iBird PRO

Talk about iBird PRO

goofy166 — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:00:14 GMT

This forum is for discussing the iBird PRO application for the iPhone or iPod Touch. The purpose of this forum is to share your thoughts about the product, suggest new features, offer insights and of course vent. While we are open to criticism our only request is that you remain civil and mature in your comments. You can learn about iBird PRO in the Apple iTunes store.

IBird Mexico (and request for IBug)

drgnflyz — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 23:23:45 GMT

We spend quite a bit of time in Cancun as well as on the Pacific side of Mexico and would LOVE an app to supplement our IBird Pro. I cannot tell you how happy my husband will be to save packing space as I am forever hauling 3 big books with us whenever we go to Mexico. BTW, I mentioned this in the forum, but your app has hooked my sons on birding in a way I just wasn't able to do. They are looking forward to the lifetime list (notes) update. They LOVE looking up the birds I am constantly pointing out. THIS is their iphone game- and we have a family game of trying to "guess" the bird call.

Off topic- I am also into entomology. What are the chances of getting you to develop a bug id app? Sure would LOVE that! Thanks for your time.
Peace

Reset Button

Buckra — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 01:52:08 GMT

What does the Reset button reset?

How do we get updates to iBird Pro? I keep finding more errors....

acadonnelly — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 17:47:51 GMT

I have had iBird Pro for several months now, and have made some comments on errors in the software and things that needed to be improved. Every time I use it I find more, usually associated with the search databases and associations between birds (the custom search lists are a great idea but in places very problematic). You REALLY need to tighten this stuff up. For example, I was just in WA and saw a Sooty or Dusky Grouse (they were female, couldn't discern which). I looked them up in iBird and figured, seeing they were both just split from Blue Grouse, they'd be under each others "Similar" birds and I could flip back and forth and compare. They're not. Now the Kalij Pheasant, an Asian exotic introduced onto the big island of Hawaii, is included as a "similar" (I have no clue why), but the Sooty-Dusky connection is not there. This is the sort of thing that drives me nuts, maybe I am a little AR, but to me it seems a little careful QA would fix a whole lot.

I was hoping that a new version is out and available (I am at 1.6.1). I see that version 1.7.0 is out, how does one go about getting it. I am really hopeful that at least some of these types of problems have been taken care of, but the first thing I have to figure out is how to get the new version (which I presume is available to previous purchasers). Can't see anything in iTunes app store.

andyd

New Note Feature

jjbelz — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:12:52 GMT

I have the Pro version 1.7, but don't seem to find the 'note' feature that I've been reading about. Is it that hard to find? It doesn't appear on the menu at the bottom of the species.

Feedback

newyorkbirder — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:50:09 GMT

Thanks for keeping us informed. Good luck with the next update.

Still no listing!?!?!

bissa101 — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:46:58 GMT

I was thrilled to see the new version available but saddened to see the one thing I really wanted still missing.

All I would like is a simple checkbox with each bird so I can checklist my sightings for the day. A checkbox that can be referenced at the end of the day and cleared by me for the next. All I am interested in are species accounts, not concerned with location tagging or time and date tagging. I can handle that myself.Please give us the ability to check off a bird once Identified.

I still have to carry a pen and pad with me to record my trip sightings because this program doesn't offer it.

ibird pro suggestions

goshawk — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 03:21:30 GMT

First I would like to say that iBird Pro is awesome and I love showing it off to friends. I do have a couple suggestions for improvement. First, I would like to have the ability to keep various bird lists (e.g., life lists, trip lists, yard lists, etc.). Second, it would be great if there were bird id quizes - using songs and/or images.

iBird for iPhone needs a "note taking" feature...

keofarmer — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:18:49 GMT

I think this APP would be nearly complete if one could take notes in reference to each species...like when and where you first or last saw the bird.

Maybe this has already been suggested, I didn't really search the forums.

