Good, but flawed in many ways! Be careful--upgrades have reset toolbars and photos!
A NEW GLITCH
Asteroid data no longer update! Even though it says "Update Required", the update never work! You get a Network Connect error or a Download Incomplete error message and no updating!
OLD GLITCH NOW FIXED
On the iPhone now, it crashes every time Featured is chosen! Now fixed!
ONGOING MAJOR GLITCH
Each time this app is upgraded, it forgets that 160 megs of photos have been installed!! So, one has to discover that by accident --and then go through a long download. That should not be necessary and definitely needs fixing.
This latest version of the app has done something worse--the app claims all the photoshop bars and photos! are installed, but wont show any in the scrolling list! It responds with a Photos x symbol. And, no, it has nothing to do with my photo settings--I checked that! Oddly, photos still show up in the info windows of individual objects, but not the scrolling list--which is so good for spotting whats up. The only solution is to DELETE all the photos and then re-download.
ANOTHER UPGRADE CATASTROPHE
The latest upgrade reset all the toolbars. It takes a long time and painstaking work to change the icons in each toolbar to what you want. Having an upgrade destroy all that effort and time is horrendous. Be sure to take snapshots of the screen as a record to get things back in order. Youll be sorry if you dont!
The developer is a responsive, decent sort, but this problem reflects poorly on his attention to the program! The upgrade problems lose it a star out of the box.
SOME GOOD AND BAD THINGS
Pop up photos and info when tapping on an DSO are just wonderful. One tap and you see a mini photo of the object similar to an eyepiece view. But its very tricky tapping on DSOs. Instead, you often end up getting some obscure stars info.
Excellent eyepiece views, with user customization to fit your collection. But theres only one magnitude setting--and it handles both DSOs and stars, so its very hard to get a FOV that really represents what youve looking at. (Stars are an odd grey, too; nothing like an eyepiece view.)
DISPLAY OMISSIONS
Attractive display, including color customization by user and discrete display of DSO names. But the program does NOT show many of the brightest DSOs, including many Messier objects, unless you drill way down to ridiculously small fields of view! Thats really a major deficiency in a star charting program! The symbols for star clusters and globulars are too similar, and there is no color customization of DSOs.
SPRAWLING LIST
The Tonight feature is wonderful, providing a great way of seeing whats going to be up--and permits great filtering by object type, telescope, magnitude or rating, etc. But youre stuck between a choice of listing only two or scores of objects--and the button for switching requires scrolling through all the objects! There needs to be an in-between setting, too, showing say top 5 or 10 in each category.
TOOLBAR LABYRINTH
Customizable tool bars, so that you can group the functions you use most into a couple of toolbars. But the customization is needlessly convoluted, you end up having to use multiple toolbars; it switches every time you use a different command; and it doesnt even include the new Find command from its simplified toolbar (which groups all the various finds together).
Note: I had taken backup photos to have a record of how I had set things up--and it is still a bear redoing the icon sets. Frederic really should provide an alphabetized list to draw on; as it stands now, one has to hunt and hunt to find the icon/command one wants in the maze of icons.
SUMMARY
Still, this is one of the best astronomy, planetarium, sky gazing apps available. While SkySafari Plus surpasses it overall, with a better design, better features in many areas, and more frequent upgrades, Starmap Pro is no slouch and makes an excellent app (its photos and one-tap pop up info & photos are the best among all astro apps). At these prices, buy both! Just make sure that you take snapshots of your toolbar customizations because upgrades can reset all that work!
Say, that reminds me. I better go take some screen shots of Starmaps menu palettes!
AstroPaul about Starmap Pro, v4.8
