I don’t know what you have against Flighty but you through considerable lengths in the thread below to spend time on letting everyone know how unimpressed you are about their efforts.
Your lack of amazement is duly noted, I suggest you don’t waste any more time on it.
That said, I, like others, are indeed impressed for a couple of reasons.
For starters because of the simple fact that they’ve found a novel way to use background notifications to provide users without unrestricted internet access with flight updates.
Contrary to what you imply, and subsequently fail to substantiate, there aren’t many, if any, other apps that use background notifications in such a novel way, certainly not in a way to circumvent restrictions and limitations on data connections.
Moreover, I have never seen background notifications being used to push concrete data to apps. This is because there are severe payload size constraints on notifications, including background notifications.
Typically when background notifications have been used, it simply contains an instruction to download data from a remote server, something that wouldn’t work on a limited connection.
Instead, Flighty uses the minimal payload size to push the actual concrete data used by the app.
Additionally there are some limitations in how often a background notification gets delivered to the tune of a few times per hour, worse yet, delivery of these notification is inconsistent because it’s beyond the app’s control of they get delivered at all.
To account for this, Flighty will use the background notifications to update the data where it can and make estimations in times it cannot not until the next time it can receive an update.
I’d go as far as call that amazing engineering.
You might not and I don’t know your qualms with Flighty, but you’re doing a poor job of convincing people to see it your way.
You’re right, I see that as embarrassingly trivial. This whole thread is inane — if using a simple API is “amazing engineering”, what do you call the actual amazing engineering you’re holding in your hand right now?
I have nothing against Flighty — this has nothing to do with Flighty. Background notifications are trivial and all apps can and should be using them to solve this type of problem. It’s detrimental to have folks mistakenly operating under the belief that this is complex, unusual, or difficult.
Sure, the payload size is limited, but it’s not impossibly small, and custom keys with arbitrary payload are explicitly and obviously documented as supported.
Overly-effusive praise doesn’t do anyone any favors.
Your lack of amazement is duly noted, I suggest you don’t waste any more time on it.
That said, I, like others, are indeed impressed for a couple of reasons.
For starters because of the simple fact that they’ve found a novel way to use background notifications to provide users without unrestricted internet access with flight updates.
Contrary to what you imply, and subsequently fail to substantiate, there aren’t many, if any, other apps that use background notifications in such a novel way, certainly not in a way to circumvent restrictions and limitations on data connections.
Moreover, I have never seen background notifications being used to push concrete data to apps. This is because there are severe payload size constraints on notifications, including background notifications.
Typically when background notifications have been used, it simply contains an instruction to download data from a remote server, something that wouldn’t work on a limited connection.
Instead, Flighty uses the minimal payload size to push the actual concrete data used by the app.
Additionally there are some limitations in how often a background notification gets delivered to the tune of a few times per hour, worse yet, delivery of these notification is inconsistent because it’s beyond the app’s control of they get delivered at all.
To account for this, Flighty will use the background notifications to update the data where it can and make estimations in times it cannot not until the next time it can receive an update.
I’d go as far as call that amazing engineering.
You might not and I don’t know your qualms with Flighty, but you’re doing a poor job of convincing people to see it your way.