Google Android
- Thread starter westmeadboy
- Start date
Well that's true for a lot of people, but the licenses we signed for a lot of our Palm/WM content were strictly one-device-at-a-time and the fact that it's the same user unfortunately doesn't help much.
I really wouldn't recommend buying any current Android tablet expecting to run Pleco on it - Google have specifically discouraged manufacturers from making tablets until 3.0 comes out, and to be honest it's very unlikely we'll do anything much to support pre-3.0 tablets when there'll be so many improvements for them in 3.0. Hopefully Samsung will release a 3.0 update for the Galaxy, but you really might want to think about delaying your tablet purchase for a month or two at least...
mikelove said:
As far as I know the Galaxies are very similar, so mixing them up is even correct to some extend. Mike, could you please explain why you are differentiating between the mobile phone Galaxy and the tablet Galaxy? I would expect that from the point of PlecoDict there should be no difference... At the moment I have the impression that 3.0 sounds a little bit like an excuse to me at least. Android 2.2 is here and why should Plecodict not work on this release?
I know that 2.2 might not be tuned towards tablets, yet my own experience says that it is already great. Did you had the chance to work with a 2.2 tablet yet for some time? If yes, where do you see problems? I'm curious to learn more.
haraldalbrecht said:
Because if Google introduces a bunch of new UI frameworks in Android 3.0 - very likely with its increased focus on tablets - we don't want to have to go to the trouble of supporting both the old and new ones. Also, it's possible that in 2.3 or 3.0 they might introduce some new capability to the NDK (or some other low-level thing we rely on) that makes our lives so much easier that we'd rather not have to support systems that don't have that new capability.
haraldalbrecht said:
I haven't used one at all yet - I just know from Google's statements that they're working on an official release of Android for tablets, and I'd rather design around that than design around some proprietary Samsung-specific tablet skin that even Samsung won't be using in 6 months.
As for the proprietary skin: I already installed a lot of applications which are all non-Galaxy-specific without problems. In fact, with only one exception they flawlessly make good use of the available display space. The one exception is a commercial one for running around in nature, looking for boxes laying around. Its free counterpart, in contrast, works like a champ on my tablet. Maps, et cetera are literally great.
I still don't get the whole discussion, I have to admit. But I also don't know what is really in the basket for android 3. I can understand you being cautious. On the other hand, the early adaptor 2.2 decides already are here and are fun to use.
I still don't get the whole discussion, I have to admit. But I also don't know what is really in the basket for android 3. I can understand you being cautious. On the other hand, the early adaptor 2.2 decides already are here and are fun to use.
haraldalbrecht said:
Understood, but when you're designing a very complicated app that you intend to charge a lot of money for and keep supporting for years, you really really don't want to be saddled with any more backwards-compatibility than you absolutely have to be... even way back when we released our first product on Windows Mobile we caught a lot of grief for the fact that it didn't run on Pocket PC 2002 but required Windows Mobile 2003, but that saved us a lot of time later on (though in hindsight we would have been better off waiting for / designing around the much more radically different Windows Mobile 5).
We'd rather have an app with stiff system requirements than an app that feels outdated the day it goes on sale, because long-term it'll be a much better product. And on Android we intend to be very hard-nosed about compatibility issues from day 1; we simply can't afford to buy / perform testing on hundreds of different Android devices, if your device doesn't run Pleco perfectly and it's not some 20-million-unit-selling multi-carrier masterpiece we may not be able to do anything for you but apologize and proffer a list of tested / recommended devices.
Seems to be rocket, err, tablet science ... 
Google's slowness on the Android Tablet front may be due to internal confusion about whether to push for Android or Chrome. I thought it was strange that they were trying to do two operating systems at the same time, and there's no natural relationship between the two (like there is with OS X and iOS). Eric Schmidt's comment that Android is for touch and Chrome is keyboard sounds confused at best.
