The server that controls map downloads and also operates this website failed early today. It was down for about 10 hours, but now seems to be functioning normally. The cause of the problem has not yet been identified.
Apologies to everyone who was unable to download maps during this period.
If you have an iPod touch, you may be interested in the new GPS Cradle from Dual. Your iPod simply plugs into the cradle and GPS location information is then avaialble to your apps, including Topo Maps. Dual have tested the cradle with Topo Maps and report that it works correctly; the only issue you may encounter is that the app doesn't wait long enough for a location to be reported. In this case, just touch the button again and it will continue waiting.
I've installed about a hundred new versions of maps in the NW Viginia / E West Virginia area. Specifically they're in the rectangle between 38-39 degrees N and 78-80 dgrees W. To get the new versions, just delete any maps that you currently have in that area and re-download them.
Do please let me know if you find other areas where newer versions of the maps are available.
This version adds a number of features that you're sure to find useful if you want to view large numbers of maps. You can now select multiple maps to install in one go (just touch one corner map until it's selected, and slide your finger to select more). Also, you can now choose the "Quick Install" mode: this downloads a lower-resolution version of the map that's typically about ten times smaller than the full version. You can later upgrade these maps to full resolution using a button in the map settings popup.
Multiple downloads are currently limited to ten maps at full resolution or 100 maps at low resolution. This is a per-use limit - there is no limit on the total number of maps that you can install, apart from the capacity of your device.
The app should now start significantly more quickly if you have large numbers of maps installed. This should also fix the problems identified with version 1.5, described below; please get in touch if you have any problems.
Finally, an additional co-ordinate format, degrees and decimal minutes (i.e. dd mm.mmm) has been added.
The more maps you have installed, the longer the app takes to start. Most users will not notice this, but if you have hundreds of maps installed it can get annoyingly slow. Version 1.6 will improve this.
This turns from an annoyance to a bug when the startup time exceeds about 20 seconds, because the device decides that the app has failed to start and kills it. For this reason, if the app takes more than about 15 seconds to start I suggest that you do not install more maps without also deleting some.
It is possible that version 1.5 is worse in this respect than version 1.4 was. For that reason, if you currently have version 1.4 and are considering upgrading to version 1.5 you should consider deleting some maps before upgrading. More info here.
If you were one of the first users of Topo Maps back in March, you may be affected by a problem that has been identified when upgrading to version 1.5. If you first purchased Topo Maps version 1.1 or later, from April onwards, you will not be affected. More info here.
The most obvious change in version 1.5 is the new app icon. Apart from that, there are two important new features. Firstly, the area covered has been extended to include Alaska and Canada. These maps are accessed via an additional satellite index map to the North of the existing one. In Alaska the maps are a mixture of 1:24,000 (mainly in the South and Anchorage area) and 1:63,360 (other areas). In Canada, the app uses Natural Resources Canada's 1:50,000 maps. These seem to cover almost the whole country, though many areas in the North are monochrome.
The second feature is the ability to mosaic together adjacent maps. This is intended to make it easier to navigate in areas at the joins between maps, but it's also useful if you want to get a zoomed-out view of a large area. To use this feature, select the first map from the satellite map as usual and then use the arrow buttons at the edges of the map to add adjacent maps to the mosaic.
The mosaic feature only works where the maps have the same map projection and have been scanned at the same scale, so it may fail to work at e.g. state boundaries. We may be able to improve on this in the future.
If you're considering upgrading to version 1.5 there are a couple of other things to consider:
The most obvious change in this version is the addition of hill shading. When you install a map it now also downloads corresponding altitude data, and from this it computes a shading overlay based on the simulated sunlight direction that you specify. This makes these already high-quality maps look even better, especially when you're looking at a zoomed-out map where the contour lines are hard to see. Of course you can turn off hill shading if you want.
This height data is also used to display an estimated height at the center of the screen. We hope this is useful, but note that the accuracy of this data is relatively poor.
The map database has seen some major fixes in this version and we're now confident that there are only a handful of maps (out of about 54,000) that are missing from the server.
We've also made some improvements to the user interface. In particular the co-ordinate display is now enabled and disabled by means of a button at the top right of the screen. The co-ordinate display is now also available on the satellite map screen, which will be useful if you need to find the map for a particular latitude-longitude position.
Finally, we've made some changes to the way that downloads work. Specifically, if the app detects that a download has stalled for more than 30 seconds it will now make an attempt to poke it back into life. A few users have reported problems with downloads that are probably explained by problems with their network providers; with luck, this trick might help in those cases.
As ever, do let us know what you think of the new version and what you would like to see in the next release.
This is a bug fix release; it corrects an error in the grid letters in an MGRS grid reference. It also corrects a few issues in the map database.
This latest version adds:
Version 1.2.2 is now available in the App Store; this is a bug-fix release. Previously, some maps suffered from a "stretched pixels" effect at maximum zoom; this should now have been fixed.
I've just made some changes to this website that should be invisible to normal web browsers, but which will cause it to display better if you're using Safari on an iPhone or some other mobile browser. All the same words and images are included but, for example, the multi-column layouts are reduced to a single column. My plan is that some future version of the app may link to this site from a "help" function, so it needs to look OK. Let me know if you see any problems.
The latest version is now available in the App Store with the following new features:
Please note, however, that inter-operation with the Panoramascope app has been removed. If you found this feature of older versions useful you may prefer to not upgrade. I have removed this feature at Apple's request: they believe that a user who did not have the Panoramascope app installed would be confused by the message that the operating system displays when Topo Maps tries and fails to start the Panoramascope.
A user emailed me recently to complain that the maps that he needed in Florida didn't seem to be available. On investigation it turned out that most maps for Florida, North Dakota and Nebraska were not downloading due to a problem on the server. This is now fixed. My apologies for the inconvenience that this must have caused. I've also put together some statistics about the coverage in each state that you can now see on the questions and answers page. Do let me know if you find that any of the missing areas cover important hiking areas, or if you have any other problems or questions.
Maps of Massachusetts are now available. This state was previously missing for the map archive. However, there is a complication - which may perhaps explain why the maps were previously missing. Much of MA is covered by double-width sheets, i.e. each download covers two of the yellow map squares shown by the app. For each pair, if you touch the right square the whole double-width map will be installed; if you touch the left square you'll get a "download failed" message. For extra confusion, the name shown on the map is often the name of the left square shown on the app. I will try to tidy this up in a future version of the app. Do let me know if you find any problems with these new maps.
Version 1.1 has finally made it to the App Store! I do hope that you like the new features; I'm already working on version 1.2 which adds even more.
Version 1.1 of Topo Maps and a new demo version are currently in review at Apple. I can't say how long that will take, but somewhere between a week and a month is likely. While I wait for them to cast their judgment I'm putting together this new website describing all the features in the new version. If you're currently using version 1.0 I think you'll like the new higher-resolution satellite map and the ability to search for maps by name. I'm now deciding what features to add to version 1.2 - if you have any requests, do please get in touch.