May 1, 2010 22:00
I'm new to this forum, and I'm actually glad to see this discussion taking place. As an fairly informed user and longtime boater, I agree with major points in both of the recent posts.
There is some new energy in creating mobile nav products for the iPhone and now iPad. These, often small developers, are creating some very intestesting products. But Activecaptain also has a point that while good and interesting there is is a lot of room for improvement. As I said in an earlier post (and I think someone else mentioned as well), there are good things and bad things about all the products currently available. They will certainly improve (and most have shown a lot of improvement in a relatively short period of time). If the current crop doesn't evolve to fill the needs, someone else will.
About pricing...as a consumer I had a tough time paying the $49 for iNavX. I've used it occasionally, but I never used it for anything serious and largely gave up on it when the Navionics product was first released at a more attractive price point. I often used it on my iPhone in parallel to my Raymarine C series plotter. Eventually though this use faded as the small screen wasn't really suited for this use. I would use it to quickly find a marina phone number though. I would also use both iNavX and Navionics to do some basic planning, to show people where we'd been or were thinking of going or just s general marine google maps.
The recent updates of both products have been really interesting and raised the bar in how we might use them. Charts&Tides is really nice looking on the larger screen, but I have experienced some issues learning to use the interface (I've had similar issues to varying degrees with the others).
In the end, it think we are a the beginning of the evolution. Current products are interesting, but future ones will be indispensable tools.
There is some new energy in creating mobile nav products for the iPhone and now iPad. These, often small developers, are creating some very intestesting products. But Activecaptain also has a point that while good and interesting there is is a lot of room for improvement. As I said in an earlier post (and I think someone else mentioned as well), there are good things and bad things about all the products currently available. They will certainly improve (and most have shown a lot of improvement in a relatively short period of time). If the current crop doesn't evolve to fill the needs, someone else will.
About pricing...as a consumer I had a tough time paying the $49 for iNavX. I've used it occasionally, but I never used it for anything serious and largely gave up on it when the Navionics product was first released at a more attractive price point. I often used it on my iPhone in parallel to my Raymarine C series plotter. Eventually though this use faded as the small screen wasn't really suited for this use. I would use it to quickly find a marina phone number though. I would also use both iNavX and Navionics to do some basic planning, to show people where we'd been or were thinking of going or just s general marine google maps.
The recent updates of both products have been really interesting and raised the bar in how we might use them. Charts&Tides is really nice looking on the larger screen, but I have experienced some issues learning to use the interface (I've had similar issues to varying degrees with the others).
In the end, it think we are a the beginning of the evolution. Current products are interesting, but future ones will be indispensable tools.