Dan,

Jerry Pournelle of Byte's Chaos Manor fame used to say "better is the enemy of good enough", and I guess you're echoing that sentiment. That's fine, I just recently gave up running Glide Navigator II on an iPAQ 3950, so I understand.

But just like sometimes it's necessary to shoot the engineers and start making product, other times it's necessary to drop the old stuff and adopt the latest and greatest. For me, it was time for iGlide. Why? Well, I find that I can get much more information with much less effort using iGlide than with other moving map programs. In addition, the terrain maps in iGlide are the best I've ever seen in any moving map program - that's important to me as aridge runner. Plus, iGlide gets wind and other air data from my Butterfly Vario and uses it to help me fly better. Finally, I find that the iPhone 6 is more easily readable in bright sunlight than the iPAQ, MIO, Avier, Oudie, etc.

You are correct, proficiency is important and it takes time to acquire. But having spent a significant amount of time with SYM and LK800 I found iGlide to be much easier to use. That may just be the way my mind works, and YMMV...

Anyway, have fun and enjoy soaring, whatever moving map program you use...

-John, Q3

On Thursday, May 14, 2015 at 12:24:26 PM UTC-4, Dan Marotta wrote:
On a more serious note, Bob's complaint and Sean's (and others')
rather aggressive responses simply support the notion of "Diff'rent
strokes for diff'rent folks)".

I make no bones that I'm a fan of XCSoar.* Maybe iGlide allows task
generation* if 3 less keystrokes, but who cares?* I've got all day.*
Heck, I can even build and declare a task today for a flight
tomorrow.* I like XCSoar the best because it's the one I have the
most experience with.* My glider came with WinPilot but the former
owner told me about XCSoar and I bought a Mio GPS and gave it a
try.* For someone who'd never used a moving map before (military,
airlines, corporate, gliding) it was eye-opening!

The only shortcomings were power and sunlight readability.* Then a
friend showed me his Dell Streak 5 and I found I could read it with
the sun shining over my shoulder!* This is 5+ year old technology,
folks!* Why haven't all the makers of portable devices tried
transflective technology?* Anyway, for $100 brand new on eBay and
with free software, why would you want anything else?* Seriously,
who needs realtime doppler radar overlays while soaring?

I submit that any one of us can get used to any of these products
and become quite proficient with it.* Then, upon having difficulty
operating a new interface, it's easy to claim that the first is
better than the second.

Dan Marotta