Google Android

[numble]

If you do any type of poll, wouldn't most people that answer for any platform be existing Pleco users and mostly interested in license transfers? I don't know if that would be the best way in figuring out where new potential business will lie.

I think you may be able to make more money supplying more, smaller,focused, but less complicated products, compared to large, more expensive and complicated products. For instance, I think a putative Anki iPhone app would sell a lot more than a spinoff of Pleco's current system, even though the latter may be more complicated. Anki focuses on one simple model, but focuses on doing it elegantly and just telling users that the scoring system "just works." Many users are happy paying $5 for a simple dictionary running CC-CEDICT.

 

[mikelove]

That is a concern with the poll, yes. But other metrics aren't necessarily much better; we get a lot more email from BlackBerry users than Android ones, for example, but most of the emails from the former are of the "does Pleco work on BlackBerry" type, while most of the Android ones are of the "are you planning to develop a version for Android" type, so it may be that Android users are more likely to visit our website, find this thread, and have their question very thoroughly (albeit indecisively) answered here without having to write in at all So ultimately this has to be a gut business decision one way or the other.

The flashcard thing I think is more of a design problem - our system with the pre-made "spaced repetition" profile "just works" too, at about the same level that Anki does, but the options are presented in such a way that people still seem to think there's a whole lot of tweaking required to make good use of it. But we could deliver an Anki-esque product quite easily if we just took away a lot of the extra settings, there isn't really any algorithmic magic they do that we don't do also at this point.

But the existence of Anki and the ease of data-sharing between applications on Android definitely makes me very uncertain about whether or not it would be worth our while to ever include flashcards in a putative Android version, particularly given how much work would be involved - the flashcard system by itself has more cross-platform C code than the entire Pleco "core" I mentioned in an earlier post. Though on the plus side it is at least a bit less reliant on things that can't easily be done in Java...

 

[sui.generis]

... and Ivy-Leaguer mikelove just likes arguing the opposite of whatever everybody else is arguing

Hmmmm... :?

...

...

Down with Android!

 

[gato]

You might want to do your poll at Chinese-forums to have broader reach?

 

[Huguete]

I was about to acquire your excellent program for my WM PDA.

Nevertheless after having seen a fantastic Nexus One and learned about the HTC Desire (both are Android based machines) I couldn't resist it and dropped my old PDA and got the Desire for me. I have owned three different windows mobile machines and now that I have already spent a whole week using the new Android machine I am pretty sure this is an standard that will be in the market for a long time.

I have visited your website many times learning about the Pleco's possibilities to help me to learn Chinese. Your product is by far the best (obviously this is old news to you) anyone may find in the market, alas this is not (yet) available for us Android users. I have purchased some other dictionaries for my machine but they are miles away from your standards.

I am convinced that a poll in Chinese forums may show some interesting and useful data for you.

Meanwhile I'll keep visiting your website longing for the expected announcement.

 

[mikelove]

Interesting - any particular reason you didn't pick an iPhone instead? (obviously not a keyboard issue ) And I assume you're not somebody who'd ever buy an iPod Touch and carry around two devices? Trying to understand the market here.

Chinese-Forums users are significantly nerdier than typical Chinese learners, I think, so I'm not confident the data from a poll there would be more accurate (= not stacked with votes from Android fans who have absolutely no interest in Pleco but just promote Android everywhere they go) than from one on our website, though I suppose having it somewhere not hosted by Pleco would demonstrate that I wasn't tampering with the results...

 

[sui.generis]

On a serious note, would a good tool for converting iPhone apps to Android, along the lines of the one Palm had for WebOS, make it more likely for you to pursue a full featured Android Pleco? I realize even that wasn't free from porting tasks, it just made the porting a shorter affair. It seems like that kind of tool would be a logical step for someone to take, even though at Android's current pace, it doesn't need the help the way WebOS did, developers who want to dev for both would welcome it (especially if it worked both ways).

Right now I'm mulling the likelihood of emulation for winmo6 apps showing up on Android, like styletap or the like (Which doesn't seem likely, to be honest). Alternatively, I can dual boot on my TP2. After that, I'd pretty much have to keep that winmo device as a standalone Pleco device. Not super convenient, but even old unsupported pleco is better than new something else. If you don't end up going android, please keep the winmo version in your new license agreements even after you abandon updating/supporting the software itself for us holdouts (and for people who buy obsolete winmos as cheap Pleco conduits).

Chinese-Forums users are significantly nerdier than typical Chinese learners, I think, so I'm not confident the data from a poll there would be more accurate (= not stacked with votes from Android fans who have absolutely no interest in Pleco but just promote Android everywhere they go) than from one on our website, though I suppose having it somewhere not hosted by Pleco would demonstrate that I wasn't tampering with the results...

