Garmin BaseCamp

Purchased a Garmin Zumo XT and trying to use Basecamp to plot routes. Nothing connects up Garmin Express doesn't talk to Basecamp which means the maps are macro rather than detailed. It's an absolute disappointment, i'm just getting more and more frustrated! I've now gone back to using Gala GPS (which is FREE) with my mobile.

This is the worst piece of route planning software that I've ever come across.

Garmin...you have so many good products and services. Why, oh why, is Basecamp such utter crap? I mean, really; it's junk. The map renders slowly on Catalina, the UI is terribly far behind the times. Try building a fun motorcycle route on Google Maps (which is easy) and then transfer that to Basecamp so you can load it to your zumo. Utter, complete, coffee-cup-throwing frustration. Garmin: Please update this sorry piece of software soon or admit defeat and find a way to import Google map route files directly. You're not looking like the world-class dev company that you are with this product.

My wife and I have used BaseCamp for several years. It is a great tool to load our international vacation trips into our Garmin GPS. I used to use my dell laptop to plan our trips and the program took for ever to load and crashed during planning multiple times in an hour. Very frustrating. We have planned trips to Ireland, Germany, England, Scotland using BaseCamp. To date and the maps were always correct and led us exactly to where we needed to be. We always bring two devices just in case. We set one with the hotels/B&B's and the other with the entire itinerary. It works great! I recently loaded the program onto my older MAC (I had to upgrade the OS to make it work) and I am here to say, WHAT a DIFFERENCE. It is fast reliable and easier to use. There are some draw backs. A lot of destinations are not there and you have to zoom into the map to find the right spot to make a waypoint. I do this in conjunction with Google Earth. It is a pain. You would think that there is a way for the programmers to update the software with all the people who use it to add way points or places of businesses that people have found or at least work with Google Maps. Even still, I am planning a trip to Italy and so far it has been very smooth. The trip is not complete but I will update what I find using the MAC. I gave this a 4 because of the difficulty in finding addresses. If I were to rate this for a windows device it would be 2 stars.

Rubbish software - avoid - not working well under Catalina, does not talk to my Garmin GPS device - WTF? POS software, standard fare fro Garmin

connecting tracks together, it does automatically create a direct line from the new end to end together. Make no sense to me. (Version 4.8.7) I would also pay for a usable software but Basecamp is free of charge but even nothing worth!!!!

Installed this latest v4.8.3 64-bit compatible version of BaseCamp on my 2016 MBP running macOS 10.14.3 Mojave. Installed successful and then manually deleted the old v4.7.0 BaseCamp. App opened fine and picked up all existing data without problem. Still early days and have not tried to link to my Garmin GPS unit yet but no problem so far. No obvious and significant changes to the GUI from v4.7.0 noticed yet. I'd suggest that anyone having trouble should consider moving to the latest version of macOS. Not surprised that the devs would focus on the current macOS version. Bugs with prior macOS versions are to be left for future bug fixes. Anyway, good on Garmin for moving this old but important app to 64 bit.

4.8.2 does not work on my macbook nor on the iMac - Bad software as usual from Garmin :-( Use 4.7.0 !!

Version 4.8.2 bounces once in the dock but does not open. Version 4.7.0 is still working. It is quite infuriating how badly Garmin treats this important application.

An insult to the OS X design and usability guidelines and everything Apple stands for. Using this mess is akin to working with Windows XP within OS X. Takes a forensic lab technician to make head or tail of this highly cryptic software.

Not remotely pleased with this product. Spent 10 hours trying to get the same favorites in three Garmins. If I had used the software before the purchase, that would have been three TomToms or three something elses. It couldn't seem to find addresses, and worst of all, there seemed to be no way to reliably get the data from this product into any of my Garmin devices. There was always something extra, or something missing. Seriously, are the other products really this totally bad? Are there any third party software products, etc.? I would have given it a lower rating, but MacUpdate gives a "Please complete the ratings stars" error message if you don't give it at least half a star.

I use BaseCamp with a yellow eTrex. I just upgraded to 4.01 from an earlier version. This version loads and saves much faster than previous versions. Feels much faster in use, too. I've always liked the features and the ability to manage the content on my eTrex. The send to Google Earth is helpful, too. The only drawback is that it won't import KML files from Google Maps. But I can convert them using GPSBabel, so it's not awful. And lest we forget, it IS free.

The reasons given below, no need for repetition, are the main reason I have Parallels Desktop installed and a Boot Camp partition. Garmin has shown an appalling lack of commitment to the Mac user community and, now that that user base is increasing exponentially they're trying to play catch-up but are not devoting enough resources to it. Too little too late Garmin! I want feature parody with MapSource for Windows. Garmin has massive resources, there's no excuse for this or the mess that is their cartography product line.

Garmin, why do you let me choose "Bicycling" as my "Activity" when you won't route me onto bike paths clearly displayed and marked as such in the City Navigator North America NT map!?! And how come when I asked Basecamp to check for updates today, the update check *FAILED*, yet a few hours later I see a new version posted on macupdate.com?

Really, really crappy user interface, worse than most web base maps nowadays. Creating routes on the computer is a pain, transferring them to the GPS, which recalculates the whole route and so on. This software should have never passed UI design and usability checks. Unfortunately, that's not new with Garmin. I wish there was more competition.

..and it get's even worse; After running my BlueChart map in Basecamp 3.0.2 it no longer works in my plotter!! From bad to hell - and support stinks big time!

Problem STILL remains: BaseCamp 3.0.2 does NOT support drawing the newest BlueChart maps. It does not even load the map now. They wrote earlier in a problem report that the next release (3.0.2) should fix the problem. I guess you can't trust the Garmin developers one bit! I'm very disappointed!! :(

This version upgrades MapManager to version 2.1.3.1beta. When you do a custom install it does show that it will be "upgrading" MapManager and MapInstall applications but it does not indicate to what version which would allow you to unselect those applications if you already have a newer version installed to prevent an unintended downgrade. This should not even be an issue though because the installer should be smart enough not to downgrade applications to older versions. It's very confusing the way Garmin is packaging updates. MapManager and MapInstall updates were released quite recently and listed on MacUpdate as separate updates but in fact both listings point to the same download/file which installs both applications, again, without indicating what version is being installed. Like I said in my previous comment for version 3.0.1, it is very poor practice to not identify in the installer description that it will be updating or downgrading applications other than BaseCamp. I'm happy that Garmin is supporting the Mac but it wouldn't take much more effort to be clear about what these packages contain and what is going to be updated. Also, if they're going to continue bundling multiple application updates into each release without indicating as much in the name or description then make the installers smart enough to recognize when you have a newer version and don't mess with it! Finally, I don't see in the release notes that the problem with not displaying the latest BlueChart maps has been addressed in this update.

This version downgraded my Garmin MapInstall app from 2.1.6 to 2.1.5. Suggest doing a custom install and unticking MapInstall until we get an explanation from Garmin. I wish it was clearly indicated that this package installs more than just the BaseCamp application.

Not Universal anymore, Intel only. PPC version 2.1.2 http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=4939