Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Navionics navigation app.

.Tried to put the old, paid for Navionics program from my old phone onto my new phone.  The phone accepted it but won't run it.  Navionics took 6 days to respond to several queries only to say they no longer support that app.  No offer to supply a replacement.  I tried one of their apps which uses "govt charts".  You would think this was a NOAA chart so I uploaded all the NOAA charts I need and tried again with the new app.  The "govt" charts show NO buoy numbers or the names of the bridges on the ICW.  They show depth info only at the highest zooms,   According to them: "The source category for this layer of detail is listed as government. Our chart sources are proprietary and we do not provide this information publicly."  In other words, their chart reading app does not accept the free NOAA charts and you must buy their charts.  If this isn't Bait and Switch, ...  Needless to say I uninstalled their app and will be using another FREE app which does take both NOAA and Explorer charts. For the computer, I still prefer "OpenCPN" which does everything the high priced programs do and does it for FREE.  It works on both the Mac and the Windows environments and, at least on windows, shows me AIS with a receiver.

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