Apple's Spring Loaded event

[AONomad]

This is more a question for @mikelove but if anyone else wants to speculate, please go for it! Interested in hearing from anyone who knows more than I do.

I'm starting an intensive program in September with coursework in Chinese and will almost certainly be buying an iPad Pro exclusively to have Pleco open side-by-side with another app for reading and writing assignments. I'll be keeping an eye on tomorrow's Spring Loaded event to see if any major hardware or software changes would allow Pleco to release on macOS, such that I could get a Macbook and use Pleco on it instead of being limited to an iPad.

As far as I've been able to tell from recent updates in other forum posts, Pleco 4.0 is still deep in development and there is no release date set. Meanwhile, a macOS version is in development as well (I'm not totally clear on whether it would come together with 4.0 or not). But as of 2-3 months ago, neither sounded like they would be released in the near future.

Just curious, since I'm not really that tuned into the mac-sphere, are there any big announcements people are waiting for that could potentially quicken the timeline for Pleco 4.0 and/or a macOS desktop release? Or is the viability and speed of a release pretty much entirely dependent on the work that still needs to be done on the Pleco side, more so than on the Apple side?

Thanks all!

(p.s. mikelove you're my actual hero)

 

[mikelove]

I'll be keeping an eye on tomorrow's Spring Loaded event to see if any major hardware or software changes would allow Pleco to release on macOS, such that I could get a Macbook and use Pleco on it instead of being limited to an iPad.

This wouldn't happen at the Spring Loaded event, but rather at WWDC in June - that's when they announce new OS versions / other stuff for developers. Tomorrow's announcements are likely to be mostly hardware related plus possibly one or two new Apple services like a paid podcast offering.

As far as I've been able to tell from recent updates in other forum posts, Pleco 4.0 is still deep in development and there is no release date set. Meanwhile, a macOS version is in development as well (I'm not totally clear on whether it would come together with 4.0 or not). But as of 2-3 months ago, neither sounded like they would be released in the near future.

Yep, that's pretty much correct. macOS version would be using the same codebase as 4.0, but beta of that will probably arrive a month or two after the first iOS beta.

Just curious, since I'm not really that tuned into the mac-sphere, are there any big announcements people are waiting for that could potentially quicken the timeline for Pleco 4.0 and/or a macOS desktop release?

About the only thing that would do that would be if Apple announced some sort of backwards-compatibility change so massive that it would no longer be viable to maintain our current iOS version and we'd have no choice but to release 4.0 despite it being awkward and unfinished. But that's both extremely unlikely and frankly not optimal for anyone.

Or is the viability and speed of a release pretty much entirely dependent on the work that still needs to be done on the Pleco side, more so than on the Apple side?

It's pretty much all us, Apple's current macOS development tools are adequate to the purpose even if they could certainly stand to improve.

(p.s. mikelove you're my actual hero)

Heh, thanks!

 

[AONomad]

Thanks so much for the comprehensive & lightning-fast response!

About the only thing that would do that would be if Apple announced some sort of backwards-compatibility change so massive that it would no longer be viable to maintain our current iOS version and we'd have no choice but to release 4.0 despite it being awkward and unfinished. But that's both extremely unlikely and frankly not optimal for anyone.

...

It's pretty much all us, Apple's current macOS development tools are adequate to the purpose even if they could certainly stand to improve.

I take it that sort of backwards-compatibility change would be deeply harmful to a large number of apps and they'd only do that if they were proceeding to a "new generation" of app structure, yeah?

So it sounds like the macOS version might not be out until deep into my program or even after I've graduated-- but an iPad should serve just fine for now. I'll be one of the first people to upgrade once it does finally release! It'll be a godsend.

 

[mikelove]

I take it that sort of backwards-compatibility change would be deeply harmful to a large number of apps and they'd only do that if they were proceeding to a "new generation" of app structure, yeah?

Yeah, and I'm not aware of anything like that on the horizon - we're still years away from the point where they could start to think about deprecating Objective-C.