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Any Mac Users With Lowrance Ifinder Gps?


user13371

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I've written a program for converting Lowrance iFinder's data files (USR format) to tab-delimited text. It runs in Mac OS X and also should work in Classic, OS 8-9 with CarbonLib installed.

 

It can also convert text back into USR data to load on the iFinder. It currently handles tab delimited text and Geocaching LOC files. It doesn't do GPX files yet, but probably will in the next version.

 

But to get to the next version, I need a few helpful Mac & iFinder users to test this version. Anyone willing to give it a try?

 

Reply direct to <lee_rimar@gmail.com>, thanks.

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I can help with the first part...

 

Going by the downloads of MacGPSBabel vs. gpsbabel just from www.gpsbabel.org (and not including downloads from VT or MacUpdate as that would be cheating), I get the Mac market share for GPS related software to be about 8.6%.

 

The Groundspeak forums have 33,751 members at the time of posting. So if you post about Mac software here you are potentially talking to 2917 people. Of those, how many have a Lowrance iFinder? - That I don't know.

 

JeremyA

Edited by JeremyA
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... Mac market share for GPS related software to be about 8.6% ... Groundspeak forums have 33,751 members ... potentially talking to 2917 [Macv users] ... how many have a Lowrance iFinder? - That I don't know.

As much as I like my new iFinder H2O, I know isn't the best unit for geocaching. Can't record comments with waypoints, nor can you customize the icons. We all know how important that is!

 

It's no surprise their market penetration among cachers is smaller than for boating and aviation types. Among cachers I'd bet it's something like 1% or less against the big G and M crowds.

 

I wrote the thing for my own needs - but as far as finding other users, I may as well be writing for the Amiga :laughing:

Edited by lee_rimar
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I started down the same road as JeremyA, but talked myself out of reaching a conclusion. Amazingly, though, the number that JeremyA produces is pretty darned close to the numbers that IDC gets paid a zillion dollars to compute of relative market shares of the OSes in the desktop/laptop space.

 

I talked myself out of it because I was thinking that GPSBabel (one of the very few cross-platform programs in this space) had a skewed download rate. As more windows users move to GSAK (which won't be reflected in my numbers) and Mac users will sometimes build from source and sometimes use Jereemy's builds, my guess was that the Mac numbers would be high. Mac users also have fewer choices, so I figured that of 100 mac users vs. 100 windows users, more of them would be ours. Then things like VPC (twice within the last 24 hours I've spoken with folks using the Windows version of GPSBabel on OSX under VPC) complicate the numbers.

 

So in the end, I talked myself out of giving that answer, but Jeremy's answer is really close to the percentage of Mac users in the population so I wouldn't veto them.

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