Why don't they try to make the Android browser as good as it can be instead of creating a whole new OS consisting of only a browser? If the argument is that a browser-based OS would be easier to use than Android, then why not make Android easier to use? Or couldn't they just use a browser-only Android set up? Why an entirely new OS?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/techn ... technology
For Google, the Browser Does It All
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Published: November 24, 2010
“We don’t want to call the question and say this one does one thing, this one does another,” said Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive. “So far the model seems to be the Android solution is particularly optimized for things that involve touch in some form and Chrome OS appears to be for keyboard-based solutions.”
Why don't they try to make the Android browser as good as it can be instead of creating a whole new OS consisting of only a browser? If the argument is that a browser-based OS would be easier to use than Android, then why not make Android easier to use? Or couldn't they just use a browser-only Android set up? Why an entirely new OS?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/techn ... technology
For Google, the Browser Does It All
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Published: November 24, 2010
“We don’t want to call the question and say this one does one thing, this one does another,” said Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive. “So far the model seems to be the Android solution is particularly optimized for things that involve touch in some form and Chrome OS appears to be for keyboard-based solutions.”
gato said:
I think at this point Chrome OS is basically a momentum thing - they've invested a lot of time / money / PR into it and they don't want to admit it was a mistake / drop it like Microsoft did with the Kin or Palm did with the Foleo, so instead they'll quietly delay it, open-source the interesting bits and let development stagnate while they go back to working on Android.
Actually in a funny way I think Google is starting to turn into Microsoft - they're losing their best employees to Facebook just like Microsoft lost them to Google, they're having difficulty keeping their partners in line, they're getting entangled in ugly ugly lawsuits and governmental investigations, they're making mistakes and launching ill-conceived products the existence of which can best be explained by executive power-grabs... that doesn't mean they can't keep churning out brilliant products, but it may mean that their glory days are ending and they're never again going to be quite as close to ruling the world as they seemed to be a year or two ago.
sui.generis
探花
gato said:
I was pretty shocked when I found out that the android browser wasn't chrome, that they had in fact been dev'd entirely separately, and worse (since Android was an acquisition) that they've done very little since to unify the code base between them. I switched to Chrome after FF3 started giving me a bunch of performance issues, and I have about 10x more extensions than I did on FF, I've started to get attached to them. It'd be great if they worked across desktop/mobile. Not great enough to ever use ChromeOS, but nice.
Basically you had two different teams building both without a lot of crosstalk, and I don't think the company really knew in the very early days that Android would be as successful as it has become, and now that it has, they have yet to sort out what to do with their competing assets. As to why they haven't cut ChromeOS yet, hopefully mike is right. I think given the infrastructure of the moment, the cloud is a nice complement to local computing, but little more.
character
状元
My guess is they'll keep working on both, as Chrome might be appealing as a thin client for desktops, while Android is doing well in mobile. Customers already using Google Apps could conceivably replace Windows with Chrome. Google may benefit from all the protocols Apple is pioneering with other companies, such as AirPrint, so Chrome doesn't need a bunch of printer drivers. Chrome might be Google's way of opening another front against MS/Apple.
westmeadboy
榜眼
On a slightly different note:
Another chilling glimpse of what the mobile world would be if Apple were allowed to become a monopoly [Cedric Beust]
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/26/ ... gazine-app
Another chilling glimpse of what the mobile world would be if Apple were allowed to become a monopoly [Cedric Beust]
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/26/ ... gazine-app
character
状元
Some obvious hyperbole from Google, but it's clear Chrome OS is not just (or mainly) about mobile:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/25/ ... -desktops/
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/25/ ... -desktops/
sui.generis
探花
westmeadboy said:
I almost wonder if they were baiting Apple to get some free publicity, and if so, boy did they see Apple coming (and boy did Apple not see them coming). The story got picked up pretty widely and I'm certain does more to harm the Apple ecosphere than having a Android mag in their store that no one would read. Not that either could do much harm...
