Google Android

[mikelove]

No, I'm saying an Android port needs to justify itself based on sales alone, because there's no way it pulls its weight on the "making better Chinese dictionaries" front - it's just too much like iPhone capabilities-wise. Porting to Android just for the sake of being able to release a Pleco IME would be hard to justify even if it weren't likely Apple would be adding IME support to a future iPhone release. And anyway, if we wanted to revolutionize Chinese text input for learners we'd be a lot better off doing it in a desktop product instead, since most serious writing is done on devices with full-size keyboards, and certainly most of the sorts of writing for which you're likely to want to translate an obscure word / technical term / etc.

 

[mfcb]

As you are writing an SMS/email you can quickly look up words as you type pinyin or sketch characters. Now that's a significant feature IMHO.

yes! it is a significant feature (WM6.5).. :lol:

 

[gato]

You might be interested in this Nexus One review from a former iPhone 3GS user, both on AT&T.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread. ... 57&page=26
I just switched from the iPhone 3GS to the ATT version Nexus One.

Pros
-Screen is amazing
-Customization of the feel of the device
-Fast 3G (I'm getting 1.3 down and 1.1 up)
-You can search for words on webpages.
-Feel of the device makes the iPhone feel like a cheap plastic toy
-Widgets!
-Notification handling is far better than the iPhone
-Voice recognition wherever you can type is great
-Integration with everything google
-Great multi-tasking

Cons
-Android needs to be polished, a lot
-Keyboard is taking a while to get used to
-Screen is not as sensitive as iPhone's. This is a pretty big drawback.
-I'm not getting as good of battery life

Let me expand on Android needing to be polished:

-Calendar app is terrible. Horrendous. It doesn't have search and the different views are completely useless. I can't stress this enough
-If I tap in a text box (I'm looking at you, messaging application) the keyboard should pop up every time
-Screen sensitivity makes it hard to type/click small links once in a while
-Copy/Paste is pathetic on Android, plain and simple.
-Switching between windows in the browser is pain. It doesn't even tell you which tab you're on so sometimes you have to guess which window to close.
-This has a 1ghz processor. There is no way that an iPhone should be smoother at scrolling but it is.
-Apps aren't as well-developed. This should change, but they just aren't now. Doesn't matter to me much. I think iPhone apps are largely useless because they are confined to themselves; they can't interact with anything else on the phone
-If you want to get non-gmail mail, you have to use a separate app. This separate app is not searchable.


That's all I can think of. Feel free to ask me any questions if you have them.

Overall, I like it a lot. If Apple introduced an iPhone with multi-tasking, new notifications, better screen, and updated UI, I think I might go back to the iPhone. The screen sensitivity and how fast I am at typing on an iPhone are the main reasons to go back.

 

[sfrrr]

Gato--Thanks for this. I really appreciate it. I have to buy a real phone soon (I have a Chinese Android clone whose only resemblance to any decent operating system is the Android-icon-look-alike.) After reading Mike's comments here, Android doesn't sound like a very good investment for me--contacts, tasks, and Pleco are absolute essentials for me. I'm drawn to the Android OS because, in some ways, it's a marvel of engineering and programming. And I think the iPhone is way too limited.

So this critique is extremely useful. Fortunately, I have about 4 months to decide, and can just sit back and watch for a while.

Thanks again.

 

[mikelove]

Definitely in grain-of-salt territory, but see this article for one possible description of iPhone OS 4.0. Under-the-hood, iPhone is pretty darn marvelously-engineered too, Apple just needs to do a better job of presenting that low-level beauty to non-programmers.

 

[westmeadboy]

Hmmm, I had to stop reading after the third paragraph:

Other platforms that do support the launching of multiple apps, including Android and Windows Mobile, require users to manually manage system resources and kill off performance robbing background tasks.

which is simply not true for Android (especially not 2.0 or later).

EDIT - so curiosity got the better of me and I read on...

More rubbish about the dangers of installing apps from "other sources" completely ignoring the Android sandbox approach.

And what's this about Android not supporting system-wide push notifications?

Well, I don't know what that means in the iPhone world. But in Android an app can declare itself interested in, for example, "received SMS message" system broadcasts and then it is woken up accordingly. And of course, it can listen to 3rd party broadcasts too, such as "New comment on Google Android topic on Pleco forums" . So I'd be interested to know what extra these Push Notifications offer.

