It does that just fine. However, if you move the phone, it moves. When you are trying to find a faint fuzzy, you need the chart to stay still. You touch the phone to zoom in, and you can lose your place. Sky Map is great if you are using an equatorial mount. You can find the RA + DEC and just set your mount/scope and go.
If you are using an Alt/az mount or a dobsonian scope you can't use coordinates. However, there is a push to app that I downloaded but haven't tried.
I wind up using more geometry with a Telrad, then the finder scope to zoom in. That's where you need to zoom in on the chart and have it stay perfectly still. For seeing what's where and what's available in the sky, especially if you get disoriented looking overhead, Sky Map is great. Since we are suburban with light pollution, some constellations are faint. Sky Map can locate, then I can switch to finder and chart.
Of course if the phone moves, Sky Map moves. Its an augmented reality app. It was intended to be directionally sensitive. Its the first one that I've seen that is so fast the app displays in real time with the phone movement.
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Apparently Iphone has a couple of apps that are reality. However, most of the member of our astronomy club just play with those apps, and use Astromist and now Stellarium which has been ported to the Iphone.
Stellarium is open source and free for a laptop/desktop. And the club pushes Apple as being the most useful.
I'm hoping that someone will do something similar now for Android. We are a small part of the market, but I'm sure there are other fields that need specialized apps at times. If the apps are good, we would gladly pay for them. Android has nice screens.
The way I see it:
Apple - nice phones, good apps, but you have to put up with Steve Jobs as God.
MS and Nokia:
We know what you want and we will do our best in that direction, and that direction only. Since most want a "social" phone that will sync with Outlook, that's what you will get.
BB - Losing ground, but still probably the most secure business phone. Witness some of the Arab nations complaining about BB security.
Android - Similar to Linux. You can have close to anything you want, especially if you can code for it. And if you can't - there's pages of stuff to help you do it "your way"
I've heard about some of these iPHone astronomy apps. Most of them you have to buy. Some are even too expensive. Some look complicated and cluttered. Some of them are laggy, crashy and slow. People whine all the time why Google Sky Maps isn't available on the iPhone. Google Sky Maps is free, its fast, it has a simple, easy to use interface and it is truly spectacular.
I did say I would be willing to purchase the app. I bought Astromist for the Palm years ago, and I can still use it on the Clie if I need to. I have no objection to buying an app. Should the writer of Astromist ever put it out for Android, I would pay for it, again, gladly. I would want a trial - preferably time limited than partially disabled or ad supported.
For some uses, free isn't always better. Nicer maybe.
I use Stellariium (free) on the PC. I also have Orion's "The Sky" (came with a scope)
SkyMap Lite (purchased) and another purchased one. Stellarium is the prettiest and easiest to navigate, but it doesn't print.
The people that whine are usually not serious, or they are beginners. They will buy a $2,000 scope and whine because they can't set up the GPS! Or they expect to see pictures like the images from Hubble, and they can't see anything that way either.
You have them in phone forums, too. If they can't connect or post to Facebook, or get a movie instantly, they whine and try another phone!
I blame some advertising. Some problems are carrier related, some are from the phone manufacturer. Most can be solved if you have the patience.
I didn't move to Android for the apps or so much the system. I like the fact that you can FIND information most of the time. And you can bypass a lot of junk much easier on Android. I read both NokiaUSA and NokiaEurope forums. You were more likely to find an answer on the European forum. But ask about VOIP, and it's a state secret!
Other sites had more technical stuff, and some were downright haxor!
Last edited by zuben el genub; February 8th, 2011 at 10:08 AM.
I'm hoping that someone will do something similar now for Android. We are a small part of the market, but I'm sure there are other fields that need specialized apps at times. If the apps are good, we would gladly pay for them. Android has nice screens.
I think in time they'll do something similar. Unfortunately right now most people are developing for Iphone first and porting to android second. Hopefully with the new web market and other re-structuring of the market, there will be more developers who will develop apps for android first.
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MS and Nokia:
We know what you want and we will do our best in that direction, and that direction only. Since most want a "social" phone that will sync with Outlook, that's what you will get.
WP7 and Symbain are completely different beasts
Symbain is completely anti-social (and thats not changing), and has awful email capabilities
Nokia has no idea what the consumer wants, hence continuing use of Symbain
BTW, the closest thing any Nokia phone getting an OS update was the C6 getting the dialler from.S^3
LOL
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There are rumors that Nokia is talking to Microsoft about future support. Since there will be ARM (Risc) support in Windows8, that may fit and they will port Windows to the Phones and Tablets like Apple did with OSX which became iOS.
That's a misconception. OS X did lead eventually to iOS and iOS has some app properties of OS X - but OS X is based on various flavors of BSD unix (FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD with a Mach microkernel) and uses typical unix pre-emptive multitasking.
In that sense, Android is VERY close to OS X (or advanced, later versions of desktop Windows).
The iOS multitasking and app management is a giant step backwards and is very much like that introduced with Windows 95 - big difference.
I'm unfamiliar with what Windows is doing with Win7 phone multi-tasking.
That's a misconception. OS X did lead eventually to iOS and iOS has some app properties of OS X - but OS X is based on various flavors of BSD unix (FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD with a Mach microkernel) and uses typical unix pre-emptive multitasking.
In that sense, Android is VERY close to OS X (or advanced, later versions of desktop Windows).
The iOS multitasking and app management is a giant step backwards and is very much like that introduced with Windows 95 - big difference.
I'm unfamiliar with what Windows is doing with Win7 phone multi-tasking.
Very intersting. You dug a lot deeper than I wanted to go. But anyhow, MS has to do something more than just porting Widows8 to the tablets and smartphones. Although those devices will get a lot more muscle to handle the gorilla, the end user crowd is different and will probably require a different UI. And the CES words from MS pointed into that direction. They were talking about tiles in their new UI called Mosh.
Windows phone fans have been very, very supportive of that platform.
Competition is always a good thing - in the end, it's never really Android vs. iOS vs. Winphone vs. Symbian - in the end, it's always us_consumers vs. those_makers_and_carriers.
That's a misconception. OS X did lead eventually to iOS and iOS has some app properties of OS X - but OS X is based on various flavors of BSD unix (FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD with a Mach microkernel) and uses typical unix pre-emptive multitasking.
In that sense, Android is VERY close to OS X (or advanced, later versions of desktop Windows).
The iOS multitasking and app management is a giant step backwards and is very much like that introduced with Windows 95 - big difference.
I'm unfamiliar with what Windows is doing with Win7 phone multi-tasking.
Windows Phone 7 doesn't have third party app multitasking.
Bigger step backwards than iOS 4.
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