If I ran anti apple or pro apple competitor content I'd be submitting apps based on it like crazy hoping to get one rejected.
character said:
I doubt that's technically untrue,if you look at what most PCs do and how non-critical those actions are, and the increasing avail of things like Office webapps and Google Apps. They aren't saying that businesses WILL make that change, just that they could on a technological level without losing anything valuable.
Back to the Galaxy thing:
if pleco will work fine on my galaxy s it will also work fine on your galaxy tab. Just use the smartphone-version then
Google said they will make modifications to let apps look better on Tablets with 3.0 but that doesn't mean that 2.2 Apps won't work on your galaxy tab anymore.
And 3.0 will not be released in near future. First there will be gingerbread (2.3) with some small enhancements and it's not sure that it will be released this year. I expect 3.0 to be released not until mid 2011, we'll see
if pleco will work fine on my galaxy s it will also work fine on your galaxy tab. Just use the smartphone-version then
Google said they will make modifications to let apps look better on Tablets with 3.0 but that doesn't mean that 2.2 Apps won't work on your galaxy tab anymore.
And 3.0 will not be released in near future. First there will be gingerbread (2.3) with some small enhancements and it's not sure that it will be released this year. I expect 3.0 to be released not until mid 2011, we'll see
megaheld said:
They haven't said much about 3.0, but it's entirely possible that they'll introduce a new UI framework - HP/Palm just did for the tablet-friendly version of webOS, thew out the old one altogether - and if they do we'd rather develop for that new framework than develop for an old one and end up with an app that's outdated before it ships. The amount of time it's taking them to release info on 2.3/3.0 if anything provides further evidence that there's a major redesign involved here...
nciku_kevin
Member
mikelove said:
Hi, this is Kevin from nciku. I wouldn't normally post here, but I want to reply to this. The data in the nciku iPhone app is far more than just the same dictionary that Pleco gives away for free. For example, our entries for common multi-meaning English words have matched Chinese and English definitions so that you can be sure which translation of the word you want, we have over 95,000 bilingual example sentences so you can see the usage of a word etc.
Pleco definitely has its selling points (we're really jealous of your OCR function), but this isn't one of them.
nciku_kevin said:
I just checked half a dozen entries for common words and in every case we had the exact same example sentences that you do - we licensed the same dictionary from FLTRP that you guys did (cost us a pretty penny, too) and there doesn't seem to be any significant difference in what we've done with the content from it. If you'd claim to have added a few extra definitions / examples somewhere that I didn't look, I'd counter that between our free add-on downloads of CC-CEDICT and Adsotrans we probably cover a lot more actual words than you guys do.
I'm not quite sure what you mean about matched English definitions; we do a full-text search of our Chinese-English dictionary and present you with full definitions from that, from which you should pretty easily be able to extract more details about what a particular translation actually means, and we also have a free English-Chinese dictionary available as an add-on download.
I am sorry I mentioned nciku specifically, though - I normally make it a point never to comment on a particular competitor by name (much though I'd like to in the case of a few of them), but I somehow managed to forget that rule in this case since Izmahoby had specifically mentioned your Android app as a potential threat.
I have a lot of respect for what you guys are doing with online dictionaries, you're one of the biggest reasons why we haven't yet tried to launch our own web-based or desktop app, but I can't say I'm not a little nervous about what a company like yours with virtually unlimited resources could do to us if you really set to work on launching a full-on Pleco competitor on smartphones - I get antsy enough about talented people even without huge budgets.
I have a lot of respect for what you guys are doing with online dictionaries, you're one of the biggest reasons why we haven't yet tried to launch our own web-based or desktop app, but I can't say I'm not a little nervous about what a company like yours with virtually unlimited resources could do to us if you really set to work on launching a full-on Pleco competitor on smartphones - I get antsy enough about talented people even without huge budgets.