Gunks Climbers, You May Find This Of Interest

rgold wrote:What is the difference between staring at your phone and staring at a guidebook?

bragging rights

rgold wrote:What is the difference between staring at your phone and staring at a guidebook?

Well for starters when you drop a book off a cliff.......... ;-P

$600 phone + $15 App

or

$30 for guidebook is the other.... so social status symbol among ny climbers?

rgold wrote:What is the difference between staring at your phone and staring at a guidebook?

ha, people dont usually try and read books while walking(they usually stop in the middle of the trail) but I have seen some walkers/hikers staring at their phone while trying to walk. just wait and see.

MJMobes wrote: ha, people dont usually try and read books while walking(they usually stop in the middle of the trail) but I have seen some walkers/hikers staring at their phone while trying to walk. just wait and see.

What? That never happens.

mobile phones

Morgan Patterson wrote: ...so social status symbol among ny climbers?

Nonsense. Climbers all over the country (and world) have been carrying smart phones, i- and otherwise, for years now, well before there were any guidebooks on them.

The MP app has been around for a while, did anyone feel obliged to make snarky comments about people with their noses in their phones for that? (Perhaps not because the MP app is clumsy to use effectively as a guidebook on climbs so won't be attracting many noses.)

Most guidebooks are considerably heavier and bulkier than smart phones. What happened to the light-is-right crowd on this issue?

Smart phones have a host of uses, and incorporating a guidebook makes for even more multi-tasking. If it is done well, as it appears the Trapps App is at first viewing, then why the hate?

The biggest problem with smart phones is reading the screen in bright sunlight. The second biggest problem is the battery dying, leaving you with no screen to read in any light. And yes, you don't want to drop them or have them in your back pocket during an offwidth session.

As for all the rumblings about beta, the reality is that the Trapps App represents a refreshing retreat from the kinds of details one finds in places on MP and the guidebooks. The app tells you how hard the climb is, where to go (the minimum expected of any guidebook) and provides simplified pro ratings, making it possible to argue that it is a step in a direction more, not less, in keeping with the now somewhat faded spirit of trad climbing.

I might add that, there being nothing new under the sun, it turns out that Stannard had the idea for the Trapps App forty years ago. He got a special wide angle camera, photographed the cliffs from the base of the climbs, and marked the routes with transparent fishing tackle so as not to obscure cliff features. The name and grade were written on the photo. The black and white photos were juxtaposed into panoramas and made into accordion-folded units, there being no cell phone to load them on at the time. I don't think he ever made a production run of even a small size, and the idea languished until technology caught up with conception.

I am an android user, so I'm poor and uneducated, but I've been scanning my guidebooks into indexable PDFs for quite some time. Any pages with text only get a high contrast black and white setting. Route tops and photos either color or gray scale. With a duplex sheet feed scanner this is fairly quick and easy. The only manual labor is converting the pages. Well worth it.

I use my phone as my camera, GPS (when needed and rarely for cragging), among other things, so turning it into a guidebook makes perfect sense.

BigA wrote: Yep. And I'm drawing comparisons between the two. Not to knock MP, but anyone can add routes to the database. This inevitably leads to errors, as someone could get on a route just once and then submit. Or they don't even have to climb it, they can get second hand info from a friend.

I'm not aware of any errors. If you know of some and haven't reported the errors for correction, then shame on you I guess. I know the mod(s) for the Gunks care a lot about the accuracy and usability of their beta.

rogerbenton wrote:ˆˆˆˆ maybe because he's basing his opinions on having actually seen and used it, as opposed to bits of info he picked up on the internet.

Ebola sucks, I don't need to contract it to know this.

Unfortunately I've been deselected for participating in this app's review, since I'm on android. So lack of availability wasn't of my choosing. [and I can't think of anyone I climb with who has an iPhone either, which statistically is odd... so I guess we're just poor slobs!]

My initial contention was the fact they skipped android (possibly indefinitely).

Upon reading the feedback, it would seem the iPhone guide is missing routes while adding other unpublished routes(weird?).

Then the $20 cost only adds to the 'stay away' factor. It's been my experience (as well as studies you can find searching google) that everything in the iTunes app store is twice the cost of the exact same apps in the android store. Guess you get what you pay for. So it makes sense, to me at least, that anyone releasing an app would take this into consideration, especially if profiting from that app is a strong consideration/factor.

With traditional paper guides, the largest cost is the actual publishing of the guide. Since the publishing for digital skips the material stage, you would think the app could be sold at a much cheaper rate or even given away for free with the right backers/advertising (see MP).

I'm glad several of you are proudly backing it and defending it. We'll see, when the dust settles this time next year, if this is here to stay.

I'm not opposed to beta, apps, or anything of that sort. Like others shared, I tend to make PDFs of photocopies especially if the approach is long and I want to save a little weight and not bring the entire guide for one route description. I do occasionally look at MP on my phone while at the cliff. My objections are clear, and they don't involve apps or phone use. I hope the people that matter in this (the app developers) hear my feedback and take it into consideration. I'm not the only person in the climbing community that thinks/feels these things, I just happen to be one of the few posting their thoughts in this thread.

