Zeldor said:
And to get back to Android market - there are just so many phones, tablets coming... and so many sizes, different hardware stuff [like 3D on LG's new slate]. I know how designing UI is even for web app, it must be real nightmare to plan accomodate 3-12" and then see someone complain that it does not work with his Atrix and 102" 3d plasma Well... certainly people trying to use the app on tv/big screen via hdmi output should be considered.
My hope is that eventually developers will get together and start making manufacturers accommodate us, rather than the other way around - if a significant number of developers agree that we're going to design around these three screen sizes and no others, or that we're going to design our interfaces to look good with the stock Android UI and nothing else, or that we're going to optimize around having such-and-such number of buttons below the display, or that we're going to require this set of OpenGL APIs to be supported and bug-free, then it'll be in manufacturers' interest to follow those rules so that users won't have difficulty running the apps they want.
Google seems to be either unwilling or unable to rein them in, but if you get enough major app developers on board with this then ultimately it could make life better for everyone else in the Android ecosystem - users get the assurance of apps that actually work on their phones, developers get to spend more time making great apps and less time fixing nasty hardware bugs, software stores do a lot more business in paid apps because users are confident that they'll work well, the manufacturers lose out a bit because they no longer have quite as much freedom in their hardware designs but ultimately the platform as a whole is better off.
Zeldor said:
BTW, I wonder if it'd be hard to add an option to translate subtitles in real time [e.x. when you have chinese subbed movie you want to play via hdmi and Pleco to translate subs (translating movie would be even better ) in real time and display them on the movie - many Chinese movies come with subtitles really].
Yes - in a lot of cases those subtitles are actually embedded in separate subtitle files rather than in the actual video frames (this is generally better since it means more readable subtitles and smaller video files), which makes them very very easy to decode, but even without that, as long as the subtitles are over a plain background (rather than being layered right on top of the video) it should be doable. With subtitles on top of video it would be a bit harder - if they're surrounded by outlines then we might be able to do a filter where we'd pick out large evenly-lit white blobs in the bottom 20% of the screen and discard everything else, but it would be quite challenging.
) since there tends to be a lot of tedious Apple-bashing any time the subject of iOS comes up, but there are a few interesting ones for this post.