- Joined
- Dec 5, 2013
- Messages
- 11
My dear TomTom One,
Whatever has happened to us? Do you remember the trips we had together, the holidays, the journeys along the big and small roads all around Europe? I do. You were sitting snugly at the bottom of my dashboard, receiving all the satellites on the sky with your external GPS-antenna, tethered to my smartphone, and happily displaying all those traffic jams ahead. It was perfect.
Your display was small, but bright and unreflecting, the colours were pleasing and customisable, the maps full of contrast and information, but without unnecessary frills, and your speaker was loud and clear. Everything just worked, always.
Then things changed. Your company got very rich, and with that came the bloated middle-management. People who had studied economy and thought they knew it all. And so the engineers who had built you, the clever programmers and nifty interface designers, became more and more frustrated. Suddenly all the decisions they had made were questioned. But as there was so much money there, and also so many debts from the acquisition of a mapping company, the economists won every time. And the good, capable people, those who had built this company, started to leave. And other, cheaper, less clever people were employed. People who could pretend a lot and knew less, and who liked to do Power Point presentations. People who could neither program nor design particularly well.
Today, my dear One, I have to tell you that you will not be receiving live traffic updates in the future. The technology hasn't changed, but the policy has. I would happily pay to continue with you. But your former company wants me to buy a new, shiny machine. One that looks more complicated and is less intuitive to use. One that has a reflecting screen and fewer possibilities for customisation. One that makes tethering to most phones impossible and doesn't allow an external antenna to be connected. The people making the decisions now are sure all this is better, and every time somebody says it isn't, they just close their ears with their hands and start to sing. And they are singing a lot.
You know, the Dutch company that once made you reminds me of a large Finnish phone maker. They used to build the best phones of their time, and they also became very rich. Then came the middle-managers, and the good developers became frustrated and started to leave the company, and only the not so good stayed on. And the company became more and more arrogant. People who could have changed something for the better didn't, because this company was still paying their bills. Today, many don't know this company, and it has long been bought up by a big American software maker.
So, my dear One, there is nothing more I can do for us. I will be moving on to other solutions, I am afraid. I just wanted to say thank you for the times we had together. They were great while they lasted.
Yours truly
Whatever has happened to us? Do you remember the trips we had together, the holidays, the journeys along the big and small roads all around Europe? I do. You were sitting snugly at the bottom of my dashboard, receiving all the satellites on the sky with your external GPS-antenna, tethered to my smartphone, and happily displaying all those traffic jams ahead. It was perfect.
Your display was small, but bright and unreflecting, the colours were pleasing and customisable, the maps full of contrast and information, but without unnecessary frills, and your speaker was loud and clear. Everything just worked, always.
Then things changed. Your company got very rich, and with that came the bloated middle-management. People who had studied economy and thought they knew it all. And so the engineers who had built you, the clever programmers and nifty interface designers, became more and more frustrated. Suddenly all the decisions they had made were questioned. But as there was so much money there, and also so many debts from the acquisition of a mapping company, the economists won every time. And the good, capable people, those who had built this company, started to leave. And other, cheaper, less clever people were employed. People who could pretend a lot and knew less, and who liked to do Power Point presentations. People who could neither program nor design particularly well.
Today, my dear One, I have to tell you that you will not be receiving live traffic updates in the future. The technology hasn't changed, but the policy has. I would happily pay to continue with you. But your former company wants me to buy a new, shiny machine. One that looks more complicated and is less intuitive to use. One that has a reflecting screen and fewer possibilities for customisation. One that makes tethering to most phones impossible and doesn't allow an external antenna to be connected. The people making the decisions now are sure all this is better, and every time somebody says it isn't, they just close their ears with their hands and start to sing. And they are singing a lot.
You know, the Dutch company that once made you reminds me of a large Finnish phone maker. They used to build the best phones of their time, and they also became very rich. Then came the middle-managers, and the good developers became frustrated and started to leave the company, and only the not so good stayed on. And the company became more and more arrogant. People who could have changed something for the better didn't, because this company was still paying their bills. Today, many don't know this company, and it has long been bought up by a big American software maker.
So, my dear One, there is nothing more I can do for us. I will be moving on to other solutions, I am afraid. I just wanted to say thank you for the times we had together. They were great while they lasted.
Yours truly
. Can you provide the first two digits of the unit serial number? Unit naming has not by any means been consistent across oceans, but the only ONE model in our charts that ever supported Live was the ONE XL HD Traffic (noted above), serial beginning with F3, and wasn't being called a V2 at the time.
