Protected maps => motivated map makers => better maps => LESS devices sold,Quote:
Originally Posted by kunix [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]
because not everybody has the money to buy aaaall the maps he wants to have or to try out.
It's like saying I've downloaded 100 illegal movies to watch (maybe), but if downloading is blocked for good, I would pay money to watch all 100 movies in cinemas.
(probably just one or two...)
So, why buy an expensive Garmin gps, if you have to pay 3 times more to buy maps you want.
I would buy a chinese unit and install a couple of navigators to play with, spending less than 100 euros.
Anyway, Garmin is selling most of their units as LMTs so we PRE-PAY for maps and we PRE-PAY for Traffic!
And in countries that companies (associated with Garmin) produce local maps for Garmin, units sold in those countries come preloaded (PRE-PAID) with those maps!
Sometimes a new good map (locked or easily unlocked) is the way to sell a new unit.
Now that we have the new Germany TOPO, if I wanted to use that map to full extend, I would have to buy a 62st (for example) at the price of 450 € !!!!!!!!
But if I was going to be stuck with JUST ONLY this map (lack of money to "buy" more maps for that already too expensive unit), probably I would NOT have bought the 62st in the first place (I already have a 60 and a 60csx).
And if I do so, who is losing money now???
A Forum like this one is useful to Garmin, because we are both beta testers (testing firmwares and maps and new features) and ADVERTISERS of new devices, features and maps.
Do you think my friends, that everybody that buys a Garmin device knows (or even bothers) to download and unlock maps, flash firmwares or unlock hidden features?
For everyone of us here, there are hundreds of others that just want to navigate from point A to point B.
They 've bought an EXPENSIVE Garmin device, they PRE-PAID CNxxNT (plus a country map from the country Garmin Dealer sometimes) just because they have heard from a friend: "Great device, you can load any map you like, for any place of the world, buy it, buy it, it has great potential!!!" but they never downloaded another map....
Don't you think that is easy for a company of this size to shut us down (or at least try) as Google did the XDA Developers thread of Maps?
Do you think that they took back the 6.40 firmwares just because some users protested in Garmin's Blog or because of the feedback in every Forum like this one?
(The same have happened with popular TV series like Lost, House MD, Prison Break, Game of Thrones etc. For every thousand of illegal downloads, the rummors and hipe that "we the illegals" spread worldwide, "forced" hundreds of local TV networks around the globe to "buy" those series and the profit, both for them and the producers, skyrocketed).
I think that Garmin is clever enough to "lose little from the few" and "profit too much from the many"! [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]