BadElf told me about their 50% off offer when I contacted them about possible solutions. You may have to already own a BadElf product to qualify for the sale price but no one asked me for any purchase verification information. I may be in their d'base from a product registry though. I agree as well that Dual and BadElf should have picked up on the problem when 8.3 was offered for Beta testing. I posted that very thing on the BadElf blog. No comment from them on that. If I were in a jam for a fix to this and had a loaded IPad, I'd go with either the Pro+ or the lightning connector BadElf and be set for the future (hopefully). I've had no problems since I got the Pro+.

Frank

Also, as I understand the problem it stems from Apple upgrading a data/language format in 8.3 that makes it incompatible with "older" GPS units. While I'm no programing expert it seems that Dual and BadElf should be able to fix this with a firmware upgrade. If that is a possibility it seems that we may be getting stuck with this problem because the GPS manufacturers don't want to get stuck with the development costs. I hope not because that would change my outlook on BadElf. o date I've had nothing but great experiences with their products and customer service. I have no connections with BadElf other than as a customer.

Frank

fshaw wrote:BadElf told me about their 50% off offer when I contacted them about possible solutions. You may have to already own a BadElf product to qualify for the sale price but no one asked me for any purchase verification information. I may be in their d'base from a product registry though. I agree as well that Dual and BadElf should have picked up on the problem when 8.3 was offered for Beta testing. I posted that very thing on the BadElf blog. No comment from them on that. If I were in a jam for a fix to this and had a loaded IPad, I'd go with either the Pro+ or the lightning connector BadElf and be set for the future (hopefully). I've had no problems since I got the Pro+.

Frank

Bad Elf did stand up when you contacted them, not bad.

Money is important to me and under the circumstances I still have received a great value. But, if I can afford better integrity from other vendors I will vote with my wallet and stay away from these guys.

Glad you have a fix and appreciate your post.

fshaw wrote:Also, as I understand the problem it stems from Apple upgrading a data/language format in 8.3 that makes it incompatible with "older" GPS units. While I'm no programing expert it seems that Dual and BadElf should be able to fix this with a firmware upgrade. If that is a possibility it seems that we may be getting stuck with this problem because the GPS manufacturers don't want to get stuck with the development costs. I hope not because that would change my outlook on BadElf. o date I've had nothing but great experiences with their products and customer service. I have no connections with BadElf other than as a customer.

Frank

Anyway, I do not feel ripped off too much because of the great success so far with all this stuff... But, there is a scary dark culture lurking in the background which now is getting some attention, at least from pilots. Not very entertaining!

fshaw wrote:
While some may criticize non-TSO navigation equipment and slam Apple, I can buy a bunch of Apple and BadElf for the cost of a certified Garmin. It will give me more than enough nav accuracy and meet real world applications as well. You can bet that I'll wait a while before making the next IOS upgrade though.

Frank

I don't use a certified garmin, but handheld garmins are a reasonable price, and you don't have to deal with this kind of BS from apple... For me it's worth the extra $500 to not be trying to figure out why my GPS doesn't work for 2 months, and then downgrade IOS or upgrade to new GPS receiver.

You have other BS to deal with with Garmin like paying for database updates and the clunky interfaces and tiny screens. I'm still very happy with Apple products. You just have to pay attention - don't be the first to upgrade. Call it a life lesson.

I have owned and used Garmin products IFR GPSs, RADAR, SONAR, VFR GPSs and iPAD Pilot.

They are buggy too. But, Garmin product support and leadership from day one was/is reasonable and predictable.

Apple: Total vacuum. Nobody at Apple can explain why a decimal upgrade would slaughter an entire industry's GPSs. Its not the bug as much as Apple is so unpredictable on how they deal with major flaws. Kind of weird.

Steve Jobs would of kicked some ass and thrown a desk or two down the hall. This would not of happened under his watch.

But, I am happy with my iPAD. I am typing this post on it!

Bottom line:

Apple needs to step up dealing with bugs, like restoring a previous version or two of IOS if stuff hits the fan.

8GCBC wrote:Apple: Total vacuum. Nobody at Apple can explain why a decimal upgrade would slaughter an entire industry's GPSs. Its not the bug as much as Apple is so unpredictable on how they deal with major flaws. Kind of weird.

