Does foreflight seem to be getting slower?

Tantalum said:
A friend of mine had a theory that gadget performance was designed to degrade overtime to motivate people to upgrade. I doubt that's true but as each update uses more hardware power eventually you do need to upgrade
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The reason each update uses more hardware power is that there's more hardware power available to be used. About twice as much every other year, as a matter of fact (Moore's Law).

Oh, and that new WiFi vulnerability that was in the news last week (KRACK)? That will never get patched in iOS9. Hope you don't keep anything sensitive on your old hardware.
 
Part of the problem is these fancy-schmancy leading edge companies get their developers the best and latest hardware. Not a problem where I work. Customers have better hardware than us, so while it takes forever to build something, at least the customers aren't complaining about speed when the product finally gets released. Oh well, we have do have computers now. When I first started, we used rocks...and liked it!
 
O'Reilly Auto Parts is still running their entire company on an AS400 and it was a freakin' dinosaur when I left there in 1999.
 
ForeFlight has been adding features to make it more attractive to fleets and jets. As it gets larger and more complex two very predictable things have been happening.

  • Fatter and slower. Hardware needs increase.
  • More buggy. I recall FF never having a "bug release." The latest version has already had 3 or 4 in rapid succession.
 
The older iPads have just plain become too slow for ALL apps, not just Foreflight. Browsers crash, slow to open, laggy response. On an old iPad 2 with Chrome browser, a post of the length of this sentence might take 60 seconds to type.

Apple's built-in method of pushing you to buy new stuff and now-current pricing.
 
asicer said:
The reason each update uses more hardware power is that there's more hardware power available to be used. About twice as much every other year, as a matter of fact (Moore's Law).
Click to expand...
There was an interesting article on this I read somewhere with regards to animation studios and the time it takes for video processing and rendering. IE, even though the computers are light years ahead today of where we were a decade ago the rendering time has not improved by that same magnitude. Makes sense

Moore's Law recently in the news: http://www.patentlyapple.com/patent...-tsmc-says-moores-law-is-no-longer-valid.html
 
wsuffa said:
a post of the length of this sentence might take 60 seconds to type.
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and that's what frustrates me with updates and upgrades. Simple tasks don't need to be over complicated. It's one thing if an advanced process slows the machine down, but lag time to simply open a dialog box, or, like you said type characters, is inexcusable in my book. I wonder if the advances in hardware spend a lot of their time apologizing for sloppy coding. I mean, what incentive does a coder have to simplify tasks if they can relay on 32 GB of ram and a quad core processor. Just because you have a turboV8 doesn't mean every greenlight needs the pedal smashed to the floor

Microsoft has been trying to break into the BI world by continuing to add stuff to Excel. But frankly, most hardcore BI and data scientists are going to SQL, R, Tableau, Periscope, SPSS, etc. Excel is a great tool, primarily because it was a simple way to do a quick analysis on a set of data, but they shouldn't detract from its strengths by trying to turn it into something it is not. I've regretted the last several Excel upgrades
 
Tantalum said:
and that's what frustrates me with updates and upgrades. Simple tasks don't need to be over complicated. It's one thing if an advanced process slows the machine down, but lag time to simply open a dialog box, or, like you said type characters, is inexcusable in my book. I wonder if the advances in hardware spend a lot of their time apologizing for sloppy coding. I mean, what incentive does a coder have to simplify tasks if they can relay on 32 GB of ram and a quad core processor. Just because you have a turboV8 doesn't mean every greenlight needs the pedal smashed to the floor

Microsoft has been trying to break into the BI world by continuing to add stuff to Excel. But frankly, most hardcore BI and data scientists are going to SQL, R, Tableau, Periscope, SPSS, etc. Excel is a great tool, primarily because it was a simple way to do a quick analysis on a set of data, but they shouldn't detract from its strengths by trying to turn it into something it is not. I've regretted the last several Excel upgrades
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Yea, if they wanted to, they could make new OS releases with the new cpu/hardware intensive 'features' configurable(turn off-able) so that you could have still have a light OS on an older phone/tablet, but its not in their best interest. You've got to run the voice recognition code(or face recognition or whatever) in the background even if you don't care for or need that feature.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I run it on an iPad Mini....

So last week I did a factory reset of my iPad and reinstall the application...
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So there are your problems. Mini is very old with Apple A5 chip(same generation as iPhone 4S). It's way too slow to run iOS9. You should have left it somewhere in iOS8 land if all you are using it for is FF. You should have also left FF somewhere in that same generation. Too late now... only recourse is to get new iPad.
 
wsuffa said:
The older iPads have just plain become too slow for ALL apps, not just Foreflight. Browsers crash, slow to open, laggy response. On an old iPad 2 with Chrome browser, a post of the length of this sentence might take 60 seconds to type.