Why not use a 3rd party polling apparatus, that way you can both poll Pleco users, and chinese-forums users and let other interested parties embed it elsewhere. That way, as far as that 3rd party poller can control for, you don't get overlap, but you do get a wide audience.

And btw, nerds like Apple.

 

[mikelove]

A tool like that isn't technically possible AFAIK - the gap between native and managed code is really too great for any automated system to do much with. And even then there'd still be the need to maintain two code bases. WM emulation for Android is very unlikely, but you might see Palm OS emulation via StyleTap - if other platforms are any guide that would only be useful with PlecoDict 1.0, though, and you'd likely encounter the same issues selecting text and handwriting characters in a resistive-screen OS on a capacitive screen that people have had using Pleco in emulation on webOS. And dual-booting is certainly a possibility as you say.

Any poll that isn't explicitly restricted to existing Pleco customers runs the risk of getting spammed by Android boosters (a significant number of whom seem to approach the mobile OS wars with a sort of religious fervor) - only takes one person who really really wants Pleco on Android to post about it in a dozen Android forums and generate thousands of pro-Android clicks. (not really any parallel for that on the desktop side of things, nobody's going to go into a big Windows 7 forum and get everyone to vote for putting such-and-such cool app on Windows 7 out of an abiding love for Windows 7)

I myself am a proud Apple-liking nerd, it's more that the people who feel strongly enough about Android versus iPhone that they refuse to buy the latter under any circumstances tend to be considerably more computer-savvy than the average Pleco user. (at least that's my sense of it) I don't see Android versus iPhone becoming anything other than a matter of personal preference anytime soon - this won't be a night-and-day comparison like WM versus iPhone (or WM versus Android), neither company is going to let things slip that far - and judging by the iPhone 4G leaks, it seems like aside from the lack of a keyboard (not actually that oft-cited an issue) neither platform is likely to achieve clear hardware superiority anytime soon either.

So the size and steadfastness of that Android-only group are a critical question here; they have to demonstrate they're large enough to buy tens of thousands of copies of our software that we wouldn't sell otherwise. And the importance of that is why I'm worried about getting accurate results. Steadfastness is definitely key, since if someone merely prefers Android but would buy an iPhone / iPod if that's the only way to run Pleco, there's probably some combination of other things we can do for them (via lower prices, new licenses, new features, etc) that'll make them equally happy but at a lower cost to us than an Android port. (another problem with the poll, and why there'd need to be a "don't support any new platforms but add such-and-such long list of new features to your iPhone software instead" option)

 

[sui.generis]

Any poll that isn't explicitly restricted to existing Pleco customers runs the risk of getting spammed by Android boosters (a significant number of whom seem to approach the mobile OS wars with a sort of religious fervor) - only takes one person who really really wants Pleco on Android to post about it in a dozen Android forums and generate thousands of pro-Android clicks. (not really any parallel for that on the desktop side of things, nobody's going to go into a big Windows 7 forum and get everyone to vote for putting such-and-such cool app on Windows 7 out of an abiding love for Windows 7)

You make Android users sound like Apple users. Having evangelists on your side isn't an entirely negative affair. And for the record, I disagree that there is no material hardware difference between Android and the iPhone. Just because one particular hardware tweak isn't oft cited and the iPhone form factor is the most common Android form factor (not exactly true, given Droid sales, but true enough) too doesn't mean that having small options isn't a meaningful advantage. I don't expect to be able to prove that to you any time soon, and I'm not an anti-iPhone zealot -- I recommend it to others from time to time -- it just doesn't meet my requirements. Small differences in hardware can make a big difference in the experience. I do expect over time, you'll see the advantages present themselves as the small number of computer sophisticates who prefer Android for particular software reasons also happen to hold enormous influence over a significant part of the market -- Apple owes these same people a lot of sales. And Google, from other products, understands the importance of niche features. Serving the top 1% well means influencing many multiples more of people who don't even know that feature exists.

Any poll that is explicitly restricted to existing Pleco customers runs the risk of not informing you of people who would buy in if only there were android version. Maybe you meant potential pleco customers, and I definitely take that point.

 

[mikelove]

They are like Apple users in that sense - this thread wouldn't exist if it weren't for people being passionate about Android And many people don't have any moral qualms about ballot-stuffing if it's for a cause they believe in.

Hardware options are an advantage for users but a disadvantage for developers - a full-featured Pleco on Android would necessarily need to have a lot more options in terms of user interface configuration than the iPhone version in order to accommodate the full range of Android form factors / screen sizes / etc in an ergonomically-friendly way. Unless we really stuck to a Droid-or-Nexus-or-get-lost policy, which I think we'd have a hard time maintaining. And I'm well aware of that influential 1%, their counterparts are responsible for a lot of obscure but really cool Pleco features, features that would incidentally suffer if we committed lots of resources to an Android port.

