Pleco for Mac Update?

Shun

状元
Yes, Jobs was a visionary with extremely deep insights (one of the few humans I really admire :)) and a product person, but Cook is very smart and exacting, too, just a lot more grounded and realistic. Of course you could say Cook is a lot more "normal". But as I've said, I think there is nothing greedy about Apple's pricing if you consider the actual value of a device to the user instead of the technical cost of making it. You're not supposed to question every technical choice Apple made or generally to second-guess them, because you're supposed to—and you can—trust their intuition when they say a product is worth a particular price, that that is what it is worth to them and everyone else. That is just Apple's philosophy, you take it or leave it. The good thing is that technical users are also usually happiest with Macs, with their rock-solid FreeBSD Unix foundation and adoption of open standards. Thanks to that smart choice—combining support of open standards with ease of use—, Apple's ambit has grown considerably in the last 20-25 years.

Regarding the garbage apps, I think it's OK as long as they're in conformity with the law. You can't tell people not to use a particular kind of app, that would be particularly patronizing and would immediately be criticized, wouldn't it? :)

Perhaps you remember, Jobs was so radical about a clean iPhone platform that the idea of an App Store had to be forced on him at first. He then soon relented with iOS 2, I believe.

I've read they're upping the minimum RAM configuration to 12 GB or maybe even 16 GB soon, which I also think is a smart choice.

Jobs said Apple shouldn't remain the same, Apple should follow Cook, because if Cook is doing his best, everyone is. You surely agree that one can't freeze a company's culture at any date, it should just be healthy and thriving, and that happens when it is able to adapt and grow. Whenever something grows, something new has to emerge in it; there is no other way.
 
Last edited:

Fernando

榜眼
One interesting tidbit I read about Job's leadership style is that he used to take people who were at loggerheads and *force* them to work together. And because of his strong personality, they would work together and produce results. Basically he'd take conflict and get it to generate good ideas overall. Cook can't do that, he picks a side and dismisses the other, because apparently he can't stand conflict.

As for the garbage addictive apps, I have no mercy. They are evil. I have an elderly aunt who ended up spending about 700€ on trashy virtual thingamabobs from a "collect-stuff" game because she was lonely and it was just easy to keep spending, 5€ here 10€ there. And Apple, of course, got their share for 'facilitating' the transactions. I can see how people can end up spending even more than that. I get it that people should be free to do as they please, but if you're getting into something addictive there should be some friction. And Apple removes that friction, because money.
 

Shun

状元
One interesting tidbit I read about Job's leadership style is that he used to take people who were at loggerheads and *force* them to work together. And because of his strong personality, they would work together and produce results. Basically he'd take conflict and get it to generate good ideas overall. Cook can't do that, he picks a side and dismisses the other, because apparently he can't stand conflict.

Oh true, thanks, I missed that. But if Cook can't do it, he shouldn't try. In return, he can do many other things better than Jobs.

As for the garbage addictive apps, I have no mercy. They are evil. I have an elderly aunt who ended up spending about 700€ on trashy virtual thingamabobs from a "collect-stuff" game because she was lonely and it was just easy to keep spending, 5€ here 10€ there. And Apple, of course, got their share for 'facilitating' the transactions. I can see how people can end up spending even more than that. I get it that people should be free to do as they please, but if you're getting into something addictive there should be some friction. And Apple removes that friction, because money.

I'm sorry to hear that. That experience of course predisposes one in a particular direction. I'd agree that collecting stuff or basically images inside an app for money should be forbidden (or any amounts over 1 USD), just gambling should stay.

Have a good one, Shun
 
Last edited:

Fernando

榜眼
Anyhow, sorry for the off-topic. macos 15 public beta will be released in July, so I'm sure people will be testing how iPhone Mirroring works (or doesn't work) with Pleco.
 
I hate to be the one mentioning potentially bad news, but doesn't the just-announced iPhone Mirroring feature obviate the need for a dedicated Mac Pleco app for about 90% of people?
As a power user I would much rather have a native mac app with keyboard shortcuts and a fully resizable window than use a clunky touchscreen-optimized version on mac. If you've tried the Xcode iPhone simulators you'll know what I mean...