Anyone want to talk money, demographics, and Preserve fees? It doesn't surprise me anyone selling the Gunks community a service wouldn't try to overcharge for that service. They see what we're willing to pay for access, they figure we should pay premium for everything. All of us must be stupid, gullible, and wealthy.

People still buy iphones? What year is this? Oh I heard a full size iphone is out so it's like year 2009 in Android.
Maybe the dev will one day release an android app for us grown ups who know how to operate a computer properly. Maybe.

Kevin,

Apple had a resurgence a decade ago, and continues as a boutique vendor of overpriced goods. Not saying what they make is crap, in fact, there is a legitimate benefit to controlling the ecosystem of hardware and software from top to bottom. However, there are also detriments.

Apple has become reactionary, the iPhone 6 Plus is my 18 month old Note 3, a phone Apple users often mocked me for, yet secretly craved. apple, who swore that a 4in phone was ideal because it could be used one handed, then decided that it wasn't ideal when the market spoke.

My issue with Apple is they don't innovate, they wait for the market to speak and then they try to improve it. That worked for a while when android was nascent, but as it evolved into solid hardware and a great OS, I cannot fathom being locked into the Apple ecosystem.

But I do agree with the $20 price tag on the app... Apple users are far more likely to pay for it then Android users, just as they are likely to pay $600 for the same hardware I spent $150 18 months ago.

rgold wrote: Nonsense. Climbers all over the country (and world) have been carrying smart phones, i- and otherwise, for years now, well before there were any guidebooks on them. The MP app has been around for a while, did anyone feel obliged to make snarky comments about people with their noses in their phones for that? (Perhaps not because the MP app is clumsy to use effectively as a guidebook on climbs so won't be attracting many noses.) Most guidebooks are considerably heavier and bulkier than smart phones. What happened to the light-is-right crowd on this issue? Smart phones have a host of uses, and incorporating a guidebook makes for even more multi-tasking. If it is done well, as it appears the Trapps App is at first viewing, then why the hate? ...

Lighten up RGold. People have been making snarky fun of people with their noses in their smartphones for years now. There are even YouTube videos of people falling down while reading their smartphones. It is funny. A real problem is people belaying with a smartphone in one hand which I've seen at the Gunks more than once.

Can we keep this thread about the actual app? If you guys want to discuss Apple, Android and other unrelated issues, please open a new thread.

On a technology website please.

Kevin Heckeler wrote: I'm not aware of any errors. If you know of some and haven't reported the errors for correction, then shame on you I guess. I know the mod(s) for the Gunks care a lot about the accuracy and usability of their beta.

Take a look at the recently added "twilight zone" route page. It's in the Trapps. This is but one example. It was added by a gentleman who aided the route (it's a free climb) once, way back in 2003. What use is that info? It's rife with errors, and short of correcting it entirely, I merely commented when safety was at stake.

This thread is preposterous. It went from (1) announcement of an app guidebook to (2) the operating system is an elitist consumer product to (3) a discussion of whether technology (broadly defined) belongs at the crag to (4) justification and clarification from independent software designer/local science teacher about the guidebook app, to (5) broad salacious assumptions about downstate New York area climbers and the various land management agencies with whom they interact with.

"If they hate, then let them hate/and watch the money pile up." - Kanye West

+1 rgold, +1,000 cfrac, +1 billion positive people who celebrate climbing and work for its betterment.

To which I'm happy to add a +1 Lucander

lucander wrote:This thread is preposterous. It went from (1) announcement of an app guidebook to (2) the operating system is an elitist consumer product to (3) a discussion of whether technology (broadly defined) belongs at the crag to (4) justification and clarification from independent software designer/local science teacher about the guidebook app, to (5) broad salacious assumptions about downstate New York area climbers and the various land management agencies with whom they interact with. "If they hate, then let them hate/and watch the money pile up." - Kanye West +1 rgold, +1,000 cfrac, +1 billion positive people who celebrate climbing and work for its betterment.

Are you not aware of MP Forums or new to MP?

1) Most threads on MP are preposterous and if not so then quickly turn preposterous.

2) All threads eventually wander far off topic.

3) If you take yourself too seriously on these forums you will be very frustrated.

4) One positive thing about MP forums is that Supertopo forums are worse.

add the droid vs iphone debate to the republican vs democrat, christianity vs islam, blonde vs brunette, right vs left-hand masturbation, etc.

Oh good. Got the admins riled up. Oopsy.

My example of twilight zone was to show how new routes can be submitted by anyone, and how off the info can be when it first goes live.
You admins do the best you can, and that's admirable. But it doesn't make it infallible. That's all.

Sorry to have offended your unpaid work. To be honest, the Gunks pages look WAY better than most MP pages.

It's just too bad the authors of the app are not very responsive. We saw one comment early in this thread, but nothing since. I sent them a few comments through their web site with comments, questions and suggestions. No answers at all.

And can we please go back to discuss the app. If you want to discuss something else, please open a new thread.