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.
Folks, I had the same issue with my iPad 4 after downloading iOS 8.3. I use the XGPS160. I performed the procedure on the following website with success. Make sure you run the backup process prior: http://techfrag.com/2015/04/14/downgrade-ios-8-2-from-8-3-iphone/
It’s a bit hairy doing this, but it worked for me.
Can you please give us some type of time frame that this will be flexed? End of spring or summer? Are you saying it will be fixed? People need to make contingency plans. The company should give huge discounts to people that bought these products to up grade. $800 for the upgrade for general aviation is cost prohibited.
Are there any updates on the 8.3 mess
I went flying with my iPad 2, BadElf GPS-1000, & Wingx, only to find GPS unavailable. Fortunately, it was VFR in uncontrolled space, the aircraft GPS was available, and I had my iPhone in my pocket if needed. After ANY software change, test on the ground before launching into conditions where the equipment is important. You check anything else on the airplane after maintenance, the iPad should be no different if you’re going to rely on it to fly.
I was able to downgrade back to iOS 8.2 and GPS is working again. A note about the downgrade process: You may not be able to restore your backups directly. iTunes claimed that my OS was now too old to restore my backup set from my PC. I had to restore my data and apps manually, most from my PC, some from the App Store. Thanks to this blog for helping me figure out the problem. I do hope Apple does their part in resolving this quickly.
Hello:
Add me to another person that saw the warning too late. I looked for it when it stopped working. I have been speaking with you already and am putting my name down here in the hopes that more people complaining will help Apple address the issue. I am sailing in reef strewn Fiji right now headed for American Samoa and would really like to use my electronic charts. Bad Apple. Bad.