Waze vs. Garmin vs. ideal GPS app

  1. I wish my Garmin device would use the Waze software. I like having a dedicated device (i.e., not my phone), but Waze is so much smarter than Garmin…
  2. At least on my Garmin, I can request the fastest route or the shortest route (I don’t think Waze offers me these customizations). But why can’t I request the simplest route (fewest turns), the straightest route (i.e., staying in the same direction; my wife hates feeling that we are deviating from the arrow of our travel), or even the prettiest route? Prettiness should certainly be a characteristic of roads.
  3. Waze, famously, will sometimes ask you to make a left turn at a stop sign onto a busy street, so you’re stuck there, waiting for a gap, peering around giant SUVs and sweating. God forbid you have a passenger asking why the hell you took this crazy route. Saying, “Waze told me to” is generally reacted to with an irritated snort.
  4. When I give Waze a new location, it reacts differently every time… I haven’t figured out the pattern yet. Sometimes it tells me that it has added it to my scheduled list (or something weird like that), sometimes not. Why?