Triggur

1. While they aren't currently accepting new API partners, that hasn't always been the case. There are quite a number of apps on both the iOS and Android platforms that are using the API, and some are very highly-regarded and widely preferred over the official apps. 2. Groundspeak is under no obligation to follow the "open" movement. If they feel it's in their best interest to keep the API proprietary and closed to new partners, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to. As for the rest of your post, I wholeheartedly agree. I think there must have been some technical or legal reason that forced Groundspeak to prematurely kill off the old app and roll out this unfinished one, and they aren't at liberty to tell us the reason why. While I think you're irrationally forgiving with them as to "why," I agree there's no law requiring Groundspeak to be anything other that closed, proprietary, and anti-competetive. At this they excel.

For all the reasons above and all the reasons in many other threads, I have to say that I'm deeply disappointed in Groundspeak. The new app is terrible. It's flat-out terrible. It was released "not ready for prime time." With so many features obviously missing and so many features implemented poorly, Groundspeak's pushing us to migrate to the new app is unconscionable. On top of that, closing access to the API to prevent third parties from building better applications makes it clear that Groundspeak wants strangle-hold control over the game. This is the absolute opposite of the "open" movement common in the software industry today. Instead, this is proprietary, protectionist, and anti-competetive. TL;DR: Groundspeak pushing members onto a terrible application and preventing anyone else from making better ones is dirty pool.

That sounds great!

Oh wow! I didn't realize there was another thread on this (I should have figured). Yesterday I posted about a microcontroller-based cache I just finished: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=298703&st=0&p=5080384&fromsearch=1entry5080384 I'm going to hide them all tomorrow evening and activate it. I open sourced the code and circuit, if anybody wants them.

I've been caching for a while and I've made some of my own; I submitted my 100th hide the day of my 1000th find. I wanted to try my hand at a multi-cache, so I came up with this: It's a five-stage night cache with audio clues along the way. The first stage's playback circuit includes a microcontroller (tiny computer) and a real-time clock to make sure you're playing at night. Each station plays a little bit more of a zombies-from-the-future tale along with the next coordinates for a total of a 1.5 mile night romp through an off-trail river area in Northern Colorado. I haven't activated it yet; I only just now got the containers finished. If anybody is interested in the design, I can share details on how to make your own!

The iPad's battery life floored me! My iPhone would be dead 2 hours into a caching session if I didn't keep it intermittently plugged into the car charger. The iPad ran for 5 or 6 hours and when I was done there was still 20% battery left! At this point all I reallyreally want is for them to add a bumped resolution mode for the map screen in specific and it will be about perfect.

I just spent the weekend caching with a version 1 (with 3G) iPad. It was *incredible*. I made 82 finds. I downloaded a pocket query for the region and told the app to download all the map tiles and away it went. Even out in the middle of nowhere-- the Medicine Bow National Forest in Wyoming-- it did a phenomenal job of showing me where I was, and the downloaded satellite/topo imagery made it great. Its positional accuracy was great, even way out there. I had no trouble keeping it clean and safe even in the dusty heat; it was in the standard black case the whole time. It was a joy to use for navigation in the car, too... much bigger display, much easier to see, and much easier to type logs. If I had the iPad 2 I could have been taking pics along the way, but that's a nice-to-have. Day 2 I cached in northern Colorado around Greeley with it. Then too, it did great. The only thing I missed is having the iPad's full resolution instead of the 2x'd iPhone app display! So: downloading pocket queries/map tiles is absolutely the way to go on iPad caching. I really had a great time with it!