Google Android

[RobRedbeard]

• Some sort of performance limitation on Android I'm not aware of (slow Chinese font rendering, say?) that makes it much harder to develop a high-quality Chinese dictionary

Doesn't seem to be the case. Chinese font rendering is lightning fast even on my HD running a not-fully-ported version of Android (booted over from Windows Mobile).

Interesting about built in handwriting recognition -- I hadn't seen that. Of course, Android sports changable keyboards, and one can just use the awesome Google IME on it for PinYin input. Still, using the iPhone version today next to the Windows Mobile version, it's hard for me to imagine upgrading to anything. The WinMo version seems to be perfect.

I just wish there was a WinMo device with a snapdragon AND stylus. It was pretty difficult to use Pleco on the HD2. All this left me wanting an Android device, as they seem to be the successor to WinMo.

Still, the arguments you've made are just and sound. An Android version would need it's own team to develop, and it would need a market to fund their paychecks. Maybe if the predictions are true, and Android takes the top-spot in the smartphone market in the next two years, it'll be worth revisiting.

There is also the idea of resolving Pleco's dichotomy of purpose and forking two product lines -- Pleco Dictionary and Pleco Chinese Study Software.

Rob

 

[mikelove]

You really prefer the WM version to the iPhone one? Were you using something approaching the "full" iPhone version - with fullscreen handwriting recognition, full set of dictionaries, etc - or just the free demo one? Did you try out the document reader / web browser at all? Are there any specific reasons other than Instant Access / general hatred of iPhone OS for why you like the WM version beter? (asking this mostly for design improvement reasons - a putative Android version's UI would be based on the iPhone version's, so problems there are better addressed pre-port than post-port)

I don't think a fork of Pleco into separate dictionary / learning lines really makes sense - since we don't have much of a presence in / own much content relating to Chinese learning at the moment, at least in the near term any moves we make into Chinese learning are going to be interesting only because they're integrated into our Chinese dictionary software, so we're a long way off from having something learning-related that might be able to stand on its own.

 

[mfcb]

i cant say i prefer the WM version over the iPhone version (as i never got my hands on one, everybody around me is using WM, at least until recently), but in my case its just like that, that my WM phone provides all the functionality i want to have. the missing upgrade for the reader is well compensated with Opera 10 (and IA via key, hehe) and several other reading SW, each designed for their task. so i must say, that after finally accepting "no more significant upgrades for pleco on WM" i switched to "find SW that supplements pleco" mode...

additionally i should remark, that maybe you never will be able to program all different ways people want to use your software into pleco. so mainly you need to find a way to for them to stick the puzzle together. IA is the way to do it on WM (now), i would like to have some more ways, to use even more functionality, more conveniently. i already mentioned an API (; another possible way would be to release sqlite versions of the free dictionaries... (instead of your .pdb ones). of course that makes only sense after full-text search is enabled on them... a huge benefit of that would be ,that we could modify/extend/repair the entries...

 

[mikelove]

I think it's more likely we'd release a desktop converter for our free dictionary format (once full-text search is enabled) than that we'd release SQLite versions of the free dictionaries ourselves - even if we get performance to be on a par with the built-in dictionaries, the files are still going to be a lot bigger, so for distribution purposes we're much better off with our proprietary format.

Whether or not there'll be any more significant upgrades to Pleco on WM depends on your definition of "significant" - nothing on the level of 2.0, but there are still some good-sized improvements like the aforementioned full-text searches in the works.

 

[mfcb]

Whether or not there'll be any more significant upgrades to Pleco on WM depends on your definition of "significant" - nothing on the level of 2.0, but there are still some good-sized improvements like the aforementioned full-text searches in the works.

well, sorry, of course full-text search is significant! but i was thinking more in the line of UI enhancements, and these seem to be not on the list anymore (e.g. fingerfriendlyness)...
hehe, even to that i got used to, most of the times i touch the right buttons, the menues are anyway replaced by a fingerfriendly version from the OS... just need the stylus for drawing characters.

 

[westmeadboy]

Interesting new and free handwriting IME coming soon for Android: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCXwfV0YEzA

Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Pinyin, Zhuyin and English!

 

[Huguete]

This is really amazing!

 

[mikelove]

Looks cool, but adds more support to my "people are going to replace Pleco with cobbled-together free stuff on Android" argument. (well, not "replace," but "approximate well enough that they're no longer willing to pay $100 for the real thing" anyway) Though I guess that depends on the quality of their recognition algorithm - we've done a very nice business replacing Apple's even-more-free built-in recognizer on iPhone with our own.

