Alert: Compatibility Issue with Apple iOS 8.3 and External GPS Receivers
DO NOT UPGRADE YOUR APPLE DEVICE TO iOS 8.3 IF YOU RELY ON AN EXTERNAL GPS RECEIVER.
We are investigating reports that iOS 8.3 (released by Apple earlier this week) is not feeding GPS data from most external GPS receivers into 3rd party apps, such as ForeFlight, WingX, JeppFD, Navionics, and others. We have reproduced this issue in our lab and confirmed that this issue is not unique to Bad Elf GPS receivers, but affects other GPS receivers from Garmin and Dual Electronics as well.
Our newer GPS accessories, including the Bad Elf GPS for Lightning (BE-GPS-1008), Bad Elf GPS Pro+ (BE-GPS-2300), and Bad Elf GNSS Surveyor (BE-GPS-3300) do not seem to be negatively impacted.
We are working with Apple to resolve this issue and will provide status updates as we get more information. In the meantime, we recommend you wait to upgrade your Apple devices to iOS 8.3.
Update (Monday 13-April): We've passed all of the necessary information to Apple Support and got confirmation over the weekend that it has been passed to the correct team. We're optimistic it will be fixed in the next iOS 8.3.x release, and will post updates as we receive them.
Update (Thursday 16-April): We're still awaiting any news from Apple. In the meantime, we’re exploring several possible workarounds. We have confirmed that the beta iOS 8.4 released earlier this week has the same GPS issue. Some customers have reported successfully downgrading their iOS back to iOS 8.2, but we can’t recommend that process to our customers — it’s not supported by Apple and requires a complete wipe of your settings/apps/data. If you are a pilot grounded by this issue, please contact us via email to support@bad-elf.com and we’ll see what we can do to help. Rest assured we are doing everything in our power to get this resolved and will send another email when we have any new information.
For future updates on the iOS 8.3 situation, please view the latest information on our supplemental blog post, available here.
Please please fix this Apple, my mini iPad is useless to me without my Bluetooth gps. :- (
Not so nice, sailing around the reefs in the Florida Keys and no Garmin or Navionics. Did the brains at Apple go to sleep. This is really a risky scene. BAD BAD APPLE. SEND THE COMMENTS TO TIM COOK. His customer support team really does follow up.
April 2th and going on a xc flight on Monday. Hope they will find a fix by then or I am going old school with no gps… I have an XGPS 150 and it doesn’t connect anymore to my WiFi ipad.
Re.post from Keith. followed instructions on Jaxov website and downgraded my ipad 2 from IOS8.3 to IOS8.2 worked perfectly. my Dual XGPS 150 now back in business many thanks. Great website by the way.
Like almost everyone else on this blog, I have suffered the loss of functioning aviation apps. I spent a very frustrating 40 mins on to Apple on this side of the pond (Ireland) yesterday. It appears that the Apple support team here were not even aware of the issue – so much for Apple’s in-house communications. I had to persuade the senior Apple support person on duty to read this blog before he understood the issue.