A poll restricted to prospective Pleco customers would be perfect, but how do we create such a poll?

 

[Zeldor]

mikelove:

Tens of thousands new customers? I find it hard to believe that you have hundreds of thousands of Pleco purchases on iPhone Are there even so many people in the western world learning Chinese?

I also support sui.generis - if there is a poll, I cannot vote. And others too. I won't buy current gen iPhone [I really really want a keyboard, why can't Apple make version with it?] and I am sure I won't buy current iPad [if it ever arrives at Poland]. I am also pretty sure I won't get next-gen iPads, unless they introduce features that are against what Apple represents. I cannot afford to buy more expensive stuff only because of Pleco - your software is not free after all. I want the best deal for my money, and I see nothing better at it than Android devices.

 

[mikelove]

Tens of thousands, yes - given the substantial up-front licensing costs along with the massive amount of development time and the ongoing expense of maintaining two separate code bases (one for C and one for Java), there's no way an Android version would be worth our while if we only sold a couple of thousand copies. (seriously - we haven't even covered our licensing costs on iPhone yet, though we're pretty close to doing so and the wave of post-flashcard-release buyers should push us well past the mark)

 

[numble]

Have you ever thought of following the model that many phone App developers have followed, doing small, focused and cheap items (and selling for cheap), compared to large, complicated Apps, that many would just transfer their licenses to?

Don't know exactly how that would apply to dictionary software, but maybe learning software (reinforced by licenses?) might work?

I just hate seeing these cheap Apps (both cheap to develop and cheap to purchase, some of them for Chinese learners) thriving in the App Store, while people here are clamoring for a port (which, judging from the iPhone port that is still not done, will be around a ~2 year process, and which I think can still can/should have some new features or design changes). that will only be a platform where people are transferring their licenses to. Could you turn off license transfers? Possibly, but you've let the genie out of the bottle with allowing it on iPhone, and the vocal Android users would probably force you to do the same there.

 

[mikelove]

Certainly thought about some other cheap spin-off products, yes - a simpler dictionary might actually have to go out under a different brand to avoid confusion, but even ignoring that there are some other specialized apps that could leverage our existing code nicely. A bilingual Bible app, for example - charge $5 or $10 for it, no license fees to anyone since we'd use public-domain bibles (King James and CUV, probably) and CC-CEDICT and/or PLC, great application for our document reader code. Bibles are a huge business on iPhone, just look at the top-selling app charts. Or a flashcards app with premade HSK lists only and a vastly reduced feature set, say. Or something just for stroke order - the animations are a little wonky right now, but that's certainly fixable. Or something just for audio, or a standalone fullscreen handwriting pad - tons of things like this we can work on once we've got everything squared away with our mainline iPhone product. But none of these apps have much in the way of "institutional" status about them - none of them are the sort of thing people are going to clamor to get ported to Android, they'll just look for and download something on Android that does the same thing.

License transfers aren't hurting us as much as you might think - they're greatly outnumbered by people who bought our software brand-new on iPhone. And there are people posting in this very thread who don't own a copy of Pleco on any platform yet.

 

[numble]

Re: License transfers--for some reason I feel like many people here are talking about their own personal putative upgrade/transfer paths from Palm/Windows to Android, while the previous iPhone request thread did not have so many, though that is not based on any empirical data.

 

[mikelove]

Fair point, though again that might have more to do with the particular people interested enough in Android to post about it on here than anything else. And if nothing else, this thread should demonstrate that vocal Android users can't force us to do anything - heck, we might not even able to swing things licensing-wise to allow free transfers on Android, even if we were so inclined. And there's certainly a case to be made that Pleco for Android ought to be treated differently on account of the whole total-rewrite-in-Java thing.

 

[mikelove]

Oh, and for people just following this thread and not regularly checking the rest of the forums, see the thoroughly non-scientific Android flashcards poll here.

 

[character]

[I really really want a keyboard, why can't Apple make version with it?]

iPhone OS 4 beta releases support using a bluetooth keyboard with the phone. Keep in mind the iPhone touchscreen keyboard works better than most/all other such keyboards.

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FWIW, my 'free' developer Droid arrived; that screen is awesome. Motorola should hurry out a keyboardless version of Droid, as the physical keyboard on it is crap.

 

[v0rt]

I value having everything in one device (thank you, smart phone revolution), and since I'm obsessed with Pleco, its platform availability will guide my future smart phone purchasing or non-purchasing decisions. I'm presently using Pleco on a Dell Axim X30, and I'd love to see Pleco find it's way onto more than one platform (and thus, more than one wireless carrier) that isn't facing complete obsolescence.

Off topic: Pleco's a great product, and I'd happily pay for an additional license for a desktop version, if one ever arrives.

 

[numble]

Android fans: You can have your Pleco and Android too!
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/21/andr ... to-iphone/