Windows 10 Universal Apps

Mike, I've been a huge fan of Pleco for several years now. I'm 100% certain that if it wasn't for this app, I wouldn't have completed the Chinese major program at my university. I've been following long enough to know of your love for iOS, indifference to Android, and disdain for Windows. In previous threads you had no interest in developing for WP7/8 for lack of return on investment (time/money).

Now that Microsoft plans to merge the development of all their devices under W10 (desktops, laptops, tablets, phones, Xbox, HoloLens, etc.), will you consider finally developing for Windows? I'm no programmer, but if I understand correctly, the same code can be used across all of these devices.

What would be the reason against developing for W10? If you don't wish to port the program yourself, can't you outsource the work? Pleco seems to be popular enough for their to be financial inventive on these platforms.

P.S. Imagine a future where you can stare at a Chinese sign using HoloLens and have Pleco OCR overlay the translation!
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
It's not so much disdain for Windows as it is that I have a hard time imagining Windows ever becoming a significant player on phones again, and without phones the other things don't really matter - anything we might do on desktops / laptops / tablets is, at least for the vast majority of our users, merely an accompaniment to the Pleco experience on their phone.

At the moment (as I've intimated in other threads and on Twitter), if we do anything to expand outwards from iOS/Android my inclination would be to make it web-based, since I think that's a more natural place for a companion to a mobile app to be (easier sync, instant access from any public computer, etc). I'm not currently convinced that the Pleco experience in a native Windows desktop app would be enough of an improvement over the experience in a web-based app to justify the vastly higher development cost.

That status as a companion app complicates the financial case for a Windows port too - it's extremely unlikely that people already happily using Pleco on their phones would be willing to pay full price for a separate copy on Windows; most of them would expect it to be free, the best we could probably do would be to ask for a nominal fee for access to the software but give people access to their dictionary and other content purchases for free. So I'm not at all confident that we would make back the development cost.

There's also a pretty big element of distraction in any new platform we support - even if all of the Windows-specific work was being done by third party developers, and even if we found Windows developers that were a) really good and b) somehow willing to do the entire project on spec, we'd still be putting in a tremendous amount of effort syncing our iOS / Android efforts with theirs, both for the initial Windows release and for updates. So it necessarily would compromise our existing development efforts to support Windows, and honestly I feel the effort required just to support iOS and Android is already straining our users' patience waiting for new features.
 

genericm

Member
Just an additional thought:

In your comments above you have placed desktops/laptops/tablets all in the same device category, this to me seems to undervalue the effect the tablet is having on the mobile computing world. The mobile experience of having pleco on your tablet (especially using it as a document reader for ePubs and PDFs) is profoundly useful, more so even than having it on my phone. It seems obvious that Microsoft is (finally) successfully entering the mobile computing space through the tablet. And I suspect with the sales decline of the iPad and the business potential of the Surface tablet line, that it will continue to gain market share. The success of the Surface tablet line will likely drive people to select windows phones as well, for ecosystem compatibility, (and brand image) just like the iPad served to boost iPhone sales early on. But regardless, the windows tablet market alone would probably justify development of a native windows Pleco app.

Additionally, in my opinion, what people (in America) really want is a set of devices that they can trust to work well together, all from one trusted manufacturer. Apple and Microsoft are equipped to deliver that experience. But without a business friendly productivity based device from Google, (e.g. no MacBook or Surface) I expect Android to only see continued growth in the low-end market, where you don't see a lot of app sales, or in-app purchases.

I have an iPhone, but I want a Windows phone. The sole reason I have delayed making the switch is Pleco. I would gladly pay for all my Pleco purchases again to gain the freedom to choose the phone I want.

If you build it, they will come...

Eric
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
I wouldn't place desktops / laptops / tablets in the same category overall, just in regards to Pleco. At the moment there are basically three things people use our app to do:

1) Look up words they encounter (whether via Pinyin or handwriting or OCR);
2) Organize / review vocabulary (flashcards)
3) Read Chinese-language books / websites.

Some users might disagree with me on this (and we do a great deal of work to make our tablet app friendly to those users), but I believe for the majority of our users the only items on that list that are significantly enhanced by a larger screen are #3 and the organizational (but not the actual testing) aspect of #2. And for #3 a large and growing number of users seem to be satisfied by large-screen phones like the iPhone 6+ and Galaxy Note.

So for Pleco, anything that isn't running on a phone is for the most part going to be serving as a companion to our phone app.

