Mike, it is probably a bit early to be asking this, but as you find out more about iOS7 at the conference can you tell us whether you are seeing sufficient integration between it and Mac OS to make running Pleco for iOS to the Mac desktop feasible? If memory serves, you at least entertained the possibility that if Apple proceeded to further integrate the two OSs, Pleco might come to the Mac without a separate port. Is this looking possible, impossible, or just unclear?
iOS7, Mac OS and Pleco
- Thread starter dcarpent
- Start date
To be honest, from the coding side not much seems to have changed - still doable but still a good bit of work.
However, from the UI side the situation has actually gotten slightly worse, mainly because there's now a more dramatic difference between iOS and Mac OS interface design - we're going to be significantly changing a number of things in our new design because of iOS 7, and those are going to make it a poorer fit for Mac OS than it was before, meaning more work to redesign it to work well on Macs. The lack of Retina displays in (most) Macs was troublesome anyway - not great for our new type design - but now we're also going to need different icons / screen designs / etc to feel like a good Mac app.
That doesn't mean it's impossible, but it certainly hasn't gotten any easier, I'm sorry to say.
However, from the UI side the situation has actually gotten slightly worse, mainly because there's now a more dramatic difference between iOS and Mac OS interface design - we're going to be significantly changing a number of things in our new design because of iOS 7, and those are going to make it a poorer fit for Mac OS than it was before, meaning more work to redesign it to work well on Macs. The lack of Retina displays in (most) Macs was troublesome anyway - not great for our new type design - but now we're also going to need different icons / screen designs / etc to feel like a good Mac app.
That doesn't mean it's impossible, but it certainly hasn't gotten any easier, I'm sorry to say.
Oh well, maybe OS8 (or OS9 . . .) Thanks for the response. From what you say I'm also assuming the "big update" will probably show up about the same time as OS7, given all the changes. But better not to have Pleco out of date as soon as the update is released! What is your reaction to OS7 as a whole so far? Pretty big changes it seems. A step in a good direction, or a misstep? It looked pretty good to me, but I'm no expert, just an end user.
It looks good - actually there are a couple of seemingly-minor items still under NDA (you can read about them in blog posts, or somebody who's not a developer but read those posts can talk about them) that I think are going to have a *huge* impact over the next year or two.
This might be a weird idea, but how about let ios/android pleco run http server for a dictionary lookup page (and maybe flashcard test page). That way we can keep everything on phones while allowing PC, android widget, smart watch e.t.c accessing portion of pleco. I guess this might have license issue though.
For quick translations on OS X, I don't see how a third-party app would compete with Apple's built-in dictionary gesture. I have installed a Chinese-English dictionary and can now tap (with three fingers) on any unknown word on Facebook to look it up…and the same works in emails, Terminal (Taiwanese BBS 
) etc., and probably even in the new iBooks app.
Then again, Pleco on iOS does not make money from the PLC dictionary either but from all the other extras, so maybe there is a market for people who would open an external app that has higher-quality dictionaries.
) etc., and probably even in the new iBooks app.Then again, Pleco on iOS does not make money from the PLC dictionary either but from all the other extras, so maybe there is a market for people who would open an external app that has higher-quality dictionaries.
IMO—A web app would be a great compromise for all the people asking for a desktop version of Pleco.
There could even be a login option to allow access to paid features & dictionaries.
Would have been clunky in the past, but I've seen some very smooth stuff running on HTML5.
Edit: you've seemed dismissive of this in the past, but for what it's worth, I would be ecstatic over a desktop Pleco. I would pay for it and I'm sure a lot of other people would too—especially power users
There could even be a login option to allow access to paid features & dictionaries.
Would have been clunky in the past, but I've seen some very smooth stuff running on HTML5.
Edit: you've seemed dismissive of this in the past, but for what it's worth, I would be ecstatic over a desktop Pleco. I would pay for it and I'm sure a lot of other people would too—especially power users
jlnr - the addition of C-E/E-C dictionaries to Dictionary.app in Mavericks certainly hasn't strengthened the case for a desktop version, true...
Bendy-Ren - honestly I'm feeling these days like it just makes more sense to focus on tablets; if "power users" aren't satisfied with them already, I'd rather nudge them in that direction (e.g. with a split-screen view/edit "translator mode" for the document reader) then go to the trouble of developing a whole new app for desktops.
A web app is a huge development hassle and I don't see a good way to monetize it, particularly given my loathing of advertising (and especially of the sort of invasive advertising that we'd need to make the numbers work).
Fundamentally, it gets easier to develop an app like Pleco every year - the royalty demands are getting a bit steeper but the technology gets more and more forgiving - and I don't think we can maintain a satisfactory lead over our prospective competitors if we try to support too many platforms; we have to spend most of our time focusing on features. Thanks to iOS and then Android, our flashcard system has gone largely unchanged since *2008* - it was cutting-edge then and it isn't now (there are something like 2000 lines of code devoted to working around heap memory allocation limits on Palm OS) - and prior to the recent update, our iOS UI was so ugly and backward that it was practically screaming out for a better-designed alternative; if we don't focus all of our energy on improving our iOS and Android apps, we're liable to find ourselves losing more sales on those than we gain from supporting a third platform.
Bendy-Ren - honestly I'm feeling these days like it just makes more sense to focus on tablets; if "power users" aren't satisfied with them already, I'd rather nudge them in that direction (e.g. with a split-screen view/edit "translator mode" for the document reader) then go to the trouble of developing a whole new app for desktops.
A web app is a huge development hassle and I don't see a good way to monetize it, particularly given my loathing of advertising (and especially of the sort of invasive advertising that we'd need to make the numbers work).
Fundamentally, it gets easier to develop an app like Pleco every year - the royalty demands are getting a bit steeper but the technology gets more and more forgiving - and I don't think we can maintain a satisfactory lead over our prospective competitors if we try to support too many platforms; we have to spend most of our time focusing on features. Thanks to iOS and then Android, our flashcard system has gone largely unchanged since *2008* - it was cutting-edge then and it isn't now (there are something like 2000 lines of code devoted to working around heap memory allocation limits on Palm OS) - and prior to the recent update, our iOS UI was so ugly and backward that it was practically screaming out for a better-designed alternative; if we don't focus all of our energy on improving our iOS and Android apps, we're liable to find ourselves losing more sales on those than we gain from supporting a third platform.