What say the masses?

new photo for House Finch - add yellow variant from Birders Homestead gallery

GHRancher — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 14:33:20 GMT

The current IBird Pro version does not have a House Finch - Yellow Variant photo and the photo in the Birders Homestead gallery gives a clear view of what to look for. Sibley describes this variant as being due to diet. They spent the spring at our feeders here on the ranch - Birders Homestead - near Yosemite National Park. Very pretty and just hang out with the other House Finches. More on Birders Homestead can be found at www.tomarket.net

IBird Pro changing icon

clapperrail — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:52:27 GMT

I recently purchased IBirdPro and installed it on my Iphone 3GS. For the first week it showed the correct icon on my phone. Now suddenly 3 days ago the icon changed to the icon of another program on my phone. (tap tap revolution of all things) The program is still working properly. I have deleted and re-installed iBirdPro from my lap top and Iphone several times re-downloading from the app store each time ( thinking I would get a fresh install). I have also deleted tap tap revolution and then deleted and reinstalled iBirdPro. The icon is STILL a muted tap tap revolution icon. I have not tried to restore the Iphone. I guess I will try that next if no one else has any suggestions. Thanks in advance for your help.

iPhone OS 3.0 Problem w/iBird Explorer Pro?

tmccabejr — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:27:07 GMT

I have upgraded my iPhone 3G to OS 3.0 as of yesterday. iBird Explorer Pro no longer shows up. Tried iPhone Restore, Reset and tried deleting and downloading another copy of the latest iBird Pro app. Still no go. Curiously my iPhone settings options for the app still shows the options available for this app. But no app. itself. Anyone else having this problem?

iBird Pro search function snafu?

Nobeeper — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:55:02 GMT

On a recent trips to South Carolina and Maine, I attempted to use the search function to help ID some birds. After going through page after page of inputting characteristics / shape / colorations / flight patterns / time of day / month of year / location of sighting, etc... the program would tell me that 0 matches were found for my bird sighting... Thinking perhaps a little less information would be better, perhaps I remembered something incorrectly, I tried again, multiple times, different birds... Always the same story. "0 Matches found". What's the deal? Is this cockpit trouble, or am I omitting some necessary step, or what? Any suggestions?

Effectiveness of iBird Pro bird sounds for attracting birds?

ATHiker — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:37:34 GMT

I just purchase an iPod Touch and the iBird Pro software. Can anyone tell me a reference that discusses the effectiveness of using the bird sounds from this device to attract birds with considerations for location, species and time of year. So far I have tried it on a few common species that I could see and it tended to have no effect on them or even shut them up if they were singing.

search/browse conceptual confusion; a few bugs; feature suggestions

Chaetura — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 16:42:32 GMT

I've just started to work with iBird PRO. I'm impressed and excited, but a few issues jump out at me immediately, within the first hour of use. I speak from the point of view of a birder experienced with using more traditional reference materials and of an experienced user of software. It seems to me this view is relevant to your "PRO" product.

Before giving a long list of perceived weaknesses, I should preface by saying that I'm not writing a review -- if I were, I would dwell on the many many things this software seems to do so well. I've taken considerable time here to detail the following issues because I think this software is worth careful attention and high expectations. Obviously a lot of each has already gone into this software.

The main issue is a cluster of awkward/missing features related to searching/limiting and presenting lists of species. I'll describe an imaginary user session. The "browse" view by family gives a list of families, and you can drill down. Great, this is what every experienced birder wants. But that's not how the application starts up (it starts by first name, the least useful of the three choices), and there's no way to correct the default. That's one easy user setting, or else remember the selected view between launches. Then I want to limit the 914 birds to those in my geographical region (alas, the tradition is by state, whether Texas- or Rhode Island-sized, but this isn't iBird's fault). I go to search, select my state, hit "view" and I get a list. I'm bumped back to first-name order, so select family order again. But I don't get a list of families with drill-down, it's a list of 290 birds with a headline introducing each family group. Not useful for 290 birds. Conceptually, it makes no sense to me to have one concept (icon, program function, mode of presentation) for search-results and another for browsing. Just have one concept, call it browsing, and then filter it with criteria such as region and physical characteristics. Call it browsing and filtering because there's already a "search" function, the search field at the top in both "browse" and "search" modes, with magnifying glass and "keyword or /Latin or &BandCode" prompt. That one's useful, and should be the only feature called "search." Back to filtering: for some criteria, region in particular (but why not allow any/all criteria?), the user will want to be able to select persistence over application launches, while having non-persistent criteria reset at re-launch (or of course at explicit request to reset).

