On Monday, November 2, 2015 at 10:13:15 AM UTC-8, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
I could not agree more. However, I just never liked the idea of using a PDA instead of a dedicated display, bigger is better. I love the new crop of instruments and have supported the development by purchasing. In my time away from gliding I was surprised to see two local glider ports had closed and at my field that used to have 15-20 private ships each Saturday now only have a handful. I have always tried to introduce that pilots I know to gliding, but have never had an introduction hold


On Monday, November 2, 2015 at 8:47:31 AM UTC-8, jfitch wrote:

WRT the computer, the problem the industry faces is lack of a viable market. Apple sold 50 million cell phones last quarter. If you could capture the W.W. market for glider nav displays, what would it be in a given quarter? A couple of hundred? Split that market between 4 or 5 competitors. This is why glide computers running on cell phones and PDAs seem always to be ahead. The vendor need only concentrate on an application, the hardware, OS, UI, comm stacks, etc., are already written, debugged, and maintained to service a market of 50M units/q. The hardware enjoys the benefits of scale, resulting in a price that is about 1/4 - 1/3 what specialized hardware can be sold for. They get a technology refresh twice a year.

The current crop of cell phones have displays as large as most dedicated glider displays (5" +). They are not as bright as the best dedicated displays, but adequate. I would prefer the limited money available for the industry product development be put into better sensor technology (which has no larger market on which to piggyback) and use existing displays (against which they cannot possibly be competitive). But no one listens to me .