Do you guys know what OS Raymarine, Garmin et al use? I'm sure they're different but I'm guessing they are all proprietary to their brand. Is that correct? If it is, that would mean that they have a whole team of people developing their OS, right?
Why? A thought: why don't they simply license Android, fire their software department (or re-orient them to create amazing Raymarine/Garmin, whatever apps for Android) and make more money? We the consumer get a platform that's much more flexible than what those devices are currently running plus access to all these wonderful apps, which would only get better and better if there was a hardware environment for them more suitable to the marine environment than tablets. The fact that Raymarine now has apps for those devices is telling, people are clearly using tablets on their boats. I think they have it backwards. Don't bring raymarine to the android device. Bring Android to the raymarine device. The marine tech companies are in the hardware business first, software is secondary. They should stick to their core competency and let the big guys do the software part. More frequent updates and bug fixes, a standard user experience regardless of manufacturer. The freedom and ability to run all kinds of apps on your boat computer (because that's what a chart plotter is). Etc. There's already a software environment which means there is demand in the market (navionics, mx mariner, opencpn, etc). My feeling is that the software companies are going to be able to provide much better apps for us than what raymarine and garmin are currently giving us. Imagine a raymarine computer at your helm, just like their top of the line plotter but you can install whatever you want on it and do whatever you can currently do with your android device (because it runs android). If they wanted to, they could port their chart software to android and sell it as an app or provide coupon codes to download it free with the purchase of their hardware. Why is Raymarine developing music playing apps and weather apps for their proprietary platform? That costs money! and this stuff already exists. Think blackberry. They got it all wrong. Along came Samsung and took the entire market (Apple too, but Samsung is #1). If blackberry licensed Android before the whole end game thing happened I think they'd still be around, and profitable. People liked their platform, sure, but what they really liked was their *hardware*. I've played around with the chart plotters at the boat show and the chandleries. I wasn't really impressed with any of the interfaces. They should continue to build amazing marine grade HARDWARE and let the people that know software handle that part. Someone is going to come along and do this. Personally, I would buy a "Marine Tough" android device for the helm before I purchased any purpose built plotter. It would do everything that a plotter does plus so much more (for those times when you're alongside a dock and want to watch a movie in the cockpit or some other frivolous thing like facebook or the C&C mailing list ;) ). Hell, install a display down below. "Computer. Play movie. Terminator 2." And so on. Science fiction had it all figured out with Hal. One central computer. One computer to rule them all and in the dorkness bind them. I wish I was capable of starting a business like this, I'de do it myself. Most people have MULTIPLE computers on board. The VHF these days is a computer, the laptop at the nav station, the chart plotter, the instrument displays .. why?!!! Just give me one CPU running a commonly used platform and let the software companies duke it out. Plug in a bunch of dumb displays or interactive displays, whatever your budget allows. Hook up all your transducers and sensors and you're off to the races. Focus on making amazing marine hardware and continue to charge marine prices for it. Stop spending money on coders to maintain your proprietary system and MAKE MORE MONEY. Or like I said before, turn them into an App department and port what they've already got as apps .. FOR SALE! Rambling thoughts on a wednesday night. Someone's going to owe me a beer if this happens. Steve Suhana, C&C 32 Toronto
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