Now to some particular filter criteria. I notice that selecting my US state in "Location" is a different operation from selecting my US-state-plus-month(s). Hunh? I can speculate that the history of the program's development led to separate filter criteria, but from user perspective this makes no sense. Region and month should be separate, multi-selectable criteria. Since the state-month list gives only states, I assume you don't (yet) have monthly data for the non-state locations (e.g., Aleutians, Atlantic Coast). So when one of those locations is selected, gray-out the months, and vice versa, and explain the behavior in the docs. There are probably other solutions but the present overlapping is not a good situation.

Song pattern: The first species I tried with this attribute in mind was Chipping Sparrow, and I really don't understand (yet) why you say it is "falling" not "flat." I'm sure that with further experience with this attribute, I will develop an intuition for how you have applied it, but it would facilitate learning (and probably always be of interest) if the "play vocalization" screen listed the attribute value for song pattern and also song-type (e.g., Rattle-Guttural -- which you incidentally misspell "gutteral"). More confusion: when I limit to "warble-trill" I get American Woodcock on the list. On audio screen for Woodcock, Common Nighthawk is (very appropriately) mentioned as a similar-sounding species. But Common Nighthawk isn't on the list limited to "warble-trill"!?

This leads to observation that if CONI wasn't on the limited list with AMWO, CONI shouldn't have been mentioned on AMWO's audio screen as a sound-alike species. I confirmed this by limiting to Massachusetts and seeing that Band-tailed Pigeon, which doesn't occur in MA, is nevertheless listed as both a sound-alike and look-alike species to Mourning Dove. This is definitely a problem for the user using iBird as an aid to identification; the very useful sound/look-alike lists are misleading and so not as useful as they could be. On the other hand, I can think of scenarios where a user using iBird as a learning tool would want this information. A program setting doesn't seem like the best solution, because it's too clunky to switch, and I can think of situations where I want to switch while look at one species a/c. So I suggest a toggle on those two screens (look-alike and sound-alike) whether to apply or not apply the current filter to the list of lookalikes.

Going forward, the option to display a sonogram of the sound being played would be a terrific feature.

I have tried to figure out by means of experimentation what the "remember location" toggle setting does, but I can't. There should be a "chapter" in the reference help for "settings".

Let's go back and improve the family drill-down. With this version of the software, drill into a family, and you always get a list of species, never a list of genuses into which you can drill again. Like US states, some families are much bigger than others, and this will certainly be true once we start filtering. For the same reasons that users want to drill into families, they want to drill into genuses when the resulting list of species would be large (nearly 60 for Emberizidae and Parulidae). It would be pretty easy, I think, to program a user settable threshold value: when a species list will be >N, list genuses instead. Some heuristic refinement would be necessary to avoid listing a single genus, and perhaps other edge cases.

Now miscellaneous issues. The organization of the screen you get when you hit the "help" icon at the bottom needs some help itself! On this screen, the fourth colored button at the top is labeled "help". But I just selected "help," didn't I?? Pressing that button doesn't actually give much help, just a couple of web links to soft resources like the forum -- and doesn't mention where the REAL help is, which is the "reference" section, which on that first screen is linked WAY below the fold -- below the first screen, below several FAQ answers. Speaking of FAQs and FAQ answers, there are two links to them (the colored button at the top and a link at the bottom) with a different set of FAQs and answers stuck inbetween.(*)

Why are some settings outside the application and some within? Is this an iPhone issue? From a user's perspective, it's confusing to have two distinct sets of settings. Two paths to access a list of settings is fine; if the two lists can't be made identical, an on-screen reminder of the other list would be helpful, and can one list at least be a superset of the other?

In browse function, first-name-order view, enter "crown" in the search field. 16 species are found with "crown" in the name. Great, this is correct. Switch to (or search while in) family-order view, and you get a list of the 7 families containing those 16 species. So far, so good. But select Columbidae now, and you get the full list of 17 Columbidae species, not the single species (White-crowned Pigeon) with "crown" in the name, as expected. This seems like a bug, rather than a design issue.

