I've been asked many times about an iOS version of Highway Radar, so in this post, I want to summarize my thoughts about this and answer all possible questions that might arise.
TL;DR I have no plans of making an iOS version; however, I'll be happy to help with iOS version development if someone wants to do so.
As you might see, Highway Radar is 100% free, has no ads, and doesn't sell your data, and for now, I don't have any plans on adding any of those. So you might ask why I am even working on this. The answer may sound a bit egoistic, but I work on it because I simply want to have the best passive CM app on the road for myself. By spending little time on polishing and publishing, I can get plenty of useful feedback I can incorporate in the application so I get a better app for myself. Also, having public responsibility makes the app much better, which I also personally benefit from. This means that I only work on things that are somehow useful to me.
That said, let's move to the iOS version. I'm an Android user, so having an iOS version would bring only subtle benefits for me. I'll get more feedback on the server-side of the application (aircraft, heat maps, risk scores, road graph). However, maintaining another version of the app would take a significant amount of time. I don't want to spend it on something I will never use. Even more, considering I'm also a Windows person, I need to purchase at least ~$1500 worth of equipment (iPhone + MacBook + Apple Dev License) only to start the development.
It is possible to charge little money for iOS version (say, $10); however, currently, I'd prefer investing the time in new Android features. There are still many things to do.
Now some good news: Highway Radar is a very lightweight application, and quite a significant part is separated from the platform. Most of the logic either work on my server or gets precomputed on my powerful home machine. For example, I compute heat maps and risk scores, assemble camera database, and road graph every week. Then this data is served from my server in a format that is super easy to parse and visualize. All aircraft operations (fetching, merging, analyzing, and filtering) also happen on my server. Such an approach reduces the load on the mobile phone, reduces data usage, and allows me to update algorithms without updating the app. Except for fetching crowdsourced alerts, the Android application only visualizes data already prepared on my server.
And the best part is that I'd be happy to share this data with anyone (considering all credits are in place). Moreover, I'm ok with someone developing an iOS application called "Highway Radar" if it would have all the features of the Android app. I'm also happy to share algorithms I use in Highway Radar (e.g., pulling data from crowdsourcing server or estimating the severity of the aircraft alert).
So if anyone wants to build an iOS version, please reach out to me, I'll be delighted to help with this project.
TL;DR I have no plans of making an iOS version; however, I'll be happy to help with iOS version development if someone wants to do so.
As you might see, Highway Radar is 100% free, has no ads, and doesn't sell your data, and for now, I don't have any plans on adding any of those. So you might ask why I am even working on this. The answer may sound a bit egoistic, but I work on it because I simply want to have the best passive CM app on the road for myself. By spending little time on polishing and publishing, I can get plenty of useful feedback I can incorporate in the application so I get a better app for myself. Also, having public responsibility makes the app much better, which I also personally benefit from. This means that I only work on things that are somehow useful to me.
That said, let's move to the iOS version. I'm an Android user, so having an iOS version would bring only subtle benefits for me. I'll get more feedback on the server-side of the application (aircraft, heat maps, risk scores, road graph). However, maintaining another version of the app would take a significant amount of time. I don't want to spend it on something I will never use. Even more, considering I'm also a Windows person, I need to purchase at least ~$1500 worth of equipment (iPhone + MacBook + Apple Dev License) only to start the development.
It is possible to charge little money for iOS version (say, $10); however, currently, I'd prefer investing the time in new Android features. There are still many things to do.
Now some good news: Highway Radar is a very lightweight application, and quite a significant part is separated from the platform. Most of the logic either work on my server or gets precomputed on my powerful home machine. For example, I compute heat maps and risk scores, assemble camera database, and road graph every week. Then this data is served from my server in a format that is super easy to parse and visualize. All aircraft operations (fetching, merging, analyzing, and filtering) also happen on my server. Such an approach reduces the load on the mobile phone, reduces data usage, and allows me to update algorithms without updating the app. Except for fetching crowdsourced alerts, the Android application only visualizes data already prepared on my server.
And the best part is that I'd be happy to share this data with anyone (considering all credits are in place). Moreover, I'm ok with someone developing an iOS application called "Highway Radar" if it would have all the features of the Android app. I'm also happy to share algorithms I use in Highway Radar (e.g., pulling data from crowdsourcing server or estimating the severity of the aircraft alert).
So if anyone wants to build an iOS version, please reach out to me, I'll be delighted to help with this project.