 

[haraldalbrecht]

Looks cool, but adds more support to my "people are going to replace Pleco with cobbled-together free stuff on Android" argument.

Sorry, but this is exactly the kind of product manager attitude that is making me turn away from once good products. I am willing to shell out money for a good product. But if you have no interest in making your product available on Android I'm turning away and trying to purchase other products or cobble together free stuff ... as long as I can get my requirements satisfied. You do not seem willing to satisfy Android platform demand so that is okay.

But for me this is the tripping point to turn now finally away from Pleco. I've used your product for a long time as a happy customer. I've accepted that the PalmOS road to PD 2 was difficult. I tried to give my share by purchasing a yet incomplete product. But I'm not willing anymore to get called a person who uses coblled-together free stuff and I'm not willing to accept your seemingly antipathy of the Android platform. And I will not purchase a windows mobile nor an apple phone. Finally, I don't like to get treated like that as a long-time customer.

Good bye. Do not count me as a customer of yours any more. I'm serious about this issue.
Harald Albrecht

*silently closes the door*

 

[mikelove]

I'm very sorry if you took offense at that post. I understand that the people on this thread are willing to pay more for quality - you wouldn't be here asking for an Android version of Pleco if you weren't. I'm just worried that other people won't feel likewise. We need a lot of users to justify doing an Android port - a few discerning customers aren't going to cut it, this has to be big.

I've actually found this a very helpful discussion in working out some of the technical / business consequences of an Android version; a lot of the responses to my anti-Android comments have been quite insightful, and I'd venture to say that an Android version would be considerably less likely to happen if there hadn't been people here willing to engage on these issues.

But anyway, if that's the way you feel then so be it - I hope you find another product that meets your needs, and wish you all the best. (and thanks again for all of the 2.0 beta-testing help on Palm)

 

[Huguete]

I am feeling too very deceived about your comments on your idea about the Android community.

I am convinced you are completely wrong about it.

For instance, between my group of friends, as I already told you before, most of them own newwest generation Android devices. These 'gadgets' are not cheap machines most of them are Google Nexus One. In my case I've just spent about US$650.00 for my HTC Desire aka Bravo (my previous handheld phone was a HTC Blackstone priced US$900.00).

I can assure you that we dont wish to collect cheap or free apps. We are willing to expend whatever it takes to acquire a good piece of software. We'd love to be able to order Pleco once it would be available for our new devices.

 

[mikelove]

Sorry, maybe there's some confusion here because people didn't read my previous post about this free app problem. Let me clarify.

First off, just to be clear - by "free" I mean "legally free," not "pirated." I.E., apps which the creator has for whatever reason chosen to give away for free.

There are a ton of free Chinese dictionaries on iPhone now - in fact, even Pleco is technically one of them since our free "basic" / "demo" version is quite functional on its own (we sell most of the cool dictionaries / features as add-on modules). The presence of / continued improvements to these free dictionaries have significantly hurt our sales and forced us to lower our prices below what they are on Palm/WM (in spite of Apple's 30% commission versus the 2-3% we pay our credit card company for Pleco.com orders).

However, this situation is considerably better than it might otherwise be because iPhone apps don't integrate very well with each other; you can't download a great free dictionary and use it with a separate, great free flashcard program, you need to download one app that does everything, so the likelihood of a free dictionary doing all of that for you even half as well as Pleco is considerably lower.

This is not the case on Android, so we end up in a situation where someone could download a high-quality free flashcard app like Anki, a (high-quality?) free handwriting recognizer like the one just described, and a dictionary designed to integrate beautifully with these things, and end up with something considerably better than any free Chinese dictionary app on iPhone. That doesn't mean that nobody would buy our software on Android, but it means that the prices we'd be able to charge for it would be lower still than our iPhone prices, and that more people on Android than on iPhone would be likely to dismiss our app as not offering enough added value to justify choosing it over those free apps (as many do even on iPhone - they even occasionally say so in reviews of those free apps).

So that's my worry - we're already getting squeezed on that front on iPhone, and even if we were only going to be squeezed the same amount on Android, it would be tough to justify an Android port given how much more expensive / complicated it would be than porting to iPhone was. One thing that might help would be to get rid of free platform transfers on Android, but I suspect that would result in hundreds of posts / emails that were just as upset as haraldalbrecht's - even if we explained that this was the only way we could financially justify an Android version - stating that if iPhone users are getting to switch platforms for free it's unfair for Android users to have to pay.

