TUAW told you it was coming, and it has arrived. TomTom has updated its U.S. GPS navigation app [US$99.99, iTunes link] and added text-to-speech, advanced lane guidance, and a 'help me' feature for use in emergencies.

TomTom has been a little late to the text-to-speech party, with most competitors already offering this important function. Magellan has now jumped into the game with a very nice nav app as well, and at an introductory price that undercuts the TomTom app by twenty bucks.

All of the major navigation apps for the iPhone are quickly approaching feature parity. At this point, your main decision is whether you want the data streamed to your phone (as the AT&T app does), or have maps and data built into the app (like TomTom, Navigon, Magellan and some others).

Looming over whatever decision you make is trying to figure out if Apple will ever allow the Google turn-by-turn navigation app into the app store. It's going to be free, and Google says it wants the app to be on the iPhone. Of course things haven't been going swimmingly between Google and Apple of late (Google Voice, Android competition), so it's just a guess as to how that will all turn out.

If you need a navigation app in order to get to Grandma's house for the holidays, it's probably a good time to buy one. However, If you're willing to wait for the possibility of Google's free turn-by-turn nav app making it to the iPhone, you might be rewarded for your patience.

I guess it was inevitable. Magellan has just launched an iPhone app that looks great and will offer road warriors even more choice in a very competitive landscape.

The Magellan Roadmate 2010 North America is being offered for a 'limited time' for U.S. 79.99. [iTunes link] The 1.36 GB app includes the usual features plus text-to-speech for pronouncing street names, a car finding feature for when you park, pedestrian mode, lane assist, 3D landmarks, in-app music control, address book integration and an intuitive one touch menu system.

With the Magellan offering, all the big navigation companies have a cell phone product. TomTom is on the iPhone along with Navigon, and Garmin has a cell phone/ nav app hardware solution that hasn't exactly caught on fire with consumers. Then there is the 'will it or won't it appear on the iPhone' Google app.

Also interesting is that Magellan has announced a Premium Car Kit that will allow you to keep your iPhone in your current case, charge your phone, give you a bluetooth speaker phone, allow an iPod touch to work as a GPS, and it is supposed to function with any nav app. No price or specific launch date for the car kit, but it's supposed to be available before the end of this year.

We'll get a review copy of the Magellan app ASAP and give it our usual whirl around town. The more choice the better for iPhone users, and the new features on this Magellan app are most welcome.

[Thanks to David for the tip]

Very welcome news for owners of the TomTom iPhone nav app [iTunes link for U.S. version]; the company has announced a free update that includes many of the features that people were craving.

• Advanced lane guidance giving drivers extra clarity when navigating difficult junctions. For the first time this is in both landscape and portrait mode.
• Text-to-speech helping motorists to keep their eyes on the road by enabling street names and places to be read aloud as part of the spoken instructions.
• "Help Me" providing direct access to emergency numbers and directions to the nearest emergency providers.
• Updated map and safety camera database (Europe only)
• Customizable audio warnings when approaching safety cameras or driving over the speed limit, increasing driver safety and saving money.
• iPod player control ensuring drivers can conveniently control their music from within the application.

TomTom submitted the new version to Apple yesterday, and as usual, it's anybody's guess when it will emerge. It won't be fast enough for TomTom owners, who have seen their app fall behind the feature rich Navigon app and other GPS offerings.

The joker in this particular deck is still the free Google Navigation app, which is trying to get onto the iPhone and will have a gaggle of features no one else is offering.

[via Engadget]

When the latest G-Map app covering navigation in the U.S. and Canada was updated with text to speech, it didn't make owners of the older East and West [iTunes store links for each] versions too happy. Now that has been corrected, and both iterations of the U.S. $24.99 app have text to speech, iTunes integration, and the ability to resume navigation automatically after a call.

Traffic will be added soon to both apps as an in-app paid update.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Canada version has been pulled from the app store. According to the company:

'we found a critical issue in the new update of G-Map US & Canada. In order to protect our current users, we have no choice but to temporarily pull the app from the App Store. We already corrected the problem and re-submitted the G-Map US & Canada for approval. Please allow us a few more weeks to serve you. We will do our best to minimize any inconveniences that might occur to you.'

All the G-Map apps have been reasonably priced, but a bit buggy which has not pleased buyers. I'm working on a holiday buyers guide for nav software for the iPhone, but the whole landscape will change radically if Apple approves the free Google nav app with turn by turn directions and photo realistic rendering of routes. The app is shipping in the new Android 2.0 phones, starting with the Verizon Droid, which is scheduled for release tomorrow.

