Are you being intentionally dense or do you not know anything about programming?
Software has to know what hardware is there to know what it can or can not do. As I said before, the article says that they want to work on porting it to the other devices but it's not their priority now.
I concur, but OS 3.0 handles this. Not TomTom.
I keep explaining this to you but you just aren't getting it. The software running on the 3G and GS are running on an even playing field. They both have the same hardware set available to the software.
Not exactly, 3GS has a compass which might come in handy, but ok.
When software such as this starts up it needs to initialize all of the internal devices to make sure everything is running properly before continuing on with the function. The 2G doesn't have an internal GPS chip. Neither does the iPod Touch. The software will has to know if an internal and an external chip are available. By default the internal GPS chip is the standard way for the device to receive a GPS signal and the software can address that and continue running. If the external dock is available it needs to handshake with that and hand off control from the internal GPS to the external GPS. Which performing the GPS check it would sit there and say, "Hello internal GPS?" "Hello internal GPS?" "Hello internal GPS?" but an answer would never come on the 2G and the Touch because there's nothing there to talk to. The software needs a hardware profile to say, "Oh. This is an iPhone 2G. I'll ignore trying to contact the internal GPS chip and move on to looking for the external device." The same applies for the Touch.
Again, I don't think this is true. Applications for iPhone OS run in a sandbox, they don't need to communicate with hardware, there are API's for that. API's which are available to both the 2G and 3G.
Also, I think you're wrong about how TomTom operates. I think it's more like this: "O hi external GPS receiver, I'll use you even though there might be an internal GPS receiver, I don't care". What's the point of an external GPS receiver if it only works whenever there's an internal GPS receiver? That doesn't make sense. An external GPS receiver doesn't need a second internal GPS receiver.
You say you don't know why the TomTom would look for the cell radio. Again, I've ALREADY explained this. The Touch doesn't have a cell radio, only WiFi. TomTom has already acknowledged there will be traffic and IQ Routes in the software. There's also a possibility that they will also integrate MapShare into the software. Those are live data products coming from them. You can't check for traffic on a device that doesn't have a live cell radio to get the information. Do you get it now? The software would be stuck looking for a radio to contact TomTom to get the traffic or IQ Routes information. It couldn't make it past that because it's not there. Again, there needs to be a hardware profile in the software to disable Traffic, IQ Routes and MapShare or to treat it like their hardware GPS units and only allow that to update when docked. That wouldn't do anything for traffic but a pre-calculated IQ Route could be done through docking or WiFi.
Ok, you're right about TomTom looking for cell service, but it's not required. If it were required, TomTom would be useless abroad because data's very expensive. I think TomTom handles this situation as follows: "There's no internet connection available, no biggie, we'll try it without traffic information".
There's also the issue of the dock Bluetooth speakerphone. Calls would need to be there for the 2G but not for the Touch models. Again, if it's trying to make a Bluetooth connection with a device that doesn't have Bluetooth (first generation Touch) then it's going to hang. What about 2nd Generation? Without hardware profiles it would think that the Touch is a phone and try to set up speakerphone handshaking with something that doesn't have a cellular radio to begin with.
Yeah, but there's also a 3.5mm jack in the carkit. You don't have to use the BT speakerphone.
Lastly, there's something that could be a complete showstopper with the TomTom dock. The 2G and the 3G has variations on how the dock connector worked which prevented or flagged charging from previous generation charging devices. iPod charging devices wouldn't work on the 2G. 2G charging devices were getting the incompatibility flag on 3G hardware and there have been posts here that 3G dock connections weren't working on the 3GS. If the dock isn't able to connect and charge the phone then none of this means anything anyhow because the battery will die rapidly.
I'm done explaining things to you. This has all been very clear about why things would not work and just a few of the things that would need to be changed to make them work. If you don't get it now, move along. As I said, it's not a toaster. You can't just plug stuff in and expect it to work. There's a lot more that's going on behind the scenes. If you want to educate yourself sign up as a developer and get the Stanford University downloads that will teach you how to develop software for the devices. It's free.
I know this. The difference on the dock connector may be a show stopper, on that I agree with you (never thought of this before), but that's the only thing I agree with you about.
I think you should realize that TomTom doesn't need to communicate with the hardware at all and that iPhone apps run in a sandbox environment. They have certain API's available to them which they can use as input for their app. Again, apps are developed to be used on iPhone OS, not for a specific iPhone. Despite your long post, I still don't see why iPhone OS would treat the iPhone 2G differently than the 3G when they are both docked into the carkit (assuming the dock connector won't be a problem).
You edited your post since I was typing my response and you managed to answer your own question. Congratulation!
There you go. You figured it out all by yourself. You got an error because it was looking for a device that did not exist in the equipment. As you said, they didn't account for the 2G/3G differences. You finally figured it out! Apparently me telling you that three times didn't take. You had to figure it out for yourself and, honestly, it doesn't seem like you've figured it out yet. There are significant differences that the software has to deal with using hardware profiles so you don't get errors. Navigon should have generated a connection message that informed you that the 2G was incompatible with GPS devices right from launch just from polling the hardware.
If you can't figure this all out now, I'm done with you. Ciao.
No, Navigon shouldn't have. iPhone apps can't directly communicate with hardware. And why should they, there are plenty of API's available that can do that. No need to reinvent the wheel (besides the fact that Navigon can't). I don't think you understand how iPhone apps work.
I still hope you can answer the following question for me:
Also, please describe to me what do you think would happen when you dock a 2G into the carkit and start the TomTom app.
I just still don't see why an external GPS receiver would not work on the 2G.