The best thing that can happen for Pleco on Android right now is for Google to find a way to make it easier for developers of native C applications to port them over to Android, thus lowering the cost of an Android port to something closer to iPhone; I'm hoping the pressure for cross-platform development alternatives after Apple's Flash-banning decision might push them in the direction of offering full native-code Android development (instead of the current, very limited NDK solution).

 

[Huguete]

I must acknowledge most of your reasons posted above.

In my case (I know it means just one person) I wouldn't mind at all paying for your excelent software the same prices you charge for the iPhone version.

 

[Zeldor]

mike:

Huh, Anki has no handwriting input to check your flashcards afaik, how can it be called advanced then?

Same goes about disctionaries - everyone learning Chinese [or any language] for at least a while, can tell a difference between good and bad dictionary. And anyone serious about learning is willing to pay for good product.

Anyone that pirates Pleco [and it's probably really easy] is not serious about learning any language. It needs investment. Pleco costs as much as just few lessons or short Chinese course. Or few imported books. That's low price.

But I'd really really wish Pleco could be even more - a whole learning platform. I'd happily resign from any Chinese lessons and use Pleco as learning tool. Make lessons for all HSK levels, stoke order learning system, flashcards, thematic sections [few lessons on a thme, like "Leasure Chinese", "Travel Chinese", etc.]. Add speec recognition so it can teach/check pronunciation. Sure, it's a long list, but I'd be willing to pay premium or even monthly fee for that.

Also - if there is someone that may be thinking about making Pleco clone [and maybe even smth better] on Android, big chances he is member of this forum, posting in this thread. That's how most things start - people try to find a product they want. IF they can't - they try to convince authors to expand/adapt and fullfil their needs. And if it does not work, some people decide to create it by themselves. You are seeing mostly bad stuff about Android [and well, seeing that is good for businessman], but you could try to turn things around. You are making commercial product, but you could still make use of open-source minded community that likes Android. I am sure you could get many volunteers to create new options, Android stuff, translations, Chinese courses, flashcard collections, etc etc - probably in exchange for free product and/or discounts they could pass to friends.

 

[Huguete]

I totally concur with Zeldor.

 

[mikelove]

Huguette - thanks!

Zeldor - it's actually not that easy to pirate Pleco - we haven't even seen a cracked iPhone version yet, though we know it's coming - but it's probably true that serious language learners are more likely to be willing to pay up. Moving in the "learning platform" direction would certainly make an Android port easier to justify, since the work on that seems to be more on the content development / licensing side (which is very portable / non-platform-dependent) than on the programming side, but that might just mean we'd release a Pleco Reader for Android to present that product line to Android users without offering a corresponding higher-cost / lower-return dictionary.

I'm still not too worried about competition on Android - if it were easy to release a Pleco-like dictionary for Android we'd already be working on one ourselves The iPhone market had considerably more time than Android has had to come up with a Pleco clone (without us to compete with - we weren't on iPhone at all until mid-December and didn't have a flashcard-enabled version until last week) and didn't, all it's produced to date is a succession of free / low-cost apps plus a couple of more expensive apps with licensed dictionaries but quality that's otherwise no better than the free ones.

And given that this is an either-or decision for us - invest resources into an Android version or into further development on iPhone - not supporting Android would let us further the competitive gap between us and a would-be Android competitor, and thus increase our odds of persuading people who aren't sure what smartphone to get to buy an iPhone (or an iPod Touch) so that they can run Pleco. Say for example that we have a certain amount of money which we can either invest in a) a Chinese handwriting recognizer for a new Android product or b) a camera OCR system for our iPhone product (allowing people to take pictures of Chinese characters and look them up in the dictionary) - which of those is really a better use of our money? Is it better to have a great Chinese dictionary that works on Android, or a Chinese dictionary with a truly unique / special feature like that that works on some platform? Which of those really does more for the cause of making it easier to learn Chinese?


