Foreflight upped the price?

[midlifeflyer]

It's really a shame when one has one or two good points to make but turns it into a loud diatribe that distracts the audience from those points. Which is ironic since that's exactly what Jeff has been accusing ForeFlight of doing.

 

[TangoWhiskey]

Highly unlikely. They did this quite intentionally. Make the simplest purchase option more expensive to sell the "upgraded" product whether people want it or not. It's a basic scummy marketing practice that I am sad to see FF has adopted.

It's not only true, it's targeted at Jeff.

I wrote and asked them to do it just to **** him off.

 

[TangoWhiskey]

GP saves data to cloud so it's available via web browser, maybe FF will add that capability

That's their plan:

Full export functionality is high on our list for future revisions, so thanks for providing feedback. For now, you can see a summary report of your experience by going to plan.foreflight.com/logbook, and clicking reports. I'll also add a vote to our list for an 8710 report format.

 

[Bill Watson]

I've always liked this particular story about pilots being cheap bastards:

http://acaptainslog.blogspot.com/2008/03/cheap-bastards.html

Great stuff there. This thread is running a close second....

ForeFlight is crap - there I just said it.
Continues raising application price (crap) !!!

Crikey!

I flew out of a small international airport yesterday after an overnight stay and was put out a bit by the fact that I wasn't charged any fees despite no fuel purchase and a bit of ferrying around the airport to get a rental car.

That's the way it used to be and I'm not sure I like it! I would just as soon pay $10 to park and not feel like a freeloader, but that's just me.

(I'd be more specific but I'm afraid some people on this board would swarm in there like a plague of locusts to drink the coffee.)

 

[TangoWhiskey]

Let's change up the question a bit...

We all know EFB's save us time and money over paper charts while adding a HUGE amount of reduced workload.

How high would the annual subscription price have to go before you'd say "screw it, I'm going back to paper"?

 

[TangoWhiskey]

Great stuff there. This thread is running a close second....


Crikey!

I flew out of a small international airport yesterday after an overnight stay and was put out a bit by the fact that I wasn't charged any fees despite no fuel purchase and a bit of ferrying around the airport to get a rental car.

That's the way it used to be and I'm not sure I like it! I would just as soon pay $10 to park and not feel like a freeloader, but that's just me.

Amen. I am sure to leave a really good tip (like who does that anymore, either?!) for the girls at the front desk and the line guys when the FBO refuses to charge me anything at all. Karma, and the like.

 

[ahkahn]

Let's change up the question a bit...

We all know EFB's save us time and money over paper charts while adding a HUGE amount of reduced workload.

How high would the annual subscription price have to go before you'd say "screw it, I'm going back to paper"?

Man, Troy, you're not helping anyone out here...

In all seriousness I would consider switching to another app before switching back to paper. With all of the features FF has though, they're still good in my book. When I was VFR, $99 was a no brainer. When I went IFR, I think $175 seriously made me consider the buying decision, but the synthetic vision and geo-referencing were very compelling to me. $200 makes it a tougher decision, but still doable. I think they're flirting with the top of the market though, as they should be, considering their app feature-wise is at the top of the market.

To answer your original question, I'd have to be in the $300-$500 range for ALL apps before I would switch back to paper for charts, AFD, maps, etc.

 

[Gsxrpilot]

It's a good question Troy. I make my living in software and so am always interested in a better/electronic way to do what used to be done with paper. At the current $200 for everything, I think it's still cheap. FF support has always been excellent. Apple makes a very stable platform for it to run on. The addition of a Stratus2 for traffic/weather/METARs etc. makes it a tool I really don't want to be without. I'm sure I'd still be a customer at $500/year. It's a lot of data, current, accessible, useable, available which translates into peace of mind. And after all, that's still not Jep territory.

 

[fiveoboy01]

Let's change up the question a bit...

We all know EFB's save us time and money over paper charts while adding a HUGE amount of reduced workload.

How high would the annual subscription price have to go before you'd say "screw it, I'm going back to paper"?

I have a number in mind, but I'm not giving FF any ideas

 

[Scrabo]

>> I'm sure I'd still be a customer at $500/year.

There goes 2017 pricing plan for Pro Plus.

 

[Scrabo]

Let's change up the question a bit...

We all know EFB's save us time and money over paper charts while adding a HUGE amount of reduced workload.

How high would the annual subscription price have to go before you'd say "screw it, I'm going back to paper"?

But should you have paper as a backup anyway for when the iPad goes Tango Uniform ?

 

[Turningfinal]

But should you have paper as a backup anyway for when the iPad goes Tango Uniform ?

Different strokes for different folks.

I've been flying without paper backups for 5 years now.

100% reliability on my iPad. I also carry my iPhone so I use that as a backup if the iPad happens to go.

 

[TangoWhiskey]

But should you have paper as a backup anyway for when the iPad goes Tango Uniform ?

Yes, or another device. But not a full paper subscription. I print plates for destination, alternate and a couple enroute emergency options.

 

[GLMS_NC]

It's not a matter of going to paper. WingX, FlyQ, GO, and Garming Pilot are all options.