Apple's built-in method of pushing you to buy new stuff and now-current pricing.
Click to expand...
It’s really no different than what was going on with PCs in the 1990s I was at a Microsoft rollout during that period when Bill Gates said, "our job as software developers is to make your new fast PCs seem slow."
 
Tantalum said:
and that's what frustrates me with updates and upgrades. Simple tasks don't need to be over complicated. It's one thing if an advanced process slows the machine down, but lag time to simply open a dialog box, or, like you said type characters, is inexcusable in my book.
Click to expand...

I wonder if the predictive learning algorithms got more complex in an attempt to improve auto correction.
 
My iPad Mini 2 is pretty much unusable. It's very laggy with anything. I bought an iPad Pro 10.5" and parked the Mini 2. With the iPad Pro, ForeFlight is very responsive.

Recommendation is to buy a Mini 4 and NOT upgrade iOS. Or just upgrade to the iPad Pro.
 
rtk11 said:
My iPad Mini 2 is pretty much unusable. It's very laggy with anything. I bought an iPad Pro 10.5" and parked the Mini 2. With the iPad Pro, ForeFlight is very responsive.

Recommendation is to buy a Mini 4 and NOT upgrade iOS. Or just upgrade to the iPad Pro.
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I have the mini 2 with GP, if you disable some of the features (like dynamic maps, weather overlays, traffic if in a high traffic area) it still works, but it’s running at 100% and will slowly lose charge so I make sure Im fully charged before a long day.
I can’t bring myself to pay $700+ for an iPad...yet.
 
midlifeflyer said:
It’s really no different than what was going on with PCs in the 1990s I was at a Microsoft rollout during that period when Bill Gates said, "our job as software developers is to make your new fast PCs seem slow."
Click to expand...

In that case, they did an excellent job! Even Linux is getting slower these days with every new version.
 
What is the cheapest iPad I can upgrade to that will run foreflight w/o lag?
The Mini has gotten to the point that it is officially unusable w/ foreflight.

This irritates the holy hell out of me since it used to work and I am not doing anything more with it than I was 4 years ago.
Is the OS predominately the problem or Foreflight itself?

I would gladly roll back the OS to the first version. I've not had one OS upgrade where I have said "Finally it does this thing now."
 
I just bought an IPAD pro thru Verizon, 64 g for about $650 with a 2 year contract. Supposedly the it's an added line at $10 a month, but I haven't confirmed that. It works great with Foreflight, no lag that I can see.
 
I got an older iPad mini 4 w/ cellular over the summer for $315. In retrospect, I wish I'd looked at refurbs. ForeFlight had been running fine on my previous iPad; I only upgraded so I could give my mini2 to my son.
 
I would personally not buy a mini 4 at this point. You would really be better off with a Pro or even just the non Pro version. I’ve already seen some slow down and lag with my mini 4 and it is a dedicated iPad for ForeFlight only.

Sucks they don’t have the mini screen size anymore but the bigger screen might actually be a benefit in many cases
 
Just learned You can't roll back the OS on apple after a certain number of days.
Another reason apple sucks. I have 112 PCs that are running XP.

I think apple's whole business model is "We know what is good for you so we will take control out of your hands"
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I think apple's whole business model is "We know what is good for you, and all you really want to do with your device is text selfies to friends and listen to the latest pop album, so we will take control out of your hands, until we tell you it's time to buy a new device."
Click to expand...

More like this, I think. :confused:
 
timwinters said:
O'Reilly Auto Parts is still running their entire company on an AS400 and it was a freakin' dinosaur when I left there in 1999.
Click to expand...

Don't be hating on the AS/400. Excellent transaction processing machine and no need for fancy graphics.
 
My WingX Pro seems not to have shown any decrement in performance over time.:D
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
What is the cheapest iPad I can upgrade to that will run foreflight w/o lag?
The Mini has gotten to the point that it is officially unusable w/ foreflight.

This irritates the holy hell out of me since it used to work and I am not doing anything more with it than I was 4 years ago.
Is the OS predominately the problem or Foreflight itself?

I would gladly roll back the OS to the first version. I've not had one OS upgrade where I have said "Finally it does this thing now."
Click to expand...
ForeFlight keeps adding features and functionality, much of which are targeting the higher end corporate jet and 135 market. The natural result is a slowdown on older hardware.