Since I really don't want to offend people with these comments, I should say one other thing more explicitly. My posts here aren't so anti-Android because I really hate Android this much; I'm rather pragmatic about it, I just want to do what's best for Pleco and our customers. They're anti-Android because most of the people in this thread are pro-Android, and hence the best way to explore the merits / pitfalls of an Android version of Pleco is for me to take the opposing side. Which may get me into a little trouble if it makes people think that the official position of Pleco is that "Android Sucks!," but it does a lot more for actually getting Pleco on Android than a succession of messages about how much people really want an Android version

 

[sui.generis]

My posts here aren't so anti-Android because I really hate Android this much; I'm rather pragmatic about it, I just want to do what's best for Pleco and our customers. They're anti-Android because most of the people in this thread are pro-Android, and hence the best way to explore the merits / pitfalls of an Android version of Pleco is for me to take the opposing side. Which may get me into a little trouble if it makes people think that the official position of Pleco is that "Android Sucks!," but it does a lot more for actually getting Pleco on Android than a succession of messages about how much people really want an Android version

Lies! We all know you throw darts at a pic of Sergey Brin in your downtime and use Live for search. You probably play Xbox too. :shock:

:wink:

I appreciate you engaging the community on the issue. One of the nice things about not dealing with some massive monolith of the company is you sometimes get the ear of the decision makers. You don't have to entertain this thread, but you keep coming back. Ironically enough, a big part of my last platform choice involved keeping pleco (shortly before my new platform was killed by its maker), and not just because it's an awesome program, but also I like doing business with smaller companies. It's a much better experience. Being heard but not agreed with is far, far better than not being heard at all.

Oh, and do keep your eyes open on two news items as the develop: the Google Editions store coming this summer, and the likely related release of a Google branded tablet (rumored to use Android, not Chrome OS) along with it. The store and tablet release could potentially bring more people who both want education tech and are willing to pay for it to the general android install base.

 

[mfcb]

i think its time for me to join the chorus, even i don't feel any pressure to do so right now. as long as i can i will use WinMo (read: NOT WP7), and i hope that will be a very long time. but if i will ever be forced to choose between 2,3 or maybe 4 or more other systems, my actual preference would be Android.

Could be, that this will change until the time when i really have to choose. My reasons for this are purely gut-feelings, i never had any of the other systems in my hands long enough to get a deep impression of the differences. as i said before (in other threads as well), my current system fulfills all my needs, even can say so for pleco (on WinMo), although there are always ideas for improvements and/or innovations.

I understand Mike's reasoning on concentrating on the iPhone version, it makes sense, to improve the product. i still hope, that the one or other improvement will make it to WinMo as well.

Considering how long it took for the iPhone version, and assuming, that no Android version is in actual development (although we will never know before the actual beta-testing starts :wink: ) i think i will really have to go for a spare Touch Pro, hehe...

 

[numble]

Oh, and do keep your eyes open on two news items as the develop: the Google Editions store coming this summer, and the likely related release of a Google branded tablet (rumored to use Android, not Chrome OS) along with it. The store and tablet release could potentially bring more people who both want education tech and are willing to pay for it to the general android install base.

I don't think the Google Editions store will really affect Android. It's supposed to be device-agnostic, kind of like how you can read Kindle and Barnes and Noble books on Blackberry, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (but not all Android devices, yet).

 

[sui.generis]

Oh, and do keep your eyes open on two news items as the develop: the Google Editions store coming this summer, and the likely related release of a Google branded tablet (rumored to use Android, not Chrome OS) along with it. The store and tablet release could potentially bring more people who both want education tech and are willing to pay for it to the general android install base.

I don't think the Google Editions store will really affect Android. It's supposed to be device-agnostic, kind of like how you can read Kindle and Barnes and Noble books on Blackberry, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad (but not all Android devices, yet).

The store is supposed to support multiple devices, but I don't think you're right about it not affecting Android. Sure, the iPhone was a great reading platform (one of the best, really) even before Apple got into the book selling business because every store that made an app went for the iPhone first. But having its own store does make a difference. For all the techies like myself who can make devices do all sorts of things with aftermarket addons, the truth remains that having something available out-of-the-box, and marketing it accordingly makes a big difference in public, mass market perception.

Now I haven't heard any stories linking the Google branded tablet with the Google Editions store, but with their expected debuts falling so close together, I think Google is going to roll them out together and this device will be Google's Kindle. Sure, you can read Amazon books on a variety of devices, but they've also sold millions of kindles. I think this approach could have a dramatic effect on the makeup of the Android install base -- that it could pull in a lot of new blood. Not because of exclusivity of the store, but because Google's push into the book selling business will change perceptions and even raise Android's profile.