I’ve been using the Swiss Map 25 and Swiss Map 50 products for a few years, if you’ve not heard of them they’re basically the Swiss topographical maps on DVD. They’re not cheap and they’re not reliable. Right from the start I’ve had problems with them and each time the operating system on my Mac gets an upgrade the maps stop working in a variety of ways. Generally you can’t print which is a huge problem as I only use these products to print maps to laminate and take out with me.

When the product does work it’s so slow and resource intensive that my Macbook starts spinning the fan like crazy and heating the house on it’s own. It’s written in some old Macromedia toolset that’s never been supported on Intel Mac’s so it’s a disaster area all round.

All the time I’ve been using this product, and calling the support every couple of months when it breaks, they’ve been telling me they’re working on a new release. Apparently, even after being stuck with a mapping product written in a high-level language which is exactly what you wouldn’t choose for a graphics application, they were going to rewrite it in Java. Presumably the “thinking” being that this would make it portable between Microsoft and Mac’ while the past experience ought to have suggested this was just a variation on the original product and would come with all the same problems.

I’d guessed a while back this new product, years in the making, wouldn’t be seeing the light of day and today that seems to be confirmed. I got a mail (below) from Swisstopo announcing the new online product and on visiting the webpage for the product I’ve got I see confirmation it’s not supported from June onwards.

The new product is online and subscription based. The subscription is 29 chf per annum and there is a upfront cost of 49 chf. As an existing customer they’ll let me have that for 41 chf.

Let that sink in for a moment……..

I’ve been using Swiss Map 25 and Swiss Map 50 products for about 5 years, I’ve paid 1012 chf for those products, by my reckoning that’s nearly 35 years of use according to their current pricing and in return for my money and putting up with an awful product, they’re going to give me a discount of 8 chf on the new product. I don’t why they bothered, it’s an insult, why not charge existing customers double or triple? If you’re going to take us for a ride why not go the whole way?

I don’t want an online product, I want one that works on my laptop when it’s not connected to the Internet, I know SwissTopo aren’t the only ones to do this but it’s a a really dumb idea. Why on earth did they not talk to their users? In fact, I want a product like the one I bought only one that works this time.

There’s taking the mickey and then there’s daylight robbery and this is the latter. And, if it’s an online product, why do they need to send it out on a DVD? It doesn’t look good for providing an online service if you can’t even get the software out over the internet.

For the record, here’s the email :

Chère cliente, cher client,

Nous avons le plaisir de vous annoncer la parution du nouveau Swiss Map online. En misant sur de nouvelles technologies pour accroître les possibilités d’utilisation des géodonnées, nous avons ainsi pu répondre aux multiples souhaits de la clientèle.

Grâce à Swiss Map Online, vous avez désormais accès à toutes les échelles de carte ainsi qu’à des photos aériennes haute résolution (orthophotos) quadrillant l’ensemble du territoire suisse. L’ancienne subdivision en trois produits (Swiss Map 25, Swiss Map 50 et Swiss Map 100) et l’ancienne répartition par secteurs ont disparu. En revanche, les données sont directement accessibles via Internet, ce qui signifie que vous disposez en permanence des données les plus récentes et profitez automatiquement de toutes les mises à jour.

La mise en œuvre de la nouvelle loi sur la géoinformation va entraîner une baisse sensible des coûts que nous avons décidé de répercuter dans son intégralité sur la clientèle.

Pour 49 CHF seulement, vous disposerez ainsi pendant une année entière des géodonnées les plus récentes. Et pendant toute une année vous bénéficierez automatiquement et gratuitement de toutes les mises à jour! Sans compter que la reconduction de votre abonnement pendant un an ne vous coûtera que 29 CHF. Nos clients manifestaient régulièrement le souhait de bénéficier d’une actualisation permanente des géodonnées: grâce à cette formule, c’est désormais chose faite puisque Swiss Map online est constamment à jour.

Naturellement, vous pourrez continuer de superposer les itinéraires de randonnées pédestres, de calculer des profils, d’effectuer vos propres saisies sur les cartes et – nouveauté – sur les photos aériennes grâce aux fonctions graphiques, ou encore d’échanger des points de cheminement et des itinéraires avec votre récepteur GPS. Vous disposez également d’une fonction d’impression et d’une fonction de sauvegarde des graphiques.

L’application englobe par ailleurs tout le réseau SuisseMobile, y compris les routes cyclables.

Swiss Map online paraîtra fin juin 2011.

