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Hi,
My iphone , apple just updated its operating system on my phone without my authority and now my bird song app, Birdjam, which I relied on for 75% of my bird images no longer will function. My phone gives the message this app needs to be updated in order to work with IOS -11.
Birdjam no longer is around and there is no updates for this software.. hence I am without bird song. This was by far the best app since it had both eastern and western birds of North America.

Can anyone think of any solutions for me? Do you know of any good comprehensive apps for bird songs of North America?

any help or solutions to this issue would be greatly appreciated..

thanks so much

James Vellozzi

Same thing happened to me.  I enjoy birding and photography.  I have several I-phone birding apps and the one I find that I consistently use most frequently  is called "iBird Pro-North America".   This application has photos, range maps as well as several calls for most species.  I don't recall the price but I belief it is around $15 on the Apple Apps store.   There are some others but this is the one I favor.  I had Bird Jam for a long time and found that i used it less and less and deleted it.

Ed H

Instead of using recordings to lure birds for 75% of your shots how about learning about birds,habitat,etc and using that knowledge
to your advantage.
Just a thought.

Bird Songs USA is what most everyone is switching to for a low overhead bird call app...
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bird-so ... 18764?mt=8

While my phone was happy with IOS 11.0.2, it automatically updated itself despite me having that function turned off to 11.0.3 yesterday and there are some huge problems that are being documented well on the Internet.  The big problem is that it destroys battery capacity due to a bug that causes it to constantly be communicating with something - the gears spin constantly even with no apps open.  The way to stop it is to invoke the siri button for about 10 seconds and then asking a random question.  You will need to do this everytime you see your hears spinning for no reason.  My battery life dropped to 1/3 of what it was on 11.0.2.  Apple is just a disaster on the SW front these days across all platforms and programs that it writes code for.  Software quality control is completely a thing of the past in the post Jobs era...

Here is one article on the subject:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkell ... 5a0020e336

If you can avoid it DO NOT update to 11.0.3 - wait for a fix.

James Vellozzi wrote:
Can anyone think of any solutions for me? Do you know of any good comprehensive apps for bird songs of North America?

any help or solutions to this issue would be greatly appreciated..

There are a wide range of excellent birding field guide apps available, pretty well all with sound files included. I recommend Sibley and iBird Pro

Software QC is bad but so are policies like for example I had an app I quite liked, but for some reason it disappeared off the Australian App store, so the phone deleted it during an update - very annoying!

ChrisRoss wrote:Software QC is bad but so are policies like for example I had an app I quite liked, but for some reason it disappeared off the Australian App store, so the phone deleted it during an update - very annoying!

Yup, there are a lot of older apps that are not compatible and if the developer doesn't update them, they go poof.

I have at least seven useful apps that no longer work. In addition to BirdTunes (which I love) there are three camera apps -all better than the Apple image editor- and three photo editing apps. All are very good. BirdTunes is the one I would miss, but I won't because it is also on my little-used iTouch. I'll just keep it as is and continue to enjoy BirdTunes. It is so small that it adds little bulk. I reviewed the alternatives listed above for bird ID and recordings. None are as useful and the cost is escalating. So, if you have a favorite app on an old device, it could be the answer.

Oh, and the "update" has two bugs that force me to reboot. One locks the screen and the other drops my icons down to hide the lower row. Nothing brings them up again except a reboot. This is another really poor update. I am a candidate for Android in the distant future if this continues.

And, Apple is losing market share since the new $1000 iPhone came out recently.
They may have priced themselves out of the market.

P

James, I can't speak for birds in the east, but here in the west (from Arizona to BC) I have found Sibley's to be the "best" for calling birds in. Me and a few other bird photographers have used most of the apps (never have used Birdjam though), and in most cases, Sibley's will have a call that they respond to more often than the other apps. on my phone I have iBird Pro and Sibleys, and rarely end up using iBird, even though I like the app itself better. Sibley's also has voice recognition for finding species.

Wow, too bad. I see Bird Jam is no more.
https://www.birdjam.com/

I really liked Bird Jam. I also have Sibley. I could be wrong but seem to recall Bird Jam had more calls? Look at the American Kestrel calls on Sibley. Captive is one of the calls.

The Bird Jam calls from the CD's are still on my iPhone but are in my Music Playlists. I can play them without the voice introductions but the calls for a bird is not separated. Meaning one call plays after one another without any description that this is the 'alarm call' and this is a 'begging call' etc.