 

[mikelove]

There are dangers to unapproved apps that go beyond what you can fix with a sandbox; someone can do malicious things running in the background on your phone even if they can't read other apps' data, and they can get some of that data by registering for those very same system broadcasts. Or just by reading data that's available system-wide, like contacts / phone numbers. Not that I agree phones should be locked down - Pleco would likely be a lot better off if they weren't - but there's a legitimate security argument for doing so.

Even WM does a pretty good job of killing off background tasks in later versions, particularly with a good third-party task manager installed, so it's not surprising at all that Android manages it or that Apple might do so too. Part of me thinks they waited so long on multitasking because they wanted to have a better idea what the iPad would look like first - multitasking and what you can do with it changes significantly on a large screen, and it makes developers' lives a lot easier if they can have one consistent multitasking API for both form factors. (I know Android has just such a consistent API, but Android hasn't really been redesigned for tablets yet, it just happens to be customizable enough that vendors can put it on tablets if they choose; they haven't added the sorts of tablet-specific UI controls that iPhone OS 3.2 has)

By push notifications I think he was referring to Apple's specific system for sending *arbitrary* notification messages to an iPhone from an internet server; not just system notification messages about when an SMS comes in or an RSS feed is updated (iPhone has a system for those too), but if you for example have a turn-based online strategy game and you want a message to pop up (with a button to open up the relevant app) when your opponent makes a move, you can use Push Notifications to do that. Doesn't replace multitasking for apps that need to run continuously, but nice for turn-based games / some types of messaging systems, since you're guaranteed your message will come in. Android might let you run tasks in the background, but AFAIK it doesn't do much for you when your app isn't running in the background (if it's, say, unloaded because you're running low on system resources), while Push Notifications are always on.

 

[numble]

Well, I don't know what that means in the iPhone world. But in Android an app can declare itself interested in, for example, "received SMS message" system broadcasts and then it is woken up accordingly. And of course, it can listen to 3rd party broadcasts too, such as "New comment on Google Android topic on Pleco forums" . So I'd be interested to know what extra these Push Notifications offer.

It is a different way of operating. For instance, if you want to ensure your MSN (or whatever IM client) messages come through on Android, I think you have to have the app already open and listening, but with push notifications, you'll get your IMs through whether or not you have the application open. Say you want an app to let you know immediately when sports trades occurs, you can leave that app open for weeks on end, or tell it to send a push notification when the trade occurs. Or you don't want to be continuously signed into MSN but want it to let you know when your best friend signs in. With push notifications, you don't need to waste system resources on keeping the app open. They will notify you when your friend signs on and then you can log on.

Anyway, indications are that Apple is planning on rolling out multitasking for iPhone OS 4.0:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10 ... rface.html

 

[sui.generis]

Some weeks ago, for a brief moment, it looked like you (mike) were at least willing to consider Android. That was heartening. Obviously, you're done considering it. That is equally disheartening.

I get it though, it's your program, and your sweat blood and tears that go into making it and porting it and holding the system together. I do worry some about the tone of some your proclamations since the email update. You seem so eager to defend your position and drive home its absolute and unquestionable rightness (rather than merely explain it), that I fear even if/as conditions change, you might not even notice changes or consider their implications out of shear inertia. I hope you keep a hopeful eye on Android as time passes rather than a wary one.

 

[mikelove]

Sorry if it's come off that way - I think the rapid back-and-forth has kind of a harshness-amplifying effect, and as Responder-In-Chief I'm even more susceptible to it than most.

Really, though, I'm just trying to argue that:

a) Android is not objectively better than iPhone, in spite of people's personal preferences; this isn't like Palm versus WM or WM versus iPhone; and
b) Android is a very risky proposition for Pleco right now, made more so by recent developments (AT&T's lockdown having confirmed my worst fears about fragmentation).

That doesn't mean we'll never port to Android, it just means that it's unlikely anyone will post anything here in the next few months at least that persuades me we need to drop what we're doing and start work on an Android port right now. Heck, if they expand the NDK to allow for fully native-code programs, that could push Android up quite a few notches on the priority list. And if they get AT&T to start allowing un-signed software and convince at least everybody other than the Chinese manufacturers to use the same version of the OS, that'd go a long way towards getting Pleco on Android too.

I have to say I'm very flattered by all of the interest in this, though - not sure how much of it really has to do with Pleco making great software and how much to do with the oft-incendiary nature of my Android posts, but the fact that, for example, westmeadboy has invested almost as much time trying to convince me to do an Android port as it would take him to add the half-dozen most interesting Pleco features to his own Android software is really quite moving.