Documentation bugs: In Reference, under "browse", heading "first, last, and family buttons": the text here is entirely incorrect, belongs somewhere else. It starts with "Includes five size categories". Likewise under the next heading "Reset" it starts talking about habitat.

Two editor's quibbles: (1) why are all (?) the phonetic texts enclosed in quotation marks? Quotation marks distinguish text inside them from text outside them. But there's never any text outside them -- not in any of the species I've looked at so far. So they seem to me just visual clutter and they raise a false question in users as to what they're doing there. (2) Why does every label for an audio track end with the word "Voice"? E.g., "American Robin Voice". I can't find any label that doesn't end with "voice" so it's more visual clutter. It would be great if in the future you had multiple separate sounds for each bird (with corresponding sound-alike lists) but they would use the more technical labels "song" "chip note" "flight" "distress" or "non-vocal" for e.g., dove wings, Woodcock wings, etc.

Some long-named species have labels for the audio track that don't fit; need some scrolling thing to solve? (automated or else user touch)

In the search-by-keyword field, can you modify the iPhone keyboard that pops up so that the user doesn't have to press two extra keys to get in and out of the number/punctuation keyboard to enter '/' and '&'? No species names start with Q, so you could steal that character's space on the qwerty layout as a kludge, if you could change the glyph on the "key": / would be shift-& (or vice versa, but I guess bandcodes used more often than Latin). A better solution would be to make the prefix unnecessary. I don't know about the Latin, but there aren't significant conflicts with the banding codes -- Birder's Diary handles both just fine. Maybe it's an issue of iPhone processor not strong enough for satisfactory performance?

-- Matt

(*) It is like trying to stop the tide, but I'll make the general point anyway that with good documentation there are no FAQs; FAQ answers are (or ought to be) essentially temporary, until documentation is revised or a transient situation passes. Lists of FAQ answers originated on usenet discussion groups, which of course didn't have manuals.

Another iBird PRO suggestion

acadonnelly — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:43:56 GMT

I had another chance to use iBird in the field again this weekend, this time with a bunch of Cub Scouts and dads on a campout. I found that I really liked the program in this setting, this time I found the advantage of using "Favorites" and being able to tag the birds I wanted to show them and let them listen to, so I could quickly retrieve them. Great feature.

I did, however, find another feature that I'd like to see improved. Many of the birds have only one illustration, and typically this is of the adult male in breeding plumage. Varied Bunting is a good example. I thought "OK, I'll just go and look at the photos for the female or HY birds". But there were only two photos of the Varied Bunting under the photos tab, and they were both of breeding plumage males. I could go to the Flickr option, but a) this takes a long time to upload, and b) even if my fairly old eyes were young again, I am not sure I could easily sort through those tiny thumbnails to get the image I wanted. And even if I could, as noted it takes a long time to upload.

This is the same for many birds. Cerulean Warbler is another good example. The female and immatures can really throw you, yet all that is illustrated in iBird in the main illustration and photos are nicely colored up adult males. Having illustrations is very important, especially if this program is to be a learning tool and/or is used by less experienced (and even experienced) birders. I realize that iBird may not have artist submissions for illustrations to include of the other plumages, but why can't the photos be used to supplement these? My suggestion is to include photos in the program (under the "X photos" tab) of a variety of plumages in that particular species, and not just the nice-looking birds that are already in the iBird main illustration. Having an illustration and three photos of the adult male Cerulean Warbler, for example, is great when one runs into the adult male, but isn't especially helpful when seeing immature birds or females, which a birder will very often run into.

andyd

iBird Plus vs. Pro

goofy166 — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:51:15 GMT

I wrote this up to help people understand the logic behind iBird Pro vs iBird Plus. Feel free to leave comments here agreeing or disagreeing, just please keep it civil.

We have received a number of communications about iBird PRO and iBird Plus. If I understand the point is that we should have not released a new version of iBird (Pro) with additional features not found in iBird Plus. Some people feel that we should have either provided an upgrade path for iBird Plus owners or raised the price of iBird Plus and added these new features so previous iBird customers would not have to pay for them. Some are particularly upset because Mitch Waite Group made a commitment to continually update their products and that by creating a new version with new features not found in Plus we are breaking that commitment.

