I pinged Foreflight about a month ago telling them that it's past time they move away from their iThingy only format...that many of us out here are growing weary of our iThingies and may move to other EFB software if Foreflight doesn't start playing nice with other operating systems.
And I wasn't just blowing smoke, I was a very early adopter of Foreflight and love it, but I'm seriously considering jumping ship and, if you are too, then maybe it'd help if you also let Foreflight know.
Like I said, I love Foreflight but I really dislike everything Apple these days.
I haven’t emailed them because I assume Tyson and crew aren’t stupid and see this wave coming that’s about to crash into their ship. All it takes is Garmin to get serious about android before they do, and they’re in serious trouble, business-wise. I also want nothing to do with Tim Cook’s mess.
Of course Garmin can just wait, let ForeFlight build an android version first using a lot of capital to do it, and then catch up in a matter of a quarter or two if they’re willing to spend the capital.
ForeFlight made strategic moves to lock in corporate and airline flight departments but talking to some folks who are stuck on iPad at a couple of airlines, they’re not happy with the results. Managing AppleIDs in a corporate environment is a complete mess and I’ve talked to at least one airline captain who was locked in Apple vs his Corporate IT department hell — when his IT department didn’t know what AppleID and password they created, and Apple Business Support said they couldn’t help him fix his company iOS device without it. Company IT would say “Call Apple” and Apple would say “call your IT department”.
“No big deal”, it was only his charts needed to fly the airplane stuck in the useless broken tablet that was unusable. He said neither side ever figured it out and he literally got lucky that corporate mailed out the next version of iPad to him in between trips. He said he would have had fun telling crew scheduling he wasn’t coming to work until IT got him an iPad that worked. He shipped the dead one back to corporate and hoped they had fun with it.
Software wise, Android is a mess. But Apple’s making a mess of iOS too, so the price differential is becoming less and less worth it.
Microcenter has Galaxy Tab E Lites on sale in-store only for $49. It’s not exactly the top of the line, but $49 for last year’s model? Tablets are headed for commodity pricing. People are using phablets or large phones now.
ForeFlight recognized that trend too, fixing the broken mess that the phone version was. That project isn’t quite done yet, but close. And you can see the trend and their response. With Apple likely to kill the best size format for flying (iPad mini) soon, there’s another reason to look for Apple alternatives in the cockpit.
Being roped to Cook as a climbing partner is a good way to fall off the mountain to your death. LOL. Not sure anyone knows how to climb on the android side other than Samsung either, but Cook continues to show a lack of ability to add real value. He’s not an innovator.
The leaks of Galaxy 9 and 10 already out show Samsung isn’t going to play games with Apple. “Thanks for buying our screens for iPhone X while you wait on your investment in LG to finally pay off. We’ll use that capital to make something even cooler while you wait for hardware.”
It’s a software race now. Apple can’t keep up on hardware buying all of it from competitors, unless they pay through the nose for exclusivity deals. And Apple’s software engineering is at a ten year low, quality wise. Good time for a competitor to kick them, real hard. If Samsung hadn’t screwed up the Note 7 they’d be in an even better position to kick. As it stands they kicked pretty hard with Note 8 and S8. The new commercial showing the guy leaving Apple for the holidays is cute, too.
Both of them need to come back down into the $650 price point on the smart phones to totally take over the phone market. Whoever does that first makes billions if the device will last at least three years.