If choice is a good thing, iPhone owners have a veritable bounty of navigation apps in all price ranges and features. MapQuest has now released their own navigation app, and frankly it's a mixed bag.

Like the AT&T nav app, MapQuest Navigator [iTunes link] needs the internet for its data, so if you frequently drive where even the Edge network is a sometime visitor, forget using this app.

If you are more of an urban driver or stick to Interstates, the app has some promise.

Here are some of the touted features:

• Streamlined 3D Interface: Features voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation that speaks directions and street names.

• Regular Data Updates: Search 16+ million points of interest and utilize up-to-date street maps.

• Full Route Corridor Download: Quick route re-calculation for missed turns as well provides continued service in areas of no cellular coverage.

• Traffic Incident Based Routing: U.S. routes are optimized to avoid traffic incidents that might delay your travel.

• A MapQuest Place Carousel: Easily displays locations for hotels, movie theaters, gas stations, and more with a single tap.

The interface is different from almost all the other GPS apps I've used. There is a ribbon, or Carousel as MapQuest calls it, lets you click on hotels, gas stations, food, etc.., and see icons where these points of interest are. To get to one of these places, you have to click on the destination icon, which often requires enlarging the map. I would have preferred a list, because clicking on a map icon can be some extra trouble when various icons are close together.

Users have been begging for it, and now Navigon has updated the Mobile Navigator [iTunes link] app to read street names to you as you drive.

I've tested the app around town, and it worked well, and the speech is clear and easy to understand. Here in Arizona, a lot of the street names are Spanish, and in most cases, the app pronounced them correctly.

It meant that I could drive around getting navigation instructions without ever looking at the iPhone screen, which is a real safety improvement.

Navigon has also added good iPod control functions. You can add new playlists or tracks, and listen while you are using navigation. This is an option that must be turned on, so if you want the function, be sure to do so.

I also like that the app now knows when it is night time and switches the display accordingly. Again, this is a feature you can use, or disable.

When I updated, the old version of the app was completely replaced, and the new app is 1.44 GB, so make sure you have the room and the time to get it downloaded.

Other features added to version 1.2.0 include the ability to email a destination to another Navigon user directly from the app. If the person gets the mail while on an iPhone and taps the location, it will launch the Mobile Navigator app and set the app for the forwarded destination.

Navigon has said the app would be US$99.00 the first of September, but the price is $89.99 instead, keeping it just under the $99.00 TomTom app, and reflecting, I think, how competitive navigation apps are getting with each other.

The company has also announced a car kit available in October, but few details and specs are known. This is the second update to Mobile Navigator since it has been released. Navigon says more updates will be coming. Traffic info and weather data would be nice.

In my view, with text to speech, Navigon has pulled ahead of the pack. I'd still like to see more points of interest in the database, and of course multi-tasking would be nice, but that is an Apple issue, not a Navigon issue.

I like this app, and it has been aggressively updated. Check it out if you are looking for nav, and if you already have this app, get on with the update.

Have you ever wanted to type something into your Mac and have it record what you typed audibly using any one of the Mac OS X voices? It's easily done with a few Automator actions, and in this Mac Automation post, I'll show you how.

Open Automator and find the following actions, then drag them to the workflow area (in the same order):

• Get Specified Text
• Text to Audio File

Running the workflow
With these two actions in place, you can enter text into the Get Specified Text action, and a file name in the Text to Audio File action, and run it with great results. The text that you enter will be magically encoded into audio using the specified voice in the audio file action.

Read on to learn more about saving the workflow, and adding additional options.

Have you ever wished your Mac could read a long text document to you? Well, with the speech service, you can easily have your Mac read as much or as little text as you want.

While in Safari, TextEdit, Pages, and other applications; select the text you want to be read, then click the application name in the menu bar. Go to Services > Speech > Start Speaking Text. Your Mac will then use the default voice to read the text. It will continue reading until it reaches the end of the selected text, or you can select Services > Speech > Stop Speaking to end it immediately.

You can change the default voice by opening System Preferences (Apple menu > System Preferences) and going to Speech > Text to Speech. Once there, select a voice from the drop-down "System Voice" menu.


Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section!

GhostReader is a text to speech application that allows you to have your computer read aloud PDF, Word, and text files and save the output in a variety of formats for importing into iTunes. While Mac OS X does have built-in text to speech capabilities in the Universal Access Preference Pane (VoiceOver), GhostReader adds more voices (including various voices tailored to multiple European languages), allows you to modify how words are pronounced, and automates the conversion to audiobooks.

GhostReader 1.5 is $39.95 for one language; additional languages are extra; a demo is available.