As far as Windows tablets boosting Windows phones, if that actually happens I'll certainly reconsider my position but I'm highly skeptical at the moment. And to be honest I think Microsoft themselves have now decided they'd rather sacrifice ecosystem integration for more users - the Office team are arguably doing better work now on iOS and Android than they are on Microsoft's own platforms, and Xbox One last year finally came into its own and saw its sales increase once they stopped viewing it as a way to shove Windows down people's throats and simply tried to make the best game platform they could.
 

etm001

状元
Some users might disagree with me on this (and we do a great deal of work to make our tablet app friendly to those users), but I believe for the majority of our users the only items on that list that are significantly enhanced by a larger screen are #3 and the organizational (but not the actual testing) aspect of #2. And for #3 a large and growing number of users seem to be satisfied by large-screen phones like the iPhone 6+ and Galaxy Note.

For me, testing is vastly better on a tablet than on a phone - there's much less scrolling required to read definitions, and handwriting (i.e., enabling 字) is much easer with a tablet's larger surface area. Pleco is the only reason why I own an iPad.

At the moment there are basically three things people use our app to do:
1) Look up words they encounter (whether via Pinyin or handwriting or OCR);
2) Organize / review vocabulary (flashcards)
3) Read Chinese-language books / websites.

Here's the fourth basic thing I wish I could do with Pleco: look up definitions for subtitles as I watch videos and create flashcards from them. (At some point in the past I've posted my thoughts about this kind of functionality, so I won't repeat myself). This is functionality I'd like to see before a desktop (web) version of Pleco. Video is the only communication medium not handled by Pleco, and it would be transformational to have it (seriously, I'm not exaggerating. If/when it comes to Pleco I think I will cry tears of joy).
 

alex_hk90

状元
Here's the fourth basic thing I wish I could do with Pleco: look up definitions for subtitles as I watch videos and create flashcards from them. (At some point in the past I've posted my thoughts about this kind of functionality, so I won't repeat myself). This is functionality I'd like to see before a desktop (web) version of Pleco. Video is the only communication medium not handled by Pleco, and it would be transformational to have it (seriously, I'm not exaggerating. If/when it comes to Pleco I think I will cry tears of joy).

Technically this would be very challenging if the subtitles were hard-coded into the video (which it seems to be in most cases) - I have struggled to find online the text subtitle files that would make this easy. Most DVDs do have this though, so if you extracted them you would be able to use these files in Pleco.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Yeah, definitely a non-trivial new feature - it's on our radar but I don't think we'll take on anything new on this scale until we've finished our major flashcard updates.
 

johnevans

Member
Hi Mike, At Build yesterday Microsoft talked about new compile tools to enable easy porting of both IOS and Android code to Windows Universal apps, as well as an objective to have 1bn Win10 devices in 2 years. Will this change your answer above? Or too early to say?
(I hope so, as currently I have to use Pleco on Bluestacks)
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
No, it's not as easy as they make it seem - converts code but doesn't allow you to maintain the same code base - and in any event I'm impressed enough by Google's recent strides towards making Android apps usable on Windows (via Chrome and ARC Welder) that I'm inclined to go that route with Windows support instead; less work and more widespread platform support.
 
Mike, I do hope you are keeping up on Build. Not being a developer, I can't comment on how easy the porting really is (but they make is look extremely easy). However, even if you ported the current Android version once and didn't look back, I think many of us would settle for that. Sure, ARC Welder allows APKs to run, but I would much rather prefer a native app.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
It looks like their solution for Android apps is pretty much the same as ARC Welder - emulate an Android environment - and for that, I'd rather rely on Google's solution instead of Microsoft's, since Google is in a better position to maintain future compatibility; they can ensure support for new versions of Android from day one, and can offer access to the actual Google Mobile Services rather than just mimicking their APIs.

Unlike a lot of apps (including most of the apps I suspect Microsoft is targeting with this initiative), our non-UI code is already in cross-platform C, and would already run on Windows with just a few hours' work. The code that is Android- or iOS-specific is UI code, and in order to end up with something that felt like a "native" Windows app, we'd need to rewrite that code around Windows; otherwise, even a very intelligent porting tool is going to leave you with a Windows app that feels like an iOS or an Android app.
 
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Loriquero

秀才
Is funny how Pleco always has been the main reason I buy Smartphones. First was an HTC with Windows Mobile, then when Pleco was announced for Android, I ran to the cellphone store and bought a Samsung Galaxy S II and now I'm with a Xiaomi (Apple hater here). But after I bought a Lumia 1020 for my wife, I started to love WP 8. I even have this skin on my phone...

