Relatively recently, Trimble Inc. purchased MyTopos and not only decided to terminate the use of their charts (which we understand – they now have competing apps) but did so without any prior warning to us, dozens of other developers and most importantly to our customers. To add a little insult to injury, they then published a re-direct to their app within our own app. Nice.

That’s that bad news.

The good news is that we should have a full compliment of USGS Topo maps back up and running from another source by early next week. This will happen automatically within the app.

We apologize for the inconvenience – this is not how we would have handled something like this. Moreover, if this put you in any physical jeopardy, we would want to hear about it – we’ll make sure Trimble gets the message.

EarthNC, Inc.

Folks,

For reasons so far unknown, with their iOS 5.0 update, Apple has changed how app data is stored and its important to know how to manage this process. The long story short is that Apple will now start deleting the “cache” when the dynamic storage area is full (this is where we, and dozens of other app vendors, store data such as downloaded maps). What Apple recommends / insists on is that App vendors now store data in the “Documents” folder – and this is what we’ve done in our latest update (now available via iTunes).

So far, so good…right? Well, yes and no. The problem with storing data in the Documents folder is that because Documents is backed up automatically if you use their iCloud storage service, it could really slow down the back up process via iTunes.

So here is what we recommend: IF you’ve upgraded to iOS 5.0 and IF you’re using the iCould storage service, “deactivate” EarthNC’s Marine Charts from the list of data sources to be backed up. By doing this, your iTunes back-up will not suffer due to backing up large chart files, but you do run the risk of having to re-download chart areas if for some reason, you lose your documents (in which case, while rare, you have a much larger problem on your hands).

Below are some screen shots showing you the step-by-step process for doing this.

Good luck and please let us know if you have any questions by sending us a note here.

- The EarthNC Team

1. Go to Settings and select “iCloud”

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2. Select “Storage and Back-up”

3. Select “Manage Storage”

4. Select your iPhone (in the example, the iPhone name is “EFB’s iPad”

5. Scroll to “Charts” and make sure “”Off” is selected.

…and that’s it. That should ensure that you’re not backing up the large Marine charts files.

We’ve just recently upgraded our user guide to reflect some of the latest upgrades to the Android Marine Charts app. Click on this link to view and download the PDF version. As always, please send us feedback on the good, the bad and the ugly at the EarthNC User Feedback page.

The best way to determine EarthNC’s marine chart coverage for our mobile apps is to go to our Online Viewer page at and visually inspect the coverage of the area of interest. If there you can see on the Online Viewer, it will be on the mobile apps – automatically.

Hope this helps!

- EarthNC