 

[Zeldor]

mike:

I think it's combination of 2 factors:
1. Unwillingness to deal with anything made by Apple, financial reasons being last factor. Probably similar reasons why people pick Linux over Windows. I did buy Vista and I didn't use it much. I am fine with paying for software if it's better than free stuff. And I'd pay more for iPhone if it was worth it. But I don't like Apple [and I don't like Microsoft, Cisco and other companies with similar approach] and I don't like iPhone at all [iPad could be fine, but $350 for non-phone? huh]. I want hardware I like [full qwerty keyboard for example] and freedom, which is banned from Apple Sure, you can try convincing me there are good things about iPhone [and I'd agree], but I'm not sure that getting it ONLY because Pleco does not come on Android can work for me.
2. Big interest in Pleco as a tool for learning Chinese. Probably [as I don't have Pleco, only seen it on my friend's phone] the best way to learn language, especially on the go [well, tablets will be better, but not available yet].

So it's about great tool on a platform that for many people is not acceptable. It may be great to program for, great for making money, etc etc, but it's still not good for many people, good enough to spend hundreds of $ on. Of course no one is questioning your econiminal analysis [especially potential threats] of Android, but we can still get the right to try and convince you that there are enough potential buyers for Android Pleco. Or we can just rant a bit, to vent out frustration that we can't have Pleco

 

[koreth]

For me it's much more basic than that: I really strongly prefer a physical keyboard on my smartphone. Android devices offer that and the iPhone doesn't. (Yes, I have used the virtual keyboard on an iPhone, since my wife has had one since the initial launch; I can type faster on my Pre than she can on her phone, and I can do it without looking at the screen the whole time.)

I also prefer Android's openness and am not a huge fan of Apple's mercurial and arbitrary App Store policies, for example, the latest SDK's decree that you must write apps in one of three languages and are forbidden from using code generation tools. As a software developer I don't think that is healthy for the industry in the long term and I would prefer not to implicitly vote in favor of that sort of thing by buying into the ecosystem.

However, if Pleco essentially becomes an iPhone-only app (supported on other platforms but most actively developed for the iPhone, with the nicest UI on the iPhone, etc.) then that will probably make me hold my nose and buy one. Pleco has already driven one hardware purchase for me (the Pre) and it's still my most frequently-used application, and ultimately the reason I own a smartphone at all is to run the software I want to use.

 

[haraldalbrecht]

Android has successfully arrived in the market

(Lurked for quite some time, following the discussion.)

Mike, are you aware of the situation that over here in Europe Android phones, esp. HTC ones, are being pushed into the market which are Europe/Asia devices? I just purchased an HTC Legend with contract which luckily comes without any lock-down and without any annoying network provider-specific applications or annoyware. In fact, even tethering works with "T-immobile" SIM cards and without surcharge. Using such mobiles in Europe and Asia is thus no problem. Only the US is a problem. Go figure

After comparison, I for myself went for the open Android platform in form of HTC Legend and decided against Apple -- just look at their newest ridiculous iPhone development agreement terms that require an application's original source language to be C, C++ or Objective C (plus opt, JS). Not only Apple does good phones with good usability, other can do too. And HTC does not try to lock down its devices.

Mike, I can understand your position with respect to the risks involved when dealing with multiple still-developing mobile OS platforms. But please don't hold your potential Android customers custody for the nose-dive that Palm is taking and the amount of money you have invested into their new platform. However, please accept that Android has arrived in the market and is eating Microsoft's cake. HTC is doing really good pushing quality phones into the market. Microsoft Mobile has lost momentum: a large retail chain (Media Markt) now has still that "Windows Mobile" rack with mobiles -- but many of them actually being Android devices. And with Microsoft not seeming to have any clue on further development but only hot air shops will sell what is hot and available; that is not Windows Mobile anymore. Seems that Palm and Microsoft have lost the game at least for the moment.

I would be glad, if you, Mike, could reconsider your decision with respect to PlecoDict for Android. In any case, I've now put my T|X on retirement, as its hardware becomes flaky. I will not buy an iPhone just for PlecoDict, sorry, no way. I hate to say this as I have been a PlecoDict customer for many, many years but I will have to look for other applications to satisfy my needs. Sad, very sad.

With best regards,
-- Harald

 

[clawtang]

I just found this thread, and I'm heartbroken. Not sad enough to go get an iPhone though.

Pleco would be amazing on my Android phone (Nexus One).

It's too bad that I have to choose between promoting this amazing software, and promoting my amazing mobile device.

Apologies for not furthering intelligent discussion here. My only purpose here is to register my grievance along with the other disappointed Android users.