Nothing else to add here. I'll stick with Android phones until Pleco is announced for Windows 10. I know is almost impossible, but I can always dream.... Or maybe I can buy a Windows phone and a Galaxy Note 8 for Pleco and other Android things.
 

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johnevans

Member
Hi Mike,
otherwise, even a very intelligent porting tool is going to leave you with a Windows app that feels like an iOS or an Android app.

That would be great. Much much better than having nothing. In any case, the "design language" of Win10 and WP10 is moving closer to IOS and Android (hamburger menus, etc). I have been using Pleco since the Palm days, across IOS (great system, got bored with it), then Android (didnt like Touchwiz) then WP. Pleco is the only program I miss (hence I check back periodically to see if anything is happening!)

It looks like their solution for Android apps is pretty much the same as ARC Welder - emulate an Android environment

Is it? I am very technically challenged, but I thought the thrust of these tools is that it allows for the porting of code, as opposed to an emulation. At least as claimed by Microsoft - the tools themselves (IOS to Win Universal, Android To Win Universal, webapp to WU) haven't been released yet AFAIK.

Above, you mention that they make it seem much easier than it is, and that maintaining the code base is work. I take the point. Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s executive vice president of operating system is quoted in NYT as saying “We’ve dramatically reduced the amount of work for developers to get started on Windows”. Guess it depends on what the meaning of the word "dramatically" is. And just how universal Win Universal apps really are.

I got Arc Welder running and it seems much better than Bluestacks. But not on mobile since Google is not playing nice with WP. Any way to get Pleco running on WP?

In the discussion about porting, you predominantly talk of porting from Android to Win, and rather neglect IOS to Win. Is there a reason for that?

I sympathize with your predicament. You have people who have been using Pleco for many years who want a Windows (universal) solution. But whatever you do you need a solid business case. A small enterprise does not have the resources to fracture their efforts and neglect development. And it strikes me the only clear aspects of the tech landscape looking a few years ahead is that Apple will be a sizable minority player across phone (15-20% minority outside US and Japan), tablet and desktop, and that Microsoft will probably still dominate desktop and hybrid. Everything else is turbulent and unclear.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@Loriquero - that's fair, but we have to try to do the greatest good for the greatest number of users and right now there just isn't a significant enough contingent of WP fans to justify doing that over other things.

@johnevans - a "Windows app that feels like an Android app" is pretty much what you get now with ARC Welder; even more so if/when we add native X86 support and performance gets comparable to what it is running on a high-end Android tablet or iPad.

Microsoft's Android-to-Windows solution is in fact an emulator like ARC Welder rather than a code translator - the iOS method is a code translator, and that got more press, but the Android one is an emulator - so I don't see much benefit to us in using it over Google's system. I'm neglecting iOS to Windows because I don't think the results would be significantly better than this emulator approach (wouldn't feel any more 'native') and it would require a lot more coding effort.

No solution for WP at the moment, in theory it ought be possible to do that with ARC Welder (or even with a combination of open-source components) but I'm not aware of anybody doing that right now. WP support isn't currently enticing enough to get us to use Microsoft's system instead of ARC Welder.

Microsoft dominating future desktops and hybrids is far from certain - they've got Google attacking them on the low end and Apple attacking them on the high end, and even if they continue to lead in numbers I have no particular reason to expect that they'll lead among the premium users from whom we make most of our money. And they seem very unlikely to turn things around on mobile, which is the main space we care about. Apple's "15-20%" minority may not in fact remain static (c.f. their recent gains in China), and even if it does, that minority today is making us a lot more money than the Android-using majority.

Microsoft could very well end up fending off Apple and Google and dominating the desktop/hybrid market from low-end to high-end again, and Windows 10 could even make them relevant on mobile again, but even if that does happen, it won't happen overnight - would take several years - and given how well we've managed to do on iOS and Android in spite of arriving very late to the game on both of those platforms, I don't feel any particular sense of urgency about supporting Windows.
 
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Loriquero

秀才
@Loriquero - that's fair, but we have to try to do the greatest good for the greatest number of users and right now there just isn't a significant enough contingent of WP fans to justify doing that over other things.

I understand, and I may be doing the same thing as you if I was on your position. WP lack of popularity is mainly Microsoft´s own fault.

I guess I will be buying an android 7-8¨tablet and use it for Pleco reader and e-books.

I guess is not possible to run Pleco reader in a Kindle paperwhite or a Kobo aura?
 
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