April 22, 2005 15:03
I would agree with the notion that if cartagraphic support is to be extended then it should be to S57 vector charts. After all the IHO established this standard so that ECDIS compliant data sets could be interchanged easily.
The single biggest stumbling block is government policy! By this I mean that most governments are backing away from service provision funding so that service and data providers within governments must become more and more self funded. When this revenue imperitive is placed on hydrographic offices you see the kind of situation that exists now in Australia. They see their customer as the commercial shipping industry and product pricing is set accordingly. Dongles and data encription protect their IP and licence fees to software developers ensure that only the big end of town can afford access to the official data.
The recreational mariner is almost totally ignored in this except for their PC based application called Endevour which can use their raster data (with accompanying dongle). My fear is that the situation will get worse as more S57 compliant data sets hit the street (should that be the marina maybe :lol: ).
C-Map and Navonics are a good alternative in that their data sets are geared to the recreational mariner. The problem is convincing them that the Mac community represents a big enough opportunity for them to recoup their costs of support and make some money on data set sales.
The opportunity is there, especially with MacOS now being BSD unix based. Much of the api set could be made unix generic or at least unix flavour neutral. This could expand their market well beyond the Wintel platform to the Mac and many other unix based software platforms.
I fear that they will see the market as too small and therefore avoid it completely. One thing is for sure and that is whoever does actually get in first and provide support for the Mac community for their supported and maintained data sets will in all likelihood corner the market. Mac users have a very good track record over the years of buying software and being loyal customers for those developers.
The single biggest stumbling block is government policy! By this I mean that most governments are backing away from service provision funding so that service and data providers within governments must become more and more self funded. When this revenue imperitive is placed on hydrographic offices you see the kind of situation that exists now in Australia. They see their customer as the commercial shipping industry and product pricing is set accordingly. Dongles and data encription protect their IP and licence fees to software developers ensure that only the big end of town can afford access to the official data.
The recreational mariner is almost totally ignored in this except for their PC based application called Endevour which can use their raster data (with accompanying dongle). My fear is that the situation will get worse as more S57 compliant data sets hit the street (should that be the marina maybe :lol: ).
C-Map and Navonics are a good alternative in that their data sets are geared to the recreational mariner. The problem is convincing them that the Mac community represents a big enough opportunity for them to recoup their costs of support and make some money on data set sales.
The opportunity is there, especially with MacOS now being BSD unix based. Much of the api set could be made unix generic or at least unix flavour neutral. This could expand their market well beyond the Wintel platform to the Mac and many other unix based software platforms.
I fear that they will see the market as too small and therefore avoid it completely. One thing is for sure and that is whoever does actually get in first and provide support for the Mac community for their supported and maintained data sets will in all likelihood corner the market. Mac users have a very good track record over the years of buying software and being loyal customers for those developers.
Joe Griffin
Rampart 32
Powerbook G4
iMac G4
Rampart 32
Powerbook G4
iMac G4