 

[mikelove]

Zeldor - understood. I'm interested that even though you'd never buy an iPhone you're more open to the idea of an iPad; I actually just heard the same thing the other day from a longtime friend who still uses a Treo and hates both iPhone and WM. Perhaps we can win over a lot of Android users that way; Pleco on iPad even in its current lightly-big-screen-optimized state is (IMNSHO) pretty spectacular, does everything our portable software does but does it faster and makes it easier to read. And at the moment it seems like the non-Apple tablet market is actually moving more in the direction of Atom-powered Windows devices, which aren't going to deliver anything close to as good an experience.

koreth - well it's not quite the same as a built-in keyboard, but iPhone OS 4.0 is getting Bluetooth keyboard support, and as Engadget put it "Bluetooth keyboards are going to be the next great iPhone accessory gold rush" - won't be as nice as having a keyboard built into the phone, but someone's going to hit on a minimally-obtrusive design for an iPhone keyboard accessory and they'll absolutely clean up.

People keep citing the no-Flash-apps decree as an example of Apple being evil, but I actually think it's a good thing for iPhone developers; the iPhone gaming market is really starting to mature now, and the last thing it needs is thousands of crappy not-particularly-iPhone-optimized Flash games showing up and crowding up the already-clogged rankings / review sites / etc. Apple doesn't need more iPhone developers now, it needs better ones.

And again, Android-being-open is subject to change; I don't see a lot of complaints or 1-star reviews for the Motorola Backflip in spite of it being just as locked-down as iPhone. If end users go along with that change then we'll soon be in a situation where the only way to even get a phone that can run non-Market apps is to buy an unlocked Nexus from Google.

haraldalbrecht - we haven't invested any money in Palm's new platform, we invested money in Palm's old platform out of a sense of obligation to our Palm-using customers. In hindsight I wish we'd skipped it, we could have had 2.0 out almost a year earlier and released a flashcard-equipped-from-the-get-go iPhone version last summer, but not much we can do to change the facts of that now. Windows Phone has to do a lot to prove itself before we'd consider supporting it, I just don't want to deny it's a possibility since it's another platform we can code for in C.

So this isn't a question of Android versus Windows Phone / webOS, it's a question of Android versus continued improvements on iPhone / iPad / (desktops?). There are a lot of things I'm really not happy with in our iPhone software, a lot of fairly-obvious features that I'd have liked to have had out on Palm/WM a year ago, and putting that aside to focus full-bore on an Android port seems like a terrible idea.

But here's a new thought. (or a revival of an old one) While I'm certainly not prepared to commit to a full-on Pleco Android port, and won't be for a while, here's what a "Pleco Lite" for Android - something we could have out by the end of the year while still spending 2/3 of our time on iPhone / iPad - could look like:

• No flashcards, and no promise of flashcards to come, but an other-flashcard-software-friendly "word list" system like on pre-flashcard iPhone versions
• Document reader a maybe, but probably only for text files, and with no editing capabilities
• No combined definition / entry list view, the view-a-list-of-results-and-tap-on-one-to-display-it interface would be the only one
• Dictionary definitions rendered in WebKit -> take a second or so to load once you tap on a listed entry
• Popup definitions in dictionary entries still supported, but with a bit of lag thanks to WebKit, roughly the same delay to come up that you see in "Live Mode" on iPhone now
• Handwriting yes, but possibly only with the old WisdomPen recognizer from our pre-PlecoDict products, and not available as a separate IME
• Tested only on one or two phone models (Nexus and Droid, probably), with absolutely no promise of compatibility or effort made to ensure compatibility on anything else; the response to every "Does Pleco work on the new HTC Phantasmagoria II HD Plus?" type email will be "we don't know, get a Droid"
• And in keeping with that, not compatible with any Android OS version except 2.1 (or whatever the newest one is at the time we're doing most of the work on this)
• Sold exclusively through Pleco.com and not available through Android Market, so we're back to the WM model of uploading your keyfile / databases / etc to your device, and people using the very-rare-and-not-worth-worrying-about-Android-is-an-open-platform-dammit phones that don't run non-Market apps are out of luck.
• Or: sold exclusively through Android Market, but only available in one bundle, and with no possibility of transferring licenses from other platforms.

If this sold well in spite of all of those limitations, that might make the case for a bigger commitment to Android. This would preclude spending any time on a desktop version, though, which I get the sense there may actually be a lot more interest in, and which would take a lot less work to bring up to the level of our full-featured software.