Offre de fidélité pour les clients enregistrés

Pour vous remercier de votre fidélité, nous vous proposons le nouveau Swiss Map online au prix de 41 CHF franco de port, au lieu de 49 CHF. Cette offre spéciale, destinée uniquement aux clients enregistrés comme vous, est valable jusqu’au 31 juillet 2011 seulement. Pour profiter de ce tarif spécial, commandez dès à présent Swiss Map online par courrier électronique auprès de mapsales@swisstopo.ch, en indiquant la mention «client enregistré».

Tags: maps | Reviews | Swiss Map 25 | swiss map 50 | Swiss Map Online | swisstopo

An update to my post of a few days back, I’ve done some more testing with this which reveals some interesting things but sadly not anything that gives me a working installation.

First, I tried to install the current version in Windows XP and Window 7. In Windows 7 my system just crashed totally which is a first, so SwissTopo have actually managed to produce some software that give me my first ever Windows 7 system crash which is not a great first really.

In Windows XP I was able to use the current installer and then install sector one of the Swiss Map 25 followed by Swiss Map 50 and to run the software. But, I found the exact same problem I had with printing on the Mac was also occurring on XP. In some ways this isn’t surprising, it’s basically the exact same software running through an interpreter but, on the other hand, I’d thought the problem was due to an external conflict so it seems odd the conflict exists on two entirely different operating systems. My XP installation is pretty scaled down, I only installed it recently in a VMware virtual machine so there’s no accumulated rubbish on the machine and there’s no installed applications apart from Microsoft Money and Firefox.

Odd though it seems I reasoned it might well be possible for this conflict to be on both platforms, there’s some common things between them, for example I’ve got Mozilla Firefox installed on both systems and, particularly interestingly, some Adobe components like Flash plugins and Acrobat. However, removing those things from the XP system doesn’t really change the problem so I tried another approach.

If, on Windows XP, I use the install disk for Swiss Map 25 sector One which is software version 1.0.3 build 54 then it works OK running the software from the disk without installing it. This is about as old as the Swiss Map software gets, I think it’s the initial version in fact. I then installed this version onto my XP system and found it still worked satisfactorily.

That’s not as useful as it seemed though, I need to install the Swiss Map 50 maps which requires a later version. The SwissTopo website is confused about this, they claim that version 1.2.3 (Build 87) is the first released version that supports Swiss Map 50 but the DVD actually ships 1.2.1 (Build 85) which is supposedly an unreleased, internal version. Regardless of that confusion in turns out that 1.2.1 (Build 85) doesn’t work.

Although this is interesting I can’t find a way to use the information to be able to actually print all the maps I need. It looks like it’s unlikely there’s any workaround I can make on my systems to get printing to work for both Swiss Map 25 and 50. But, it does look there’s an issue the SwissTopo could address if they were motivated to do so, if it works on version 1.0.3 build 54 and doesn’t work sometime after 1.2.1 (Build 85) then, in a nutshell, they’ve broken something along the way with their packaging and they ought to be able to fix it.

In terms of support, I reported this back on the 29th April, a few days later (3rd May) I got a mail suggesting I try removing a file (smusrpre.smp) which seems to be their standard response to pretty much any problem. I was away so I didn’t reply until the 7th May to report that removing this file didn’t work. I didn’t get a response from that or from the followup I sent late on 10th May.

Tags: maps | Reviews | Swiss Map 25 | swiss map 50 | Swiss Map Online | swisstopo

I’d written about this software a coupe of years ago when I’d first got the local set of 1:25000 maps on DVD, since then I’ve needed to purchase some more sets from the series and I now have three of the Swiss Map 25 sets. I also have the newer Swiss Map 50 product which is a 1:50000 complete set for the entire country. This Swiss Map 50 supports some useful overlays for slope gradients so slopes over 30° are marked along with ski routes which makes them really handy in the winter.

Both sets support overlays with various paths and trails marked and it’s supposed to be possible to print the maps out. Previously I’d written about printing those maps and using them which is something I’ve found quite useful. The reason this is so very useful is that I travel widely around Switzerland and am often in an area briefly or doing a tour that would need several maps.

So, with SwissMap what I like to do is print a map at 1:25000 just like the Swiss Topo maps with a brown cover but with the paths on them which you only really get on the 1:50000 (yellow) map. This is cheaper than buying new maps all the time and it’s just more effective, instead of needing a couple of maps for an area I can just print off one, with the paths on it, with my planned route on it and any other notes I want to make. I can even laminate that if I want and make it more robust and they’re easier to handle than a large paper map in bad weather. One of the other tricks I have is to print awkward sections at double size which is useful in bad light and even more useful if I’m wearing contact lenses and can’t read the detail normally without reading glasses.

