AOPA Flight Planner - Microsoft only?

In article ine.com, Andrew
Gideon wrote:
snip

The inevitable comments about how non-MS Windows users are in the
minority is going to now erupt, with the usual insensitive clods [0]
going on about how those who don't use an MS platform are in a minority
and don't matter (when it would be so easy to make it multi-platform -
say, by making it web-based).

Anyone who goes on about non Microsoft users being a minority, therefore
justifying not going to the extra effort (in this case, there would
probably be no extra effort had they started off with a multiplatform
system in the first place by, say, making it web based) are exceedingly
short sighted.

Why are they short sighted? Is Microsoft's monopoly going to collapse in
the next year or two? Well, probably not. MS will still have 90% of the
desktop probably in 5 years time. However, the desktop is going to get
less and less important for this kind of thing. Handheld devices are
going to get more and more important *especially for an activity that is
as inherently mobile as flying and the need to flight plan*.

The handheld world has seen what Microsoft did to the desktop world, and
are determined not to let it happen to them. Microsoft themselves are a
minority player in the mobile phone world. Symbian and J2ME are much
bigger, and the majority of mobile phones and devices of their ilk run
one or the other or both.
The prices of GPRS and EGRPS phones are dropping all the time.
Even on the few Windows-based handheld devices, they can't actually run
applications compiled for desktop Windows. The instruction set for the
CPU is different, and bloated desktop applications don't sit well on a
low powered handheld device (where web applications run fine, so long as
they aren't bloated out with needless Javascript and graphics)
With this kind of application, more and more people are going to want to
do it on their mobile phone/PDA especially for something that is
inherently mobile like travelling by plane! Travelling by light plane
especially is something we do 'travelling light'. I'd (and I'm sure many
others - certainly all my pilot friends over here) would rather carry a
capable cell phone to get our weather radar rather than a bulky laptop.
On my Nokia 6820 phone, I have web short cuts to METARS, TAFs, weather
radar, synoptic charts etc. and it's ideal for on the move (like GA,
there's compromises like the small screen). A flight planner on the web
would be excellent especially if it was designed such as not to exclude
mobile users. Making it a Windows desktop only application
excludes mobile users.

By making their flight planner Windows-only, they have excluded the vast
majority of mobile users. I predict that certainly in Britain, the
number of non-Wintel (E)GPRS phones will rival the number of desktop PCs
within the next couple of years. It'll probably happen in the US too -
for everyone going on about how basic cellphone service is in the US -
guess where I just bought a tri-band GPRS phone (there are plenty of
GSM/GPRS providers now in the US, T-Mobile is one, I think Cingular
might be GSM, BICBW).

And Jay Honeck, this means you, you'd do well to have a version of your
website that's accessable for mobile users :-) Because guess what -
people will want to search for a hotel on their cell phone sooner than
you think!

[0] Just kidding.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"