Where the "problem" is is up to you. We're really not seeing anything much different than PCs in the 1990s.
 
exncsurfer said:
Don't hold your breath on that android version, according to their faq they have 'no plans'. That is irritating since they probably have the most loot ($$$) to work with and could easily hire an android team. Maybe they get kickbacks or threats from Apple. (in case you couldn't tell, I have an irrational disdain for all things Apple going back to the 6th grade, Apple ][, go Tandy!).
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No kickbacks necessary. Average app sales are twice as high on IOS as Android. Total dollars are higher on IOS. It's far easier to develop for IOS (because of the limited number of variations of device/OS).

It's a numbers game even before having to resort to such theories as "kick backs". The fact is that they would have to write a completely new version to be on Android and that there is no financial motivation to do so because Android users simply don't spend money at the same rate that IOS users do.
 
NoHeat said:
The speed of my slowest iPad, a mini 3, is still plenty for ForeFlight.

Memory at 16GB can be a bigger problem than speed, especially in the transition between chart cycles when the old charts aren’t yet out of date but new charts are available. I have to delete apps like Netflix from the iPad when that happens, then I can reinstall them later, when FF no longer wants the old charts.
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Just to mention. I have an old Ipad2 (also highest possible version is that 9.whatever) and don't use foreflight, but IF foreflight upgraded it might be needing more memory than is available, as you mention. It took me a long time before I found out about hitting the "start" (the round button) twice fast to see all apps up and running, and swipe them up to close them, and free up the memory they were using. That made a BIG difference when internet was slow. Even rebooting the iPad won't get rid of these, they start right up again on reboot. But going in and "swipe" up on the screens of each app does.

Sorry if this is already known, thought it might help. Also have had instances where (I use SkyDemon, and maps take up some room) I have had to delete som apps to help, but the biggest problem was with apps running in the "background"...so swipe them out!
 
LongRoadBob said:
Just to mention. I have an old Ipad2 (also highest possible version is that 9.whatever) and don't use foreflight, but IF foreflight upgraded it might be needing more memory than is available, as you mention. It took me a long time before I found out about hitting the "start" (the round button) twice fast to see all apps up and running, and swipe them up to close them, and free up the memory they were using. That made a BIG difference when internet was slow. Even rebooting the iPad won't get rid of these, they start right up again on reboot. But going in and "swipe" up on the screens of each app does.

Sorry if this is already known, thought it might help. Also have had instances where (I use SkyDemon, and maps take up some room) I have had to delete som apps to help, but the biggest problem was with apps running in the "background"...so swipe them out!
Click to expand...

With the new reports that iPhones are purposefully slowed by Apple as they age, I wonder if iPads get the same.
 
NoHeat said:
With the new reports that iPhones are purposefully slowed by Apple as they age, I wonder if iPads get the same.
Click to expand...

Whether that is the case or not, I just figure its still going to improve if I make sure to close all apps open in the background, with the double tap on the round button, swipe them.
They sit in the background taking cup time, and memory, and most of them you can't even bring them to the foreground they just start up again from scratch so it's a waste.

What I hate about Apple, the lack of access to how my machine runs, what's running, configuration...
And then that with updates and planned obsolescence (sure the others do it too but Apple just doesn't seem to even try to care about this).
 
I listen to a podcast called “The MacCast”.

He alleges that the majority of the time, open apps are just snapshots of their state when closed and take no power or processor speed to keep them there. In fact, it may take more power to close and reopen them than to just leave them there. The exception may be apps like Waze that use the gps in the background to contually update your position.
 
FastEddieB said:
I listen to a podcast called “The MacCast”.

He alleges that the majority of the time, open apps are just snapshots of their state when closed and take no power or processor speed to keep them there. In fact, it may take more power to close and reopen them than to just leave them there. The exception may be apps like Waze that use the gps in the background to contually update your position.
Click to expand...

Since Apple, in all its "wisdom" seems to have decided I as a user have no need to see the state of processes, apps, cpu usage, etc. I can't know what apps are using it, what isn't. What is the point of a place holder of the app starts up "fresh" from scratch each time, while others come alive. Why mess with it? I know for sure that it has helped when the app I want to use is hanging get up, slow, etc. it CAN help, it doesn't hurt, and it takes about ten seconds max (unless you have to wait for the screen to wake up, because of slowness) so it's a no brainer if one is experiencing slow, hangs, on something like foreflight to close all other apps.

Might still be slow, might be its still faster than if not doing. It can't hurt, and might help.maince I don't know which apps are just zombies and which are taking space and cpu.
 
I upgraded to the latest and greatest but damned if Apple didn't add the fraction of a centimeter rendering my cases and mounts useless.

But it's FAST now!

20180325_103953.jpg
 
I'm pretty sure the whole "iPhone slowdown" scandal applies to the iPads, also.
Apple deliberately slows down old product to make you buy up.
 
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