So, it’s a complete nuisance if for some reason I can’t print maps. And that seems to be happening increasingly now.

performance…

Previously I’d written this seemed to be actively developed software but that was June 2008 and realistically there’s been no development of this software at all since that time. That wouldn’t matter if it worked well but that’s never really been the case. It’s never run natively on the Intel processors used by the current generation of the Apple Macintosh. Back when I first wrote about Swiss Map that seemed a little out of date but today, in May 2010, it looks positively obsolete. Apple haven’t been shipping hardware with anything other than Intel processors now since 2006 so it’s really long overdue to support this properly.

The problem with not being native software for the hardware we’ve all got now is that performance is awful. Just starting the software and trying to use functions in it takes nearly all the resources my system has and it’s extremely slow to perform even basic tasks. Inevitably, after a couple of years this gets more frustrating each time I need to use Swiss Map.

It should be noted though that life isn’t much better in the Windows world, I’ve installed this software on Windows XP and the performance really hasn’t been any better. It might be, more than being old PowerPC code, that the real performance hit is that the software is written in a high level abstraction presumably to make it portable using some Mactomedia tools. That’s topical right now as Steve Jobs of Apple and Adobe slug it out regarding Flash support on iPad and iPhone platforms. The argument Jobs makes in essence is that these interpreted platforms always give poor performance and are a poor choice which is convincing argument.

printing….

But, that’s something you just have to live with using the product, it’s obviously not really good enough that four years after Intel Mac’s were released that Swiss Map doesn’t run properly on them but it’s the way it is.

What is impossible to accept is that the age of the Macromedia toolset that was used is now giving huge reliability issues. Back in September last year after returning from extended trips in the Himalayas, the UK and Corsica, I needed to plan a route back home in Switzerland and tried to use Swiss Map to do it. It all seemed to be going well until I came to print the maps and realized that in the couple of months I’d been away that somehow printing was broken.

Now when I printed a map with the paths on it the paths were displaced from their real position and placed somewhere else on the map, a picture probably makes it clear what happens:

The yellow lines are supposed to be paths and you get the first clue that all’s not well as a path appears to be in the lake, your eye probably quickly tells you that the path is moved to the left and slightly down. Because this map segment contains some visual cues you can see where the path is, the cues are that the path can’t be in the lake and you can see a physical path marked following a similar line with some turns that allow you guess what’s going on. That’s not really true in some places, in some places it’s actually not immediately obvious what’s happened unless you know exactly what you’re looking for.

self support….

That’s potentially way more annoying than the software being a bit slow but if you report the problem and get a speedy fix it’s not the end of the world. But, that doesn’t happen, nearly three months later, after I send the support team some increasingly irate emails there’s still no sign of any fix. In fact not only that but they’re sending me back strange requests, the most odd being a request for “all available information about [my] system”.

In the end, I reinstall my system several times which takes days of time trying various combinations to isolate the problem with limited success until I speak with the support team on the telephone who mention this all written in a Macromedia toolkit which I’d not known until that time. So, armed with the information they had all along I was able to identify within minutes that this problem was likely to be a conflict with Macromedia runtime components. Most likely given how very old the Swiss Map software was then a more recent update of another product with some use or link to Macromedia created the problem.

And that’s what it turned out to be, I’d installed Adobe PhotoShop Elements 6 which has a whole bundle of things from Adobe Photoshop CS2 including the current versions of some Macromedia files (in /Library/Application Support/Macromedia) which break Swiss Map. Just to be quite clear, this is not a problem with PhotoShop, it’s a problem with Swiss Map being so old and out of date. I found removing the files didn’t break PhotoShop, at least for me, and did fix Swiss Map.

I’d not recommend doing this really, maybe you do something with PhotoShop that needs those files, I didn’t but it’s hard to know. If you have the same problem though and make a backup of the files you can try it at your own risk.

deja vu…

Only now it’s started again, I needed a new map the other day and it’s not printing again. It looks like the cause must be about the same as before but this time I can’t find what files are causing the conflict, at least so far I can’t. I’ve reported this of course but I’m not hopeful that they’ll be a speedy solution and my suspicion is that I’ll end up fixing this myself again.

What makes this so massively irritating is that each time this happens I’m without maps, obviously I can’t be without a map so I end buying a paper version. I only ever bought Swiss Map to avoid amassing a massive pile of paper maps that I used once or twice but now I’ve paid for the Swiss Map product then pay for a map each time I need one which is really maddening if not to say a waste of money.

It’s turned out that Swiss Map is the most expensive, most unreliable and poorest performing piece of software I’ve installed on my Mac and may top all three of those lists for software I’ve ever owned. I hope this will turn around and there’ll be a new version of Swiss Map that actually works, without needing to purchase all the maps all over again which I cannot possibly afford, but I’ve been waiting two years so far and it’s not happened.

Tags: maps | Reviews | Swiss Map 25 | swiss map 50 | Swiss Map Online | swisstopo