iPhone version: questions/problems

S

sych

榜眼
Hi Mike & all!

热烈祝贺Pleco的iPhone版本终于上市，而为你们不懈的努力表示衷心感谢！ (I think I need to get back to Beijing, I'm getting rusty...)

I have a question regarding the "trial" of the stroke-order function... I decided to download the add on (with the intention of paying for it), but Pleco suggested I first trial it before I pay for it. Sounded like a good idea, so I've downloaded it, and it appears in Addons -> Paid -> "Downloaded But Not Purchased", however when I go to the Character Details screen, I don't have the "stroke order" option at the top of the screen, only "Details" and "Words".

Is this the expected behavior or is something a little wrong?
 
O

onepassitis

Member
Hi Mike and everyone at the Pleco Team!

Congratulations on a great job with Pleco 2.0 for iphone! I'm also very pleased that you guys have decided to allow old users to transfer our licenses to the iphone while maintaining most of the add ons that were previously purchased (all for free), thanks again! I have told many friends about Pleco and a number of them will be purchasing the iphone version soon.

I just downloaded Pleco for iphone and also transferred my license over. The main problem I have, is that when I try to add the add-ons, such as (ABC English-Chinese Dictionary etc.) that it takes forever to download. I am currently in Beijing, China and can't wait to start using Pleco for iphone with the full version of the ABC Dictionary, however the estimated download time makes it a bit frustrating. I am using China Mobile, and have their monthly data package plan (150 MB), but even so, I wouldn't be able to download all of the add ons ( including pronounciation files etc.). I tried the manual upload option but that also seems to take forever as well. Is there a better way? Maybe I can download all of the files from a specific location onto my laptop and then transfer them to Pleco using itunes or something? I would also like to purchase the Stroke Order program and English-Chinese Business Dictionary, but having a quicker, easier way to do it would make things much better, (or maybe I'm doing something wrong). Either way some help in this regard would be much appreciated. Thanks so much!




iPhone 3G-16GB. (Not SIM/carrier-locked; not jailbroken)
 
G

gato

状元
The main problem I have, is that when I try to add the add-ons, such as (ABC English-Chinese Dictionary etc.) that it takes forever to download. I am currently in Beijing, China and can't wait to start using Pleco for iphone with the full version of the ABC Dictionary, however the estimated download time makes it a bit frustrating. I am using China Mobile, and have their monthly data package plan (150 MB), but even so, I wouldn't be able to download all of the add ons ( including pronounciation files etc.).
Click to expand...
Can't you download over WiFi? (speaking as someone without an iPhone.)
 
O

onepassitis

Member
Sure I can download using WiFi, however, I don't have access to it at home. Using WiFi would require me purposefully going to a location that has WiFi to download the necessary files. Additionally, some places such as cafes etc. tend to have slow / spotty WiFi connections. Moreover, large files such as the pronounciation files (which at 200 MB apiece are pretty big) would take very long to download. As such, I'm just wondering if there might be a faster / easier way to get it done.
 
P

panamajack

举人
Beijing's public wifi is that crummy and slow? That being the case, I'd suggest then go and buy a cheap router and set up a wifi network at home, seeing as in-app upgrades have to be via wifi wifi or 3G. It'll save you some of that previous 150 megs of bandwidth when you feel like browsing the interwebs on your iPhone at home.

The in-app downloads will probably prove a real boon for Mike and Pleco, because of its potential to seriously curtail piracy. Brilliant strategy really by Mike, offering a very functional free version and allowing for in-app upgrades is the perfect way to go, albeit with some hassle for people like yourself who would benefit if you could do those upgrades via iTunes (thus making it easier to hack and load a bundled version of Pleco complete with all of its dictionaries and other goodies.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
onepassitis - Unfortunately, there's no way at the moment to copy data files to Pleco (or any other third-party iPhone app) via iTunes; there was actually one app that managed to do this for a while, but Apple decided they didn't like the method that app was using (which actually was kind of a security risk) and shut them down. We're hoping Apple will add an official mechanism for USB file transfers at some point, but they haven't done so yet.

