Category: MapRhino

Categories
iOS Development MapRhino

MapRhino 1.0.5 Released – Now with route support on the iPad

One of the frequent feature requests I got for my iOS app MapRhino (Listing on the App Store) was to add the route to the view that the kids get.

MapRhino is an app for parents in the front seat of the car to share where they are going with kids in the back seat of the car. The kids’ iPads will show where they are on a map, show the car moving as it goes, and how long it will take to get there!

What the iPads didn’t show before was the route on the kid’s iPads. The app uses two different mapping technologies – Apple’s MapKit, and MapBox’s maps. The routes aren’t directly compatible between the two, and the data also has to be serialized, sent over a multipeer connectivity broadcast, and then deserialized on the iPads. I learned more about MKMapPoint and coordinates than I really needed to know, and had to do a C-style malloc for an array – yay for sticking with Objective-C on this app so far.

I added the feature over the course of an afternoon, tested it out, and it works pretty well. Hopefully more users will like it too!

Categories
iOS Development MapRhino

MapRhino Updated to 1.0.3

My “Are We There Yet?” app for kids on road trips, MapRhino, was just updated to version 1.0.3.

This latest version provides a fully responsive user interface across all sizes of iPhone and iPad, so that you can see more on your screen on the iPhone 6 Plus than on the iPhone 4, 5 or SE. If you’ve bought your kids that 12.9″ iPad Pro they’ve been asking for, they’ll see a lot bigger map on that device as well! Ok, most people certainly won’t do that, but now it has nice support if they do.

In addition, the maps have been upgraded for better offline access, and the app now requires iOS 9 to support all of the latest features.

Try it out and let me know what you think!

Categories
MapRhino

MapRhino: The Are We There Yet App for Kids on a Road Trip!

I’ve been working on a new app that isn’t like anything else out there yet – MapRhino!

It’s an app for kids on road trips who have iPads – the parents load up the MapRhino app on their iPhone, put in their destination, and then the kids get the car’s location and the time remaining until they get there on their iPads.

The greatest part about it is that it doesn’t require any kind of wireless data plan for the iPads – the iPhone and the iPads set up their own wireless network in the car using the Wifi and Bluetooth connections built into the devices, and the iPads can get the streaming updates.

Unfortunately, it uses some Apple-only technology, so it’s only going to work with iPhones and iPads (for now), but all you need is a recent iPhone and iPad.

I’m in the process of finishing up beta testing, to get the app out into the App Store, but I’ve included a screenshot of the iPad app so you can see what it looks like.