March 7, 2006 16:03
Welcome to the forum!
I was in a similar situation to you a couple of years ago, regarding the conflict of using PCs vs Macs for navigation and other marine tasks. At that stage, was were a number of fairly basic GPS packages available for the Mac, all of which had little or no support for commercially available charts for my sailing area, the English Channel. One app that did catch my eye was GPSNavX, but it didn't support my charts.
Actually, here's a confession but, for a while, I was running a Windows PC running MapTech's Offshore Navigator software with BSB charts of the English channel. The cartography was raster, so not ideal, but reasonably priced.
As soon as support for BSB charts was included within GPSNavX, I bought the software straight away, threw away my Windows laptop (well, it's under the sofa..), and haven't looked back since.
Have a look around the forum. you'll find all of your questions answered there. Also, I'd suggest that you check out http://www.gpsnavx.com , as it should provide you more information on cartography, AIS and GRIB support.
Virtually all areas of marine computing are catered for by one Mac package or another. However, for any non-US sailors, there is one glaring ommission; lack of Mac support for commercial vector cartography from C-MAP, which the majority of the serious Windows navigation packages support. This may or may not be an issue for you.
I was in a similar situation to you a couple of years ago, regarding the conflict of using PCs vs Macs for navigation and other marine tasks. At that stage, was were a number of fairly basic GPS packages available for the Mac, all of which had little or no support for commercially available charts for my sailing area, the English Channel. One app that did catch my eye was GPSNavX, but it didn't support my charts.
Actually, here's a confession but, for a while, I was running a Windows PC running MapTech's Offshore Navigator software with BSB charts of the English channel. The cartography was raster, so not ideal, but reasonably priced.
As soon as support for BSB charts was included within GPSNavX, I bought the software straight away, threw away my Windows laptop (well, it's under the sofa..), and haven't looked back since.
Have a look around the forum. you'll find all of your questions answered there. Also, I'd suggest that you check out http://www.gpsnavx.com , as it should provide you more information on cartography, AIS and GRIB support.
Virtually all areas of marine computing are catered for by one Mac package or another. However, for any non-US sailors, there is one glaring ommission; lack of Mac support for commercial vector cartography from C-MAP, which the majority of the serious Windows navigation packages support. This may or may not be an issue for you.