There's actually a screen you can swipe to to the left of the main screen where you can change the units, but I wanted to make an economic incentive for people to try SI so it'll cost ya! ;-)
Also, I apologize for the buggyness with that swiping... I should have used a UIPageViewController and will probably go fix it at some point.
You can read more about all this in my blog post, including the decision about distance units.
Another extension of it I also thought about is a version with some kind of node.js backend that's a little bit like Yo except whenever you and a friend have it open it points you at each other so you can find each other on foot as long as you have a decent internet connection and good GPS accuracy.
I've been hiking and foraging for mushrooms and wild foods, so I made this simple utility app for iOS.
It lets you pick a photo you took (or that someone sent you) and then points you in the direction the photo was taken, kind of like a compass, based on the coordinates stored in the photo's EXIF data. It's basically a fast and easy way to mark locations and get back to them.
Originally I tried it in JavaScript, but iOS strips lat and lon info from photos when they're picked with a file input field. You can still find the beginnings of my hacked together JS version here: http://foodsfofree.herokuapp.com/
This is just a side project I built for fun since I hadn't built an iOS app before, so I'm not trying to turn it into a business or something, just wanted to share it!
Great little app. I would go a little further -- let the app also take pics (with the GPS on), or simply remember places with tags on the spot. e.g. tag and say "parked car".
I sometimes do not leave the location on, however, I would still like the functionality of the app.
You're right g0atbutt. I know the team personally all three of them are great guys who have been working REALLY hard to make this a reality for the past few years. I'm glad to see they are finally being recognized for their awesome product & technology.
I've run into that 10MB problem, too! I think I remember Apple's threshold was 100MB originally, and the 10MB one is just absurd. These solutions seem a little bulky, but the tethering is to the point it's pretty seamless. I just wish an iPhone 4 jailbreak would come out so I could go back to MyWi instead of paying AT&T an extra $15/mo.
Devs can get around this by downloading extra bits on first startup or heavily compressing big datasets and decompressing them on first startup. Only a handful do, but there are ways around it. It would be nice if it was just a warning instead of a strict rule.
I agree with your last point. It's too bad the Apple brand has been reduced to that of a designer fashion by the masses, or some kind of status symbol.
It's like some people want a BMW just to impress the neighbors with a badge, while others can appreciate the level of engineering and the minds that went into the precision you can feel when you are driving it.
I like to make purchasing decisions based on the competency of the company in making what they make, but unfortunately most people don't think that way so a phone like this doesn't even get a chance.
We recently struggled with this on the design of the front page of an application. A similar issue we ran into is scaring people away with login/password boxes on the front page.
What does everyone think, is it better to have the login/password boxes visible immediately to save the user a click, or do what digg and twitter do to avoid scaring people about a sign-up form in the not so distant future and hide it behind some AJAX?
I think its better to do whatever the A/B test says works better for your particular users.
I burned two hours a week ago trying to test that but my CSS and lightbox implementation did not play well with each other and I eventually scrapped it. I'll take another stab at it in November -- no killing the magic pumpkin before Halloween.
I have compelling evidence that using a lightbox to "pre-sell" the form/download increases conversion rates, at least among my users. Try clicking on the giant image in the middle of my home page -- it works beautifully.
