[Kozmik1]

In the US Commercial Tug & Barge market, Rose Point Navigation (out of Redmond, WA) has a near 100% saturation of the navigation software market. Why does nobody disrupt them? The overlap between experts in software and experts in vessel navigation is pretty low. Take a look at the technical specifications of their platform here and see if you can crack that out in a weekend: https://www.rosepoint.com/rose-point-ecs/

In recreational vessels, our needs are more basic, but even us geeks may be more prone to shell out $500 - $2000 to Garmin or Raymarine for a hardened chart plotter MFD that "just works", is waterproof, and robust at least in the nav function. I got a "deal" on a Raymarine Axiom Pro which has both touchscreen and a keypad mode for when the rain interferes with the display, has nav, ais, radar, sonar display, engine gauges, and tons of other features, it is running some version of Android. It's really good honestly. When the wind is howling and the waves are high, it's not necessarily a good time to do some hacking and bug hunting on the nav platform. I do plenty hacking on my boat in the sensor integration world, but that's another story...

[Solvency]

Why are the color palettes used in these maps always so ugly? And they're not even color blind proof either!

[_kb]

Because the colours are standardised and embed important information. These are tools, not aesthetic objects. A lot of the palette is preserved from paper charts where they need to be readable under red light when underway at night.

For a masterpiece of technical documentation dig up a copy of admiralty chart 5011 for a dive into the colours and symbology used.

[balp]

It's an international standard so all professionals that read the maps never have to guess what the colors mean. In commercial vessels, you need to follow the Solas standards. This also means that you need certified hardware and software for the chart plotters.