However, while I know finding a WiFi hotspot in Beijing is a hassle, once you've downloaded the files once you shouldn't need to do so again; the first time you sync your iPhone with your computer after downloading the files, they'll be included in the system backup that iTunes creates, and even if you lose / upgrade / replace your iPhone in the future, you'd be able to restore that system backup and get back those files without downloading them again.

And yeah, getting a cheap WiFi router might make sense - in 中关村 they're practically giving the things away. Or if your computer has WiFi it might be possible to configure it to act as a WiFi hotspot for your phone - what type / model of computer are you using?

panamajack - thanks! There'll be more details on the strategic thinking behind this / what it means for Pleco's future plans in the announcement email I'm hard at work on. Should help with piracy a bit - I'm sure they'll crack it eventually, but the file management stuff should make it a pretty big hassle for other people to install / activate / use the cracked version once they do.

We actually had to change our plans very abruptly once Apple announced they'd allow in-app purchases in free apps; we'd previously been planning to charge something like $5-$10 for an app containing the current PLC dictionary plus NWP but probably still without any of the other paid add-ons. (the royalties on the fullscreen handwriting recognizer would have precluded us from including that, though we might have decided to bundle the document reader at least) But then we'd have had to do a whole separate Lite app for people to try out and that would have made everything more complicated in general.

Only downside is that as a Free rather than a Paid app it's going to be a lot tougher for us to break into the iTunes Reference Top 100 (we're already the #5 in highest grossing, but that's not as easy list to get to as #-of-downloads). But hopefully within a week or two we'll be coming up in the first page of results on searches for "chinese dictionary," which is the real prize ranking-wise.
 
O

onepassitis

Member
Hey guys, thanks for your help and suggestions. The thing is I live a bit far from 中关村, I live in 双井, and don't want to really have to go down there unless absolutely necessary.

Mike, my comp does have Wifi, if I could configure it to act as a WiFi hotspot for my phone that would be great! I'm using a 2006 Apple MacBrook Pro. Your help in this regard would be greatly appreciated!
 
N

numble

状元
Macbooks usually have the ability to broadcast Wifi hotspots, at least since 2007 (when I got my macbook pro).

Should be under "System Preferences => Internet & Wireless Section => Sharing => Internet Sharing" if I recall correctly.
 
G

gato

状元
Hey guys, thanks for your help and suggestions. The thing is I live a bit far from 中关村, I live in 双井, and don't want to really have to go down there unless absolutely necessary.

Mike, my comp does have Wifi, if I could configure it to act as a WiFi hotspot for my phone that would be great! I'm using a 2006 Apple MacBrook Pro. Your help in this regard would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Most of Starbucks in Beijing offer free Wifi, I think. The three Starbucks by Guomao, which is close to 双井, I believe, all have free Wifi.
 
E

Eggwind

举人
numble said:
Macbooks usually have the ability to broadcast Wifi hotspots, at least since 2007 (when I got my macbook pro).

Should be under "System Preferences => Internet & Wireless Section => Sharing => Internet Sharing" if I recall correctly.
Click to expand...

As far as I know all Macs with wireless can do this. I first used this with an iBook in 2005. The setting is under system preferences - sharing - internet sharing. Extremely easy to set up, and I used it with my iPhone all the time when I didn't have an access point.
 
K

Kotanchek

Member
For those who are in China and having problems downloading the dictionaries and such that they are transferring from other platforms, hitting the D/Ls tab and then tapping on the document being downloaded will move to a panel that lets you specify the source server.

Choosing a closer one (e.g., Hong Kong rather than the US) makes the install go MUCH faster and, furthermore, gives you a chance at successfully completing the download.

Mark.
 
