Doyle Guides

I was so excited to have a digital Doyle guide…Until I tried to use it. Every time you open the app and you have to go through all the available guides to find the one you purchased. Then it does not work like the book. A simple online PDF format would be better. If it just had a contents / chapter page that then linked you to each chapter. Or an interactive Index. I tried using the search function and after hours of trying various keywords, could find nothing on very obvious topics (eg Cousteau Marine Reserve in Guadeloupe). The only thing that is relatively simple to find is anchoring / approach info. Gave up and went to the chandlery to try and get a hard copy…which it seems they no longer stock. Subscription cancelled and back to google it is. Perhaps the developers could have a peek at how the Digital Lonely Planet Guides work.

The content is great. Just like the old hard copy. The app however is just horrible. Using this on an iPad is maddening. Every few minutes the app freezes then closes. I’ve never seen an app perform this poorly. Hire a professional app developer, PLEASE.

So far, we’re not impressed. We subscribed before our trip but the content was blocked after the trial expired yesterday even though the Apple ID shows us subscribed and active. We are now hours from starting our charter with no access. We would have purchased the hard copy but it is unavailable everywhere. No doubt this is to sell app subscriptions. We have 2 other Doyle guide books which have good content but the app idea is terrible if it can’t be accessed easily.