 

[haraldalbrecht]

@Mike:

• No flashcards -- can live with that. Had to wait long for it and used another app on my TX for quite some time.
• No document reader -- can live with that. Never really used that albeit it's cool.
• Webkit -- could be okay; I don't know whether this would be a show stopper or not. Webkit seems to be quite decent when it comes to rendering; I like the HTC webbrowser on top of Webkit which uses the pinch gesture for zoom in/out. Surfing on a 3" display was never that easy until now.
• Popup defs -- definitely a MUST for me. Would be more or less a no-go if not present.
• Handwriting -- only need that in PlecoDict for the moment. Yet, a MUST at least for me. The capacitive screens seems to do quite well with sketching, you just need to provide enough screen space or allow to scribble just all over at least half of the screen. You know: 3" screens...
• Testing -- I would like to offer a beta test drive on my HTC Legend, which is an Eclaire 2.1 OS with ordinary HVGA display, nothing special here.
• No Android Market -- that's more than okay. HTC is open and allows .apk's to be installed, you just need to check a box once in the system settings, but that is easy and does not cause any other problems.
• Transferring licenses -- would be great! While it is okay for me to have pay for PlecoDict software development I don't like to repurchase the dictionaries I already possess. I rather like to see where the costs are instead of cross-selling.

 

[mikelove]

Good reaction

One other caveat: this wouldn't be announced in advance, since there's a significant possibility that we'd get part of the way into it and realize it was going to take way more time than we'd thought (as was the case with Pleco 2.0 on Palm), and we'd want to be able to cancel it (or at least put it on hold) in that case without ticking off too many people who'd, say, bought Android phones in anticipation of Pleco Lite being available on them. So the official Pleco statement on Android will likely remain "we don't support Android" until we actually have an Android version ready to launch (or at least are at a point where we can start beta-testing).

 

[mikelove]

Oh, and I do apologize for the up-and-down nature of my Android comments; it's a reflection of my own inner turmoil about this, honestly. I certainly don't love developing for closed platforms, and I certainly like the idea of having something other than iPhone to fall back on, but an Android version of Pleco would involve a lot of work, most of it decidedly unpleasant, none of it really advancing the cause of better Chinese dictionary software (unless you consider it to be better simply by virtue of its being on Android, which I don't). Business mikelove likes the extra sales and (relative) lack of legal restrictions, programmer mikelove hates Java and is sick of writing (or helping to write / supervising the writing of) the same code over and over again, and Ivy-Leaguer mikelove just likes arguing the opposite of whatever everybody else is arguing

 

[numble]

I also prefer Android's openness and am not a huge fan of Apple's mercurial and arbitrary App Store policies, for example, the latest SDK's decree that you must write apps in one of three languages and are forbidden from using code generation tools. As a software developer I don't think that is healthy for the industry in the long term and I would prefer not to implicitly vote in favor of that sort of thing by buying into the ecosystem.

I've read that this relates to the implementation of smart multitasking in 4.0. Don't know how credible that is.

Apple's prohibition of Flash-built apps in iPhone 4.0 related to multitasking
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...ps_in_iphone_4_0_related_to_multitasking.html

But if Apple were simply trying to block Adobe from cross-compiling Flash to create iPhone apps, it could have added the changed text to its existing license agreement and spoiled Adobe's CS5 party immediately, rather than just threatening change that appears fated to kick in when Apple delivers iPhone 4.0 in June.

The primary reason for the change, say sources familiar with Apple's plans, is to support sophisticated new multitasking APIs in iPhone 4.0. The system will now be evaluating apps as they run in order to implement smart multitasking. It can't do this if apps are running within a runtime or are cross compiled with a foreign structure that doesn't behave identically to a native C/C++/Obj-C app.

 

[Zeldor]

mike:

Sure, iPad sounds better than iPhone, but it also has so many things that put me off... But I totally agree that tablets may be the best platform for Pleco and stuff like that.

I don't think Tablet is going Atom way, that would be stupid and I doubt companies that go this way will succeed. Better take a look at Tegra 2 ones. ICD Gemini and Notion Ink's Adam, check those two. Both are going to come with Android, both with better specs than iPad and both should be cheaper. It would be hard to justify spending money on iPad

I think that with more and more tablets coming with Android, it must mature. It's a serious market and they have a chance to win with Apple here. Google probably expected Chrome OS to be used on tablets, but it doesn't look like that, so they should improve Android.

And about that possible Android version - sure, I'd buyt it and use it on my tablet I assume that if it works and version with missing functionality gets released, we can upgrade for free? Or would it be rather cheaper version than let's say iPhone, because of less functions?

P.S. If I have tablet + Pleco on it, I really don't see any need for desktop version. No idea how many people feel the same way.