I'd like to try and explain our business strategy and the thinking behind our release. You may not agree with it, but at least you have the opportunity to understand our reasoning and the limits of what we can and cannot do as an Apple developer.

First however I would like to explain the confusion some people have with the definition on our App store product page were we say we will update iBird for the life of the program. There is a difference between an upgrade and an update. An update means changes to the content, such as illustrations, photos, sounds, writing, etc. An update may or may not contain changes to the functionality of the program. We will continue to update all our apps with new content and that is specifically what we mean on our product page. Updates in Apple's business model are free by definition, there is no other way to do them. Upgrades on the other hand are changes to the feature set of the program itself. It may be improvements, additional features, etc.

People are correct that the best solution would be to provide an upgrade path for previous owners of iBird Plus so that they could upgrade Plus to Pro for the difference in price. If that was possible we would have gladly taken that approach but unfortunately Apple did not provide such a feature to their developers. We understand that capability is in the upcoming iPhone OS 3.0 and when it’s available and widely distributed to our customers we will definitely implement it.

Regarding our commitment to offer updates to all customers I would like to point out that we have been updating all our iBird apps (Backyard and Regional versions) since they were launched and we have no plans to stop. There have in fact been 3 updates to all the products, each offering more features, more content and improvements in stability. We have added hundreds of new photos, speeded up the application searching, added new search attributes (secondary color), improved search attributes (ANY or All logic switch for color). We listened to customers who wanted a Favorite feature and introduced it in the latest version 1.5. We also added a Flickr button to the species page which allows accessing hundreds of additional photos from inside the app. Clearly we are keeping our commitment to continue to upgrade all our applications.

Let me try to explain our reasoning for releasing a Pro version of iBird. We have received a considerable number of requests for features from customers we characterize as advanced birders. These people asked us to add features which require adding a good deal of complexity to the iBird Plus product and considerable programming efforts on our part. We felt these features changed the target audience for iBird Plus which we see as serious birders. We felt that there was a bifurcation of the audience for our product and that the family tree needed to be changed to accommodate them. As I mentioned there was no mechanism for an upgrade from iBird Plus so we decided to create a new product called iBird Pro for Professionals. Please note that because this is software the difference in file size between Plus and Pro is not dramatic, but the work involved was.

We understood this might create some consternation from people who had just purchased iBird Plus and would have purchased iBird Pro had they known about it. Unfortunately we felt there was nothing we could do about that other than explain our reasoning. We added a note to the beginning of the iBird Plus product page explaining there was a Pro version birders might want to examine in the app store that fully explains its features. We added a product comparison table to our web site that compares Plus and Pro (http://www.ibirdexplorer.com/PRO.html) and we added a product finder to help people understand all versions of iBird (http://www.ibirdexplorer.com/product_finder.html) so they could pick a version that best suited their needs.

There are a group of people who have suggested that we should have raised the price of iBird Plus, added these new features, and then created a mid level app without these features. Here is an example of this thinking:

"I feel you would have been far more fair to your loyal early adopters if you had added the new features to iBird Plus instead. If you needed to raise the price, so be it, raise the price for new users. If that left a price gap, so be it, create a new mid-tier product that was equivalent to the old version, but in making iBird Pro, since there is no upgrade path, I have to buy iBird Pro and basically trash my iBird Plus. BUT, I am afraid to buy iBird Pro for fear that in a few months I will learn of some new iBird Super-Pro."

We thought of this approach and discussed it at length but we felt that this was not a good business decision. First we don’t feel that our commitment to add new features to iBird Plus should dictate that forever we can't create a higher end version. Furthermore we have 5 regional versions and a backyard version of iBird that would require this same "upgrade and release a new middle road iBird" process, which would mean there would have to be mid-range versions of every one of those versions created. This would mean we would need to create 14 new products just to accommodate the logic of this approach.

I would also like to point out that all industries create new products and don’t offer customers that purchased their previous products free upgrades. When you buy a new car you don't expect lifetime updates and when Apple releases a new laptop which is faster than the one you just purchased has more memory and cost less do you blame Apple for innovating? I understand that there are people for who this argument falls flat but most people understand it and accept it. I believe we are upgrading the features and content of all our products and therefore keeping our commitments. It may not be the same commitment everyone envisions. Perhaps that is the flaw in trying to be upfront about future products. Most companies are silent on their plans.