I have the BirdJam app on the phone but no calls are connected to them. I still have an early iPod Touch but the drains fast.

Here's how I have dealt with the problem.

I use an old iphone that has BirdTunes on it for playing calls (Birdtunes will continue to play as long as I dont do any updates to the phone) I have another iphone for calls etc.

Cornell Lab of ornithology has a "Master Collection" of North American bird calls ($50) with over 4500 calls on it. Works on all new phones. Call are downloaded to Itunes then on to your phone.

I use Nat Geo's app for birds call in the Western USA

Bird Songs USA is another App I use.

Ibird Pro is also good. All these are on a dedicated older version of an Iphone that I basically use as an Ipod or MP3 player.

James Vellozzi wrote:Hi,
My iphone , apple just updated its operating system on my phone without my authority and now my bird song app, Birdjam, which I relied on for 75% of my bird images no longer will function. My phone gives the message this app needs to be updated in order to work with IOS -11.
Birdjam no longer is around and there is no updates for this software.. hence I am without bird song. This was by far the best app since it had both eastern and western birds of North America.

Can anyone think of any solutions for me? Do you know of any good comprehensive apps for bird songs of North America?

any help or solutions to this issue would be greatly appreciated..

thanks so much

James Vellozzi

James, buy a second hand iPod (3rd Generation) and run BirdJam on it. Mine is still going strong. 

Ron Day wrote:

James Vellozzi wrote:Hi,
My iphone , apple just updated its operating system on my phone without my authority and now my bird song app, Birdjam, which I relied on for 75% of my bird images no longer will function. My phone gives the message this app needs to be updated in order to work with IOS -11.
Birdjam no longer is around and there is no updates for this software.. hence I am without bird song. This was by far the best app since it had both eastern and western birds of North America.

Can anyone think of any solutions for me? Do you know of any good comprehensive apps for bird songs of North America?

any help or solutions to this issue would be greatly appreciated..

thanks so much

James Vellozzi

James, buy a second hand iPod (3rd Generation) and run BirdJam on it. Mine is still going strong. 

Can you buy Birdjam any more? I appreciate the tip and will really miss Birdjam (I especially like its ability to cataloge favorites) but at some point we all have to acknowledge it’s time to move on.

Gary Irwin wrote:

Ron Day wrote:

James Vellozzi wrote:Hi,
My iphone , apple just updated its operating system on my phone without my authority and now my bird song app, Birdjam, which I relied on for 75% of my bird images no longer will function. My phone gives the message this app needs to be updated in order to work with IOS -11.
Birdjam no longer is around and there is no updates for this software.. hence I am without bird song. This was by far the best app since it had both eastern and western birds of North America.

Can anyone think of any solutions for me? Do you know of any good comprehensive apps for bird songs of North America?

any help or solutions to this issue would be greatly appreciated..

thanks so much

James Vellozzi

James, buy a second hand iPod (3rd Generation) and run BirdJam on it. Mine is still going strong. 

Can you buy Birdjam any more? I appreciate the tip and will really miss Birdjam (I especially like its ability to cataloge favorites) but at some point we all have to acknowledge it’s time to move on.

Gary, the company is no longer producing it, but you might find a used version for sale on Amazon or eBay.

I can't say too much here..................but it's possible BirdTunes may not be dead in the future.

Brian E. Small wrote:I can't say too much here..................but it's possible BirdTunes may not be dead in the future.

A resurrection would be great!!!
Paul

Brian E. Small wrote:I can't say too much here..................but it's possible BirdTunes may not be dead in the future.

Yes, as soon as you can please let us know...I'd be quite prepared to pay for an upgrade. The one thing BirdTunes has that none of the others do(?) is allow you to catalogue a custom list of favourites so I don't have to scroll through gazillions of choices every time I want to play a tune.

Gary Irwin wrote:

Brian E. Small wrote:I can't say too much here..................but it's possible BirdTunes may not be dead in the future.

Yes, as soon as you can please let us know...I'd be quite prepared to pay for an upgrade. The one thing BirdTunes has that none of the others do(?) is allow you to catalogue a custom list of favourites so I don't have to scroll through gazillions of choices every time I want to play a tune.

If/when I have any concrete info I'll be sure to post it here first.