"Decimal upgrades" is kind of a loose term. There has never been a universal consensus on what the various decimal points should mean. In apple land (and indeed most vendors there days) the point releases can be quite impactful and the point.point releases are the bug fixes that are much more likely to "just work". 8.3 was a fairly large upgrade.

8GCBC wrote:Steve Jobs would of kicked some ass and thrown a desk or two down the hall. This would not of happened under his watch.

Maybe. We don't have all the data yet, but this could be read as Apple abandoning an old bluetooth standard in favor of a new one. If true, then that's the kind of behavior Steve was *famous* for. Apple has never been a company that saddled itself with an overly acute sense of backward compatibility.

8GCBC wrote:Apple needs to step up dealing with bugs, like restoring a previous version or two of IOS if stuff hits the fan.

I just searched the Apple developer library (I do some mobile development, including IOS, so have an account there) and don't see any notes jumping out at me about location services changes nor bluetooth. In the absence of that, I think it's indeed fair to call it a bug and one that should be fairly high priority.

That said, identifying, fixing and putting a release of something like IOS through QA doesn't happen overnight. Now that they've screwed up, I'd prefer they get the fix right rather than rush it and make more mistakes.

I've never seen an OS on any platform allow for downgrades. Some allow you to have multiple versions side by side, but even that is pretty complicated. Just thinking about the work necessary to allow a downgrade is pretty mind boggling. The downgrade process would have to know what the previous version was, fetch it, migrate all databases to the old release, figure out what apps were upgraded at the same time (because remember, normal people want a big red easy button, so their apps were likely to have been upgraded also), fetch the previous versions of those, which implies that the apps *also* need to be able to be downgraded.

Not going to happen in this lifetime.

I haven't tried it, but you could backup your ipad prior to upgrading and then wipe the pad and restore the backup if things suck, right? Doesn't that capability exist today? I'm pretty sure the IOS upgrade path even asks you to do that and makes you click OK confirming that you have.

Anyway, I feel everyones pain. I am pretty religious about waiting to before grabbing new versions, but for some reason I ended up doing this upgrade also and my stratus, while great in the US, is worthless in Mexico so I discovered once I got south of the foreflight map range that my Dual Bluetooth GPS wasn't working as I headed into the mountains with somewhat low ceilings.

rw2,

Have you developed on BSD? That's what is behind Apple, Garmin, Android, the NSA, Google etc. Just asking?

WingX seems to have a workaround already built in, but it is only confirmed to work with the Dual GPS receivers. I got this email nearly a month ago:

Hilton Software LLC
Greetings!

Apple's new iOS 8.3 for iPhone and iPad broke compatibility with the Dual XGPS150 and XGPS160 (and other external GPS receivers). The problem is that iOS 8.3 does not send the GPS information it receives from external GPS receivers to apps (not just WingX Pro7 - all apps).

We're happy to announce a very simple fix. Dual has confirmed that this fix works for both the XGPS150 and the XGPS160.
Why the fix works with WingX Pro7
In addition to the standard Core Location Services offered by Apple's iOS, several versions ago our Engineering Team built an alternate method to get location data from the XGPS150 and XGPS160 into WingX Pro7. This simple fix simple tells iOS to not use the broken Core Location Services to send GPS data WingX Pro7; instead WingX Pro7 uses the alternate method and it just works!

Click here for the fix. http://hiltonsoftware.com/ios83fix/
Thanks for your support,
Support Team
Hilton Software LLC

Prosaria wrote:WingX seems to have a workaround already built in, but it is only confirmed to work with the Dual GPS receivers. I got this email nearly a month ago:

Hilton Software LLC
Greetings!

Apple's new iOS 8.3 for iPhone and iPad broke compatibility with the Dual XGPS150 and XGPS160 (and other external GPS receivers). The problem is that iOS 8.3 does not send the GPS information it receives from external GPS receivers to apps (not just WingX Pro7 - all apps).

