Oh, Hello Spring

I keep telling myself that this year, I won't need to really spend much on the boat. Turns out, all the excess spending I'm doing for everything else is more than making up for that. However, at least one of those purchases might be boat-handy anyway.

I've dabbled in the racing sim stuff, as you've seen recently. I'm putting together a flight simulator rig (budget minded, let's not get all multi-axis full motion crazy yet), which I'll outline soon for kicks, and I've decided to start taking lessons towards a private pilot's license this year, as soon as the weather can make up it's mind. It's the latter that might lead to more boaty things.

One of the things I've purchased ahead of flight lessons, is a new iPad Air. First, let me stress this, and I cannot stress it enough, I do not like Apple. It's not because of the products, which I freely admit are quite high quality. As far as that goes, I prefer the customization and such of Android products, and I can't stand that Apple can announce a new feature that Android has had out for years, and the world touts them as innovative. I'm not a fan of some of their legal tactics - there was a case not long ago where they realized no one had patented the slide-to-unlock gesture on smartphones, that had been in use by basically everyone at that point. So they did, and then sued everyone. Really? My thoughts are, win by being better, not by trying to belittle and undermine the accomplishments of others to lift yourselves up. 

I'm also not a very big fan of their.. I don't know what to call it, exactly. But for example, I once had an iTunes account to download music. I didn't use it much, I think I bought a handful of songs once, and never used it again. I hated that I had, HAD to use iTunes for it because there were no other options for what I was doing. I then ended up buying an iPhone X for someone to use, ended up taking it back when they moved South, and tried setting up the phone using my standard fare of free apps like Pandora. I couldn't even get it to let me download free apps. It took two hours on the phone with customer service over the space of three phone calls, to find out that there was a rogue application at some point, that was trying to charge my account (which is why I refused to put any default payment method on file - why should I need a card on file to use free apps?). Had I put my card on, it would've instantly been charged. Ridiculous. Even now, I said ok, I'm buying an iPad, let me see what apps I can--- oh, you can't access or browse the Apple App Store without an apple product. At all. 

So why do I buy an iPad then? Seems strange for someone like myself that is anti-Apple, no? Well the short of it is, I'm not an idiot. At least not always. When aviation started trending towards the digital age, the apps that paved the way were initially created for the iPad, because it was THE tablet to have at the time. And over the years, that's how it's stayed. The iPad is the tool of the trade, and while there are some Android based alternatives for many of them, I've resigned myself that an iPad it is for it. It's just a fact that there are some apps across all genres of activity that are just iPad only. Take sailing for example. Many people have found great success with iSailor, and other similar apps that generally work better on an iPad than an Android equivalent. 

One thing I'll note, is also the outrageous prices of Apple products. Fortunately, I ordered my iPad through Verizon, so that I can spread the payments out as well as have a Cellular model that has internal GPS instead of WiFi only. But if I wanted the fancy pencil to go with it? $129 dollars. Seriously, it's that much. I can buy much cheaper alternatives if I wanted, that charge separately and don't have all the functionality of whatever this piece of plastic does, but still. I don't think I need that.

What I do need though, is protection from the elements, and my own mishaps. A nice rugged case, but also a way to mount it in a plane cockpit. I've settled upon this, a Pivot case:

Now before you ask, it's not cheap. And that seems a little funny from someone that was just complaining about the price of a pencil. But, this uses a lot more plastic than that pencil, lets be honest. It also allows for the addition of accessories like suction cup mounts, and another one, a claw mount.

The best part about the claw mount, is it would allow me to easily affix that arm to the handhold just inside the companionway, and give me a perfect view of the iPad in the cockpit of the boat. See, told you there were sailing applications to be had. So in a roundabout way, I guess I bought an iPad for the boat. In seriousness though, it's a really rugged, heavy duty case with a wonderful yet easy to use latching and switching mechanism, and for what it does, I can't really find many better alternatives. It does add some heft to the iPad, sure, but the versatility it adds outweighs that, no pun intended. 

In other news, the slip is fully paid for, and I'll be going up next weekend to get my halyards in order, and straighten things up, and then she'll be ready to go in the water whenever the marina is. I haven't heard of a planned start date, but the bay isn't frozen and we're already well into pandemic times so hopefully not much of a delay. I really hope not, I have most of the month of May already taken off from work. Checked the marina cam, I see there's the dredger parked over on the other side, and the marina even left one of the floating docks in for the winter that just needs fingers added to make room for boats. Who knows, maybe we'll have an early season.