No kiddin? Kinda like POA. Are ya listening FF? I know yer hangin out checkin out these sites. All the gimmicks are cool but when they start slowin things down they get annoying.
Especially at current Apple pricing. $2000 for a phone and iPad as primary and backup, every three years or so, to keep up with both iOS and Aviation app bloat, is going to get old real fast.
Coming from the iPad 1 and early FF, you think, “Okay, it’s just because it was First Generation and they’ve added a lot to both the OS and the apps” as you buy iPad 2... and new phone to go with it...
Later you see iPad Mini and think, “Great form factor for the cockpit, and this crap is getting slow again...” maybe even go iPhone 6 Plus so your “backup” is a useable size. Nice. But man that was expensive.
Now it’s, “Alright enough of this crap. Features we don’t need ever in a cockpit and devices that have now hit incredible price points and grew too large to fit in a reasonable space in any cockpit... and they keep getting slower and slower with no significant feature upgrades to the OS and only corporate pilot upgrades for the apps. Might be time to get off this expensive merry go round.”
And along the way the “tabbed” interface is really showing its age. Not in terms of looks, it looks great, but in terms of fast reliable use in a cockpit where two button presses max should get you what you need to see.
Garmin is leading in that regard.
Home->Whatever. You’re there. Simplicity. No more heads down time than necessary.
Turning “layers” on and off? Kinda dumb. Set your layers and forget them and if you need the info on a layer on the map, go straight to that Home function for that data. (Weather, Traffic, etc.) If you want to see those things you want to see them right now, with minimal fiddling.
The cockpit is no place for farting with layers like a Photoshop session in front of a 30” monitor at home. And the layer list has grown to the point where it takes up most of the vertical space available, in landscape mode. The interface is degenerating into what I call on websites “target practice”.
Garmin? Home. Then big fat button, Weather. Then big fat button, Radar.
The UI is becoming important now that all these apps can show twenty or more things on the map. I want my layers left alone on the map. If I go to “Map” I want my layers I use on there.
If I want a better look at weather or traffic or any of the layered items, I want them available standalone in two to three button presses. Big enough I can almost do it without even looking.
I think Garmin “gets it” better because they do panel mount touchscreens now. ForeFlight is still coding their UI like it’s a reference tool on top of the panel mount stuff, which is fine, but it’s getting obnoxious to get to a single piece of information/category about the flight.
If you are used to it, and came up before they added all the stuff to menus all over the place, it’s not too bad. If you step back and see it from someone picking it up today brand new, it’s not very intuitive anymore. It needs some UI/UX redesign.
Touchscreens need buttons bigger than a line of text in a cockpit. Garmin gets this. I’m not sure ForeFlight does yet. Their buttons are less than 1/4” in some cases on the mini. That’s too small for a touch interface. Buttons generally need to be the size of a fingertip.
And no, I’m not carrying around a stylus just so more crap can be crammed on a screen. Not unless the device has a place to hold it internally where it stays with the tablet.