We're happy to announce a very simple fix. Dual has confirmed that this fix works for both the XGPS150 and the XGPS160.
Why the fix works with WingX Pro7
In addition to the standard Core Location Services offered by Apple's iOS, several versions ago our Engineering Team built an alternate method to get location data from the XGPS150 and XGPS160 into WingX Pro7. This simple fix simple tells iOS to not use the broken Core Location Services to send GPS data WingX Pro7; instead WingX Pro7 uses the alternate method and it just works!

Click here for the fix. http://hiltonsoftware.com/ios83fix/
Thanks for your support,
Support Team
Hilton Software LLC

Cool! I like it when people do not sleep!

By the way to reiterate... I love Apple ( but not right now).

8GCBC wrote:Have you developed on BSD? That's what is behind Apple, Garmin, Android, the NSA, Google etc. Just asking?

Yep. I've written code on probably ten flavors of unix over the years. The Linux (android is linux, btw) and BSD families are the two most common in the environments I've worked.

rw2 wrote:

8GCBC wrote:Have you developed on BSD? That's what is behind Apple, Garmin, Android, the NSA, Google etc. Just asking?

Yep. I've written code on probably ten flavors of unix over the years. The Linux (android is linux, btw) and BSD families are the two most common in the environments I've worked.

Linus ported 90% of the deamons from Free BSD! But, you are right about androids.

Went to the Apple Store today and now blogging from the sailboat at the Al Wai Harbor, 800 Pier!!

The GPS frustration is going away and I may just bite it and buy a new one.

Thank you rw2 for the comments I enjoy the conversations.

From Garmin:

http://garmin.blogs.com/my_weblog/2015/ ... VPmN_lVhBc

TomD wrote:From Garmin:

http://garmin.blogs.com/my_weblog/2015/ ... VPmN_lVhBc

Garmin as expected took responsibility and uploaded a fix to their servers. I would of predicted that from them. No mysterious blogging and speculations.

Just a fix. Others like Elf and Dual want more and more Dinero from us. Ahhh!

Quoted from a post on PoA:

I am currently testing iOS 8.4 beta 3 and I can confirm that it fixes the external GPS issue (at least with my dual XGPS150). The only down side is that the public version probably won't be available until around June 8th when Apple holds it annual World Wide Developers Conference. Hang in there the wait will be worth it!

rw2 wrote:Quoted from a post on PoA:

I am currently testing iOS 8.4 beta 3 and I can confirm that it fixes the external GPS issue (at least with my dual XGPS150). The only down side is that the public version probably won't be available until around June 8th when Apple holds it annual World Wide Developers Conference. Hang in there the wait will be worth it!

Thank you RW2. Glad Apple is taking this bug out! BTW my Air 2 is making me so happy . I love "it"!

Ahhh! Oh well... purchased this because I am splitting to Oregon in two weeks...

https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/avpages/gdl39-3d11-12368.php

I also started using Garmin Pilot, not exclusively but, the GLD 39 feeds ADSB; weather, traffic (kind of), AHRS, and barometric pressure to the app. It will be here tomorrow from spruce. The debacle made me rethink Garmin.

Glad we can use both again soon.

8GCBC wrote:Thank you RW2. Glad Apple is taking this bug out! BTW my Air 2 is making me so happy . I love "it"!

Ahhh! Oh well... purchased this because I am splitting to Oregon in two weeks...

Yeah, similar issue here. I'm going to the US for nearly two months starting May 30th. Luckily Mexico has tons of railroad lines carrying everyones cars, tractors and appliances to el norte, so IFR (I Follow Railroads) is a pretty viable option.

That said, like most here, I learned to fly before all this stuff existed. So while I like a belt and suspenders approach to flying unfamiliar mountainous terrain, it's not like this is a safety issue. The biggest challenge will be finding a weather window now that the energetic summer atmosphere is starting to be consistently in effect. 1400 miles of clear skies is a lot to ask for!

I used to navigate with a plastic sextant (could not afford brass). Also, used UUCP and news groups. Remember, alt.pilot.ifr ?

Thank you for updates on 8.3 .

8GCBC wrote:I used to navigate with a plastic sextant (could not afford brass). Also, used UUCP and news groups. Remember, alt.pilot.ifr ?

I think if this goes much further we're going to have to pop open a couple beers and yell at the kids to get off our lawn...

And we liked it that way!!!