H

heirui

Member
At last. My Palm died in China. Back in USA, but still studying mandarin. In Hangzhou and Shanghai, wifi was available in most Starbucks, but sometimes you had to log in through some china mobile or other screens -- maybe a little hard if you are a beginning mandarin student, but I found people happy to help -- just look for someone that is already online.

the tutorial is helpful, and the "manual" web pages are useful, but having an actual manual -- say a PDF file, searchable -- would be a big help. "manuals" that simply explain what things on the screen / page are for or do are just help screens. With no index or other way to search for "how do i do...", the product seems incomplete. Or is this out there and I missed it?

My problem: for some reason i am getting traditional characters with simplified in brackets; i would like to reverse this. How to do that? Settings? the first example in the tutorial actually shows the Simplified [Traditional] so from the start my screens are different in this way. and using "radical" lookup shows only traditional, not simplified, radicals and characters...
 
M

maimengzhu

秀才
heirui said:
My problem: for some reason i am getting traditional characters with simplified in brackets; i would like to reverse this. How to do that? Settings? the first example in the tutorial actually shows the Simplified [Traditional] so from the start my screens are different in this way. and using "radical" lookup shows only traditional, not simplified, radicals and characters...
Click to expand...

Very simple to remedy. At the bottom of the screen you will see 言 in both traditional and simplified form. Just tap once and it will alternate between the two. The one highlighted is your default viewing mode.
 
H

heirui

Member
maimengzhu said:
heirui said:
My problem: for some reason i am getting traditional characters with simplified in brackets; i would like to reverse this. How to do that? Settings? the first example in the tutorial actually shows the Simplified [Traditional] so from the start my screens are different in this way. and using "radical" lookup shows only traditional, not simplified, radicals and characters...
Click to expand...

Very simple to remedy. At the bottom of the screen you will see 言 in both traditional and simplified form. Just tap once and it will alternate between the two. The one highlighted is your default viewing mode.
Click to expand...

Thanks!
 
S

sych

榜眼
heirui: if you hadn't seen it, the HTML manual can be viewed from your PC/Mac at: http://www.pleco.com/ipmanual/

If you really wanted a PDF version I suggest you could try using a PDF converter (there are a lot of free ones out there) to "print" the HTML to PDF format. Or wait to see when/if Pleco provide their own PDF ver.
 
C

charnobo

Member
Will there be a full version of pleco to buy on app store ?

Some iphones can not do in app purchase, so a full version would be nice.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Possibly, but those are extremely easy to pirate (one person buys it, doesn't need to know anything at all about computer hacking, runs an entirely automated utility to crack it and can then give it to 10,000 of his / her thieving little buddies), so I'd rather wait until Apple beefs up their anti-piracy protections first. Given how many phones in China are jailbroken, a pirated version of Pleco would probably end up in stores on a fully legit-looking CD (hologram and all) with the necessary tools included to automatically copy it to your jailbroken iPhone, and we'd have people perfectly innocently going into stores and buying Pleco on a CD to run on their iPhones / iPods thinking it was the real thing. (this actually happened with our old Palm OS software many years ago, though there wasn't a problem of jailbreaking with those)

There's also the problem of people not being able to transfer licenses between one version and the other, which with an expensive product like Pleco can represent a significant headache, and of course the issue of customer confusion - many customers would see both versions and have no idea which one they should get / not understand that these were just two different ways of buying the same thing. Plus there'd be the matter of setting the correct price point / dictionary bundle to make a standalone product successful, and some purchase benefits we offer now like educational discounts wouldn't be possible with a buy-once type product.

It's theoretically possible for us to offer an alternative to In-App purchase, though; the same system we can use to transfer over licenses can also be used to sell new ones. This would be limited to one iPhone / iPod at a time just like the transferred ones are, but they could be purchased without resorting to In-App. We're just not sure how kindly Apple would look on our doing that. In fact in theory you could just buy a copy of Pleco right now for Palm / WM (borrowing someone's Palm / WM handheld to get a valid System ID) and then port it over, you'd just be paying more money than you would for the iPhone equivalent, so there'd be no reason to do it unless you had no other choice.
 
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