does anyone know of a decent offline map for Jordan (and possibly Israel)? I plan to rent a car and would like to use an offline map on iPhone or iPad for navigation purposes (one that does not require your phone to have an internet connection to save roaming costs)...
Thanks for your input,
/a
Greetings from Israel.
I don't drive and don't have an iPhone or iPad (which of course makes me the perfect person to answer your question!). However, you should note that the major problem is one of place-name spellings, Since neither Arabic nor Hebrew is written in the Latin alphabet and there is no consistency in spellings, or in what's translated literally and what is only transliterated (using all kinds of transliteration systems), the best device is a good old-fashioned (but obviously up-to-date) paper map.
I don't speak Arabic but I do speak Hebrew. Here are a few examples of problems you might find in Israel if you couldn't begin to guess what spellings your electronic gizmo uses:
You want Caesarea? How about Qesariyya? (If you see that on a paper map you might figure out what place is being referred to, but you would never guess that Qesariyya or some variation thereof is what you need to use.) Masada? It could be Metzada.
Hamelech David, literally King David, name of a street in Jerusalem. Who would guess if they don't speak Hebrew? Hundreds of similar examples in Israel, and undoubtedly Jordan is the same.
The Open Street Map project has map files for most countries in the world, free to download. I have put them on a Garmin GPS without problems. No idea if the same works for Apple.
if you are still looking for one check out kMaps. It works well and quick. You can DL it here if you want.