

Now when I ride, my phone stays in my pocket (for emergencies). I navigate by the sun when it's shining and a compass otherwise.
At the end of the day, I'll look at a paper map to see if I'm broadly in the right place and to plan the next day.
The only time I'll use my phone to navigate is when the bike breaks down or I run out of water, to find the quickest way to get help.

Yes, in 2003 on a cheap-ish pocket PC running a version of windows that felt like a mix of 95 and 3.11. Think smartphone without the phone feature

In 2001, I rented a van in Japan. Digital mapping is essential for Japan, because most streets have no names, and house numbering is almost completely random, often based on the year they were built rather than any linear sequence.

It was incredible to me to be able to punch in a destination and see the map. At the time, I don't think it could speak the directions to you. And you could search for nearby restaurants and gas stations too!

First time I used a Garmin device to mark where we dropped crab pots in the Puget Sound. Saved a lot of time hunting for our buoys.

Hertz rent a car on a business trip. It was this little box with a yellow display that would ding when it was time to turn. I thought it was so cool!

I couldn't tell you the specifics, but back in the 1990's, we had GPS devices that just had an LCD read-out of your latitude and longitude, so you could find your position on a paper map. They were on the market as survey devices, but were also useful for wilderness travelers.

It's hard to recall exact dates, because the devices developed incrementally, and navigation mode on Google Maps didn't spring into existence ask at once.

Used GPS on boats as early as the late 1980’s, back when selective availability was still a thing. For those unfamiliar with it, GPS was initially military-only, and when they allowed civilian use they were concerned that US adversaries could use it for precision attacks. So SA was included in the civilian version, which introduced a random error of up to something like 1000 yards.

The truly ironic thing is that the US Coast Guard (a branch of the very military that created SA) saw the usefulness of GPS for marine navigation, but only if SA was removed. 1000 yards could easily mean the difference between a boat running aground (or worse) or not.

So the USCG built ground stations that would receive GPS signals, calculate the SA error, and broadcast a fixed signal. That was called Differential GPS, or DGPS. Boaters could buy special DGPS receivers for years, which were as accurate as GPS without the SA error.

Eventually the military was convinced to do away with SA entirely so DGPS was retired. It was only after that happened that GPS became globally useful for car, hiking, etc. navigation.

I had one of the first affordable hand held GPS units made by Magellan in the mid 90's. I was doing monthly backpacking trips so it seemed like a good purchase. Soon went back to a map and compass and never went back

Yes. I remember seeing them advertised on a trip to Japan and not fully understanding how they even worked. It really seemed like the future. It was a few years before they were available here and prices came down enough to use it. My first trip was navigating home from Fry's

I do, the GPS maps was of course outdated, and brought us to the most random mud trail in the area.

It had potential, but definitely a lot of things to improve.

On my first smart phone ca. 2014, I had Here Maps (a Nokia product I think?). I didn't have any data plan, and that mapping service didn't require it. I don't think I ever used it, but that may be the first. Otherwise, earlier this year I used my work phone and whatever it has for navigation. I hated it 😅 I clearly liked knowing directions more then one turn out.

My first GPS was an entire laptop sitting in the passenger seat with a card adaptor. Then I upgraded to a PDA (remember those?) with a card adaptor (may have been the same one, I can't remember). Motorcycled over 3000 miles with that setup before smart phones became a thing.