Our plans at this time, providing Apple meets the schedules on the release of OS3, is to update all iBird apps to OS3. When that is done a new app store will appear on a page in the app itself. From this page you will be able to upgrade from any level version to a higher, e.g. Plus users will be able to upgrade to Pro, Backyard to Regional, Plus or Pro, etc for an incremental cost.

As far as being worried that if you buy Pro you may discover a super-pro version was released, all I can say is that is just not going to happen. We have and we will continue to update all versions of iBird including Plus, Pro, Backyard, and the regional versions. We will add features to each that we feel are appropriate for their audiences.

I understand that this communication may not satisfy everyone and for that reason we have created this forum for iBird so you can express your thoughts to a wider audience and get feedback. We are doing this because we want to keep our customers happy and we want to be honest with them and understand their needs. Here is the URL for the Talk about iBird forum:

http://www.whatbird.com/forums/forums/default.aspx

Mitch Waite

iBird Europe

coltell — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:53:55 GMT

Hi,

I've just learned about your awesome app and I was wondering if you're planning a European version (a version for Spain would be icing on the cake, actually, but I'm not hoping for this much). I hope you do! It would be a great help!

Thanks so much,

iBird PRO Version 1.6.1

Ben H. — Sat, 02 May 2009 20:52:57 GMT

I am excited to be working with the newest version of iBird PRO, available now through iTunes!

I am among the users who experienced crashes with the last version, but I cannot make this thing crash, no matter how many bird songs I sample, or bird photos I view. It is really running the way it should.

Additionally, it is delightful to see a number of species added to the master list, including the species of the Hawaiian Islands. (I'll have to plan a trip to celebrate...)

Congratulations to Mitch and the gang for improving an already excellent app!

Errors in iBird Pro

acadonnelly — Tue, 26 May 2009 01:37:08 GMT

Hi: I am new to iBird, and I wanted to try this forum out with iBird comments. I tried iBird Pro this weekend on a trip for the first time, and while I liked it at first (and, to be honest, I still like it), I found a large number of what I consider flaws in the program, or more appropriately the information included in the program--especially the databases used for searches. I wanted to write a review on it, but it would be very lengthy and the info I want to convey is probably not the best for a review, and I thought maybe posting on this forum is a better way to express my thoughts on these issues. I tried Twitter, but have never used that site and couldn't figure out how to post a comment to the forum there. I also tried email contact through the WhatBird site, but after filling in the info and trying to send it, I appear to have been bumped to a help page without sending the email. What is the best way to say "Hey, this and this is a problem" and also send suggestions? A large post here? Direct email? Or should I not even bother?

andyd

iBird Explorer Pro and iPod Touch with wireless

Michele55 — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:35:41 GMT

I have searched to find the answer to activating the Flickr component which is the main reason I purchased this application. Favorites is activated. When I go to Help and/or Setting there is only one option and that is language. My wireless works fine I use the iPod Touch 16G 2nd Generation. I am frustrated that I can not find a phone number for help. When I type my question under the "Contact Us" page it redirects me to the page which doesn't answer my question. One giant loop. This application and iPod were purchased at the end of April 2009. I am hoping you can help. Thank you.

Identifying bird by recording it's song

aps — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:54:48 GMT

I understood that this Pro version would identify birds by "listening" to it's song. Did I miss-read the description?

How do I zoom?

hauntedcity — Sun, 10 May 2009 15:00:55 GMT

This may sound like a basic question, but I have iBird Explorer PRO, and I can't figure out how to zoom in on the illustrations! The normal pan/pinch/etc for the iPhone doesn't do anything. What am I missing here?

Thanks,

Doug

iBird Tiny Good or Bad Idea

goofy166 — Wed, 06 May 2009 03:27:04 GMT

I have created a poll about a free version of iBird which I would appreciate your opinion of. Click here to see it.

iBird Product Compare

goofy166 — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:07:17 GMT

Here is a link to a posting with a product comparison table.