My GTN750 keeps improving so I really need FF anymore? Charts are free on Go...

 

[flight2000]

How high would the annual subscription price have to go before you'd say "screw it, I'm going back to paper"?

I don't know, haven't paid for a subscription since I took the FlyQ lifetime subscription three years ago. Only way I'll ever go back to FF is if Seattle Avionics goes TU for some stupid reason. In the mean time, it's already paid for itself going foward and the app keeps getting better. Nice to see an expiration date of 2097 for my data....

Brian

 

[TangoWhiskey]

ForeFlight just made some updates to their blog about the new pricing plans. Old text is in red, new text is in green:

 

[Scrabo]

ForeFlight just made some updates to their blog about the new pricing plans. Old text is in red, new text is in green:

Looks like they realized their original message wasn't clear enough, so good for them

 

[JeffDG]

Still haven't seen any explanation why the In App Purchasing was disabled, other than trying to jam customers into more expensive options.

My offer to apologize stands, but I really don't see them putting those back in...it would blow their whole strategy out of the water...but the fanbois will still sit up and clap like seals.

 

[chartbundle]

Still haven't seen any explanation why the In App Purchasing was disabled, other than trying to jam customers into more expensive options.

Probably because Apple gets a 30%(I think) cut if you purchase in-app. Even with Foreflight handling credit cards themselves I suspect they get a fair bit more in their pocket.

 

[Dave Theisen]

Let's start a GoFundMe account to get JeffDG another $50.

 

[denverpilot]

Jeff is certainly grumpy about it. But I have to agree a bit. I don't want to go to a website to purchase jack crap on an iOS device. The in-app purchasing is there for a reason, and while I'm not nearly as grumpy as Jeff about it, it's utterly retarded to not have all options available in-app.

As far as the logbook goes, after some limited research, it looks well below half-baked. And I haven't paid to be someone's beta tester since the first release of OSX.

So... my enthusiasm is officially curbed on these latest "updates". Not that much value in them.

My renewal isn't up for a while yet so I don't have to care.

 

[JeffDG]

I love how the ForeFlight people ignore the In App Purchasing issue altogether. Like I said, it's not an oversight, it's the plan.

If you want "fully baked", go take a look at http://myflightbook.com

 

[denverpilot]

Why do you say it's *well below* half-baked?



Sure, it doesn't have an export capability as of yet, but, what other functions/capabilities do you need to see before you consider it to be fully baked?

Compare to LogTen Pro's complete feature set and then get back to me. Seriously? Here's the real kicker. No desktop app.

I'm ****ed still at the LogTen guy and his poor treatment of early customers and then the eventual back pedaling on that somewhat and won't give him any more of my money... Ever.

I've had quite enough of aviation companies changing the "deal" in 20 years of buying aviation products.

But that doesn't mean his product doesn't smoke FF's. So far anyway. Way bigger feature set.

Vendor lock-in of logbook data is a game I *will not play* ever. LogTen was the closest I ever came. No export, no sale. My data. Not FFs.

As far as the desktop thing, FF is an iOS company. I realize that. It's a significant disadvantage for a logbook. I have two very nice 24" monitors on my desk and I like to use them from time to time. One side I'd pull up LogTen, the other a spreadsheet and analyze things or do whatever I wanted.

- It pains me the LogTen is as good as it is and the guy screwed early customers over.
- It's good FF is attempting something similar. It ain't ready yet.
- Companies that trap my data will never get my business until they don't.
- At the end of the day, paper still ends up being less of a pain in the ass than keeping up with rental software. I stop paying, where is the data? On your hard drive or mine? Can I still read it? Extract it?
- Renting a place to put my data seems very unwise. LogTen's original deal wasn't a rental.
- If there's any good news for LT and FF, Web apps are even worse. I've seen what happens when a one-man show website gets hit by that person having a medical or family issue and they disappear. The concerns about that with LT were there but the desktop always had a copy of the data. FF the concern isn't there at all. These other online logbooks? Not so sure.

 

[JeffDG]

The concerns about that with LT were there but the desktop always had a copy of the data. FF the concern isn't there at all. These other online logbooks? Not so sure.

Thing I like about myflightbook...hit a button, it dumps everything into your Dropbox account.

It's one of the "donor" features that it does this daily automatically, and that's about as good a backup as you're ever going to see.

 

[Sam D]

Nate -- have you gone to plan.foreflight.com? It appears you can access the logbook there for a desktop. Not sure if that addresses the first issue you raised.

Sam

 

[Shawn]

Nate -- have you gone to plan.foreflight.com? It appears you can access the logbook there for a desktop.

Web portal only gives you limited report viewing...no entry or editing.

Played with it the other day and was actually OK with having the Ipad as the workstation then the web portal open and viewing the report total page. Sync was instantaneous. Kinda worked as a two screen solution.

The functionality is pretty basic but I like the integration with the FF flight plans. I believe the product will improve with time like the rest of the app has developed.

Scary part keeping me from using it exclusively still is not having access to MY data via a download or export. I trust FF...just not THAT much yet!