So how's the Mac version coming? Any idea when the beta will be opened up, or what the price point will be? Sorry if I'm bugging you about this, but I'm just really excited to finally have a sleek, "ridiculously awesome" Chinese dictionary for my main device so I don't have to fish it out of my pocket all the time. (pun not intended)
 
Last edited:

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
So how's the Mac version coming?
Nothing new to share on that, I've been extremely distracted from Pleco stuff for the last 3 months for personal reasons (nothing bad - wife had to change jobs in March and so we're selling our house and moving to a new state) and there's only a limited amount that can happen on Mac without me driving it. (which also explains the relatively thin 4.0 updates)

The tentative roadmap is that at some point we're going to do a big-ish 4.0 update redesigning a lot of settings and some other stuff to make it less expert-y and more releasable, then after we feel good about that (probably with a few minor bug fix updates) we'll polish up the Mac version based on it, the thinking being that the Mac release is our last chance to have a lot of people download + test 4.0 and we'd like it to be in as complete a state as possible before then.
 

dightonjw

举人
If you still release the Mac version, I’ll buy a MacBook so can use it. Straight up, being able to use Pleco in a window with a full keyboard, and while utilizing other content simultaneously would be amazing.
 
1723540720845.png

pleco on mac is essentially here. its completely functional.
 

Fernando

榜眼
On other news, microsoft is deprecating windows subsystem for android. Some people got really excited about that and now it's going the way of the dodo.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
On other news, microsoft is deprecating windows subsystem for android. Some people got really excited about that and now it's going the way of the dodo.
Apple also seems to have more-or-less abandoned Catalyst, which is part of the problem with our current Mac builds; they're janky and seem unlikely to ever get un-janky. So I'm starting to envision this as a long-term beta which, depending on popularity, eventually gets rebuilt + more aggressively charged for as a truly native AppKit Mac app.
 

Shun

状元
So I'm starting to envision this as a long-term beta which, depending on popularity, eventually gets rebuilt + more aggressively charged for as a truly native AppKit Mac app.

I would love that: An unoptimized Catalyst Mac version pretty soon, and a fast, highly desktop-optimized version in a few years. Most of the code will still be portable, platform-independent code, I guess.
 

Shun

状元
On other news, microsoft is deprecating windows subsystem for android. Some people got really excited about that and now it's going the way of the dodo.
Thanks! It probably became too much work for Microsoft, and they would only be helping Android without getting much back.
 

Fernando

榜眼
So I'm starting to envision this as a long-term beta which, depending on popularity, eventually gets rebuilt + more aggressively charged for as a truly native AppKit Mac app.
I don't really know how much work and effort we're talking about here, but that sound like a good/safe approach. It's also interesting to observe how the tech landscape is evolving, or rather not evolving in some areas.
It probably became too much work for Microsoft, and they would only be helping Android without getting much back.
I guess windows has ceased to be a major revenue driver for MS quite a while ago. I mean, it still makes money for them, but they have other, bigger, things like Azure and even Office-as-a-service. It may just suck a little down the line cause the compatibility layers available to allow waydroid to run ARM android apps on x86 linux are ripped directly off WSA. Anyhow, it is what it is. Life finds a way.
 

Shun

状元
It may just suck a little down the line cause the compatibility layers available to allow waydroid to run ARM android apps on x86 linux are ripped directly off WSA.
Maybe in about five years, when normal PCs and Linux distributions will mostly have moved from x86 CPUs to ARM-based SoCs, many high-quality virtual machines for running Android apps will become available, since the performance would be even better than it was on x86.

I see; the fact that Waydroid used WSA code must be why Waydroid worked so well.
 
Last edited:

Fernando

榜眼
Virtual machines have come a long way already, but you're right that the big sticking point is still this x86/ARM barrier.

I see; the fact that Waydroid used WSA code must be why Waydroid worked so well.
Waydroid doesn't actually support this cross-architecture usage. It does support ARM Android out of the box, but only on ARM hardware. It was the *community* who made the WSA compatibility layers, libhoudini and libndk, available for installation on top of waydroid.
 
Last edited:
Top