[Dave Phillips]

Either way, the initial pitch was to ignore half the market.

[Tim Dawson]

I feel compelled to point out for the benefit of people with that opinion that iPad hadn’t been invented when we started.

[Paul_Sengupta]

It had in 2010...

I closed the iPad/iPhone/Apple thread on the SkyDemon forums because I was tired of re-stating that there are no plans for an Apple port of SkyDemon every time somebody thought they had come up with a new and persuasive argument. I should have known the issue would surface elsewhere

Let me state the reasons (not an exhaustive list and in no particular order):

1. It would be very expensive. As various people have surmised, there's quite a lot of technical investment in SkyDemon and it would be a complete rewrite to support Apple, which (believe it or not) is still a niche platform. Optimistically I suppose we could do it if we devoted every development resource we have to the project for six months.
2. After potentially investing the money into creating such a product, Apple would take 30% of our revenue. We could of course inflate the price; this is the way Apple work and it's their prerogative. Many people are happy to live with a system in which the only things they can run are things that Apple says are ok. We are not.
3. We are concentrating on bringing to market our own handheld VFR GPS units. These will change the market somewhat as they'll offer the features of the £600 - £1000 units at around 2/3 of the price. This will make us money. Developing iPad software will make us significantly less money.
4. I don't want to.

Let me now state the things which I know:

1. There are some people who will never buy SkyDemon unless it's on iPad/iPhone/iWhatever. That's fine.
2. iPad has proved that that form-factor works well. If the form factor works well, other companies will quickly develop their own competing products. There are many PCs of the same form factor on the way (HP and Asus are but two manufacturers doing this) and then lo and behold, SkyDemon will run on that kind of device!

I acknowledge and respect the many people who would like SkyDemon on an Apple product. But for the moment, unless some of the factors above change, it won't happen.

[Dave Phillips]

I feel compelled to point out for the benefit of people with that opinion that iPad hadn’t been invented when we started.

Tim, there were numerous discussions regarding iOS and Apple interfaces. You clearly stated that it wasn’t in you business interest at the time.

[Paul_Sengupta]

Anyway, that's of no consequence, that's all water under the bridge now. We've got a tremendously versatile platform in SD now where we can run it on Windows, iOS and Android, and have everything synchronised between them.

ForeFlight are just starting in the European market so we'll see what transpires over time.

[johnm]

It seems that Tim was as good a predictor and responder as Thomas J Watson head of IBM who in the 1940s allegedly remarked that " There may be a need for as many as 5 computers across the world" he then proceeded to dominate the computer market for more than 30 years

[stevelup]

Unless they've already been working on it for some time now, this isn't going to happen overnight because...

1) USA - pretty much every pilot uses an iPad. No one cares about Android in aviation over there

2) Foreflight is a native iOS application. It cannot be trivially ported to Android - they'd have to re-write the whole thing from scratch

People say it's 'slashing the user base in half' but that's nonsense. Given that Foreflight (as much as they'd claim otherwise) is an IFR product, people flying IFR are not quite in the same category of skinflintery that the rest of the piloting community are, and if they don't already have an iPad (which would actually be pretty unusual), then they would probably just bite the bullet and get one if they felt it was the right tool for the job.

[Tim Dawson]

Tim, there were numerous discussions regarding iOS and Apple interfaces. You clearly stated that it wasn’t in you business interest at the time.

And then, after a while, it was. Looking back from our current position at our decisions and their timing, I feel thoroughly happy with them

[bilko2]

IMHO:
I would say that I prefer SD .... but that may be because that's what I'm used to.

SD has better VFR maps and handles user waypoints/airfields better. FF is more IFR friendly with Jepp integration etc. This reflects FF's USA origins where IFR flight is much more accessible.

Big advantage of FF (for some) is it's global coverage, I will use it when outside SD coverage (and may learn to love it!)

Big advantage for SD is NOTAM display on map

[Peter Mundy]

And the fact that it handles VRPs correctly - FF shows them on the chart but then makes a dog's body of the way it handles them in the nav log.

[jasoncuk]

Competition is good for us as consumers. Give FF time. They are investing a lot of time and money in Europe.

[T67M]

I'm not sure that Jeppesen Integration is necessarily a good thing, and it definitely isn't for VFR flight. Jeppesen updates cost a large fortune (I'm paying £400/year) and despite reporting the errors repeatedly, Farnborough LARS West is still shown as an airfield service (not enroute) and F.LARS N & E don't exist at all, which completely screws up the auto-tuning on the IFD440 in my aircraft.