Airborne_Again wrote:
Compare with SkyDemon (or even Autorouter) where all data is in the same place.Last Edited by Airborne_Again at 06 Jan 08:26
I also find this to be absolutely annoying – you’d expect it to be able to do that. What I liked about JeppFD before is that I could just do export route to Jeppessen as well and have everything in JeppFD without having to manually do the route. I don’t use the FF routing tool at all atm, I find it crappy tbh. Example from earlier this week, only ads about an hour…
Most of the GA business, especially in the US, is “wealthy” people and wealthy people buy mostly Apple stuff. And developing for just one platform is a lot less work.
I’m assuming the majority of FF users is not wealthy. A fraction of US GA is, but the majority is not.
Only Foreflight knows, but my take is that the original FF developer knew it would work better and more stable on iOS, and „better“ is essential for aviation.
work better and more stable on iOS, and „better“ is essential for aviation.
There are shades of grey here, and you are right for a given level of coding skill. To write an android app which works well across platforms, much more experience is needed. They do exist – I use one on every flight which runs 100% perfectly (satnav) on everything made in the last 10 years. But most of today’s app writers are very young… Every day I get a “do you want me to write you an app for your site” email from one of these.
Going IOS-only ticks a lot of boxes for making life easy, and loses you very little business in the US, which is really the only market that matters.
Snoopy wrote:
Only Foreflight knows, but my take is that the original FF developer knew it would work better and more stable on iOS, and „better“ is essential for aviation.
I asked Jason Miller, who was one of the two founders of ForeFlight. He said:
The original app, before the iPhone, was called ForeFlight. And it was a Windows/Mac app. Android came out later than iPhone so iPhone was the only option for modern mobile platforms in 2007.
ForeFlight also developed the Jeppesen Flight Deck Pro application under contract to Jeppesen local copy. There is a cross platform version using Windows local copy
Jepp still support the original Flitestar/Flitemap programs. They were last supported under winXP but actually run under win10 
I think they are supported because Jepp are still running their Jetplanner tool which is basically the same thing.
Unfortunately, the PC-based (browser based) version of FF has limited functionality – or had when I had the trial. A lot of it simply didn’t work.
Peter,
There has been a lot of updates to both the Web product and the iOS product since you were a subscriber.
If FF would like to give me another trial, I will be happy to give it a go
But I am not buying an Ipad (I have an older one, which won’t run current FF) unless the web version is usable
Foreflight on web alone is pretty pointless, like plugging in a keyboard + mouse to a laptop. It’s a mobile app and you can use it while flying, on a portable tablet. . .
I do planning on a PC at home or at work, as far as is possible. A phone or a tablet is just too painful for anything serious – unless I am totally in a corner.
I also print out all terminal charts. No battery to go flat, and totally sunlight-readable Only unplanned alternates are carried as PDFs.
FF/web is nothing (or was when I last tried it) like FF on an Ipad. It was a chopped-down version of the IOS app. It wasn’t the IOS app running in a browser. That may be possible today (directly porting IOS code to run as a server executable on a virtual server with a 80×86 CPU?); I don’t know.
@Peter, it’s of course your privilege to plan flights your way, but I think you’re in a tiny minority. I haven’t done any flight planning other than a rough overview on a desktop computer in years and cannot remember when I last printed out charts. Nobody I know does. I plan everything on the iPad, a few clicks, FPL filed and you’re done. Next thing I do is send FPL to panel, call up tower and go. Easy peasy. Backups are a second iPad and my iPhone. All three devices are synced via the FF cloud. I understand the routing may not work as well in Europe as it does here in the US, but you get the drift.
Btw, the FF website works pretty much like the App, at least AFAICT.
PS: where I wholeheartedly agree with A_A and others is that it’s annoying that you cannot send the W&B data to the ‘Flights’ page. Hey Josh, here’s a suggestion for you!
