iPod Touch / iPhone
- Thread starter nihao pengyou
- Start date
I am quite curious as well as to which particular features, if you are at liberty to discuss them at the moment 
, would require internet access? I am currently living and working in China so 3G is not yet an option (at least in the city I live in). In addition, if the price of a data plan when they do come out is anywhere as expensive as they are in the U.S., I wouldn't buy one anyway. Therefore probably 95% of the time I would actually be using Pleco, my phone wouldn't have internet access.
Cheers!
Darrol
, would require internet access? I am currently living and working in China so 3G is not yet an option (at least in the city I live in). In addition, if the price of a data plan when they do come out is anywhere as expensive as they are in the U.S., I wouldn't buy one anyway. Therefore probably 95% of the time I would actually be using Pleco, my phone wouldn't have internet access. Cheers!
Darrol
Well the main two have already been talked about here, I think - loading documents and purchasing / downloading add-on modules. So you don't need continuous internet access, but you will need it when you're initially setting the software up if you want anything more than whatever modules we decide to ship with the basic version - WiFi should be sufficient for that, though.
(though of course, like everything else neither the document reader nor the ability to download add-ons is guaranteed to be in the finished version)
(though of course, like everything else neither the document reader nor the ability to download add-ons is guaranteed to be in the finished version)
Thanks for the clarification Mike! I finally found the topics you are talking about that refer to this. For a moment I was starting to get worried that you were going to add a feature that might require continuous internet access.
I think most of us here expect to be required to have temporary internet access at least to set up the device with Pleco, to install updates such as new software features or adding newly purchased dictionaries (provided Apple allows it). The idea of having a Pleco server for uploading documents to so that client's can easily download them to their iPhones is a great idea if Apple approves of it. While I regularly SFTP into both my old iPhone 2g and my new iPhone 3G, I think for many client's, even with a well written manual with screenshots providing step-by-step instructions, it is not a very intuitive process and the potential for errors, maybe even catastrophic ones, is quite high, and would definitely add to your customer support workload.
I think most of us here expect to be required to have temporary internet access at least to set up the device with Pleco, to install updates such as new software features or adding newly purchased dictionaries (provided Apple allows it). The idea of having a Pleco server for uploading documents to so that client's can easily download them to their iPhones is a great idea if Apple approves of it. While I regularly SFTP into both my old iPhone 2g and my new iPhone 3G, I think for many client's, even with a well written manual with screenshots providing step-by-step instructions, it is not a very intuitive process and the potential for errors, maybe even catastrophic ones, is quite high, and would definitely add to your customer support workload.
Well there are a few not-yet-discussed / not-necessarily-included-in-the-first-release features that might rely on an internet connection, but basically the only things we plan to make internet-dependent are things that by their very nature have to be - features dependent on data that isn't / can't be stored on the phone, in other words. There might be an argument for eventually providing some potentially-downloadable data from a server at least as an option to save space, though - higher-quality audio, for example, as some people might prefer having that be internet-dependent than having 1 GB of their phone's memory eaten up by audio samples - but we've already got audio working just fine as a downloadable module, so absent any Apple intervention it seems unlikely we'll have to make that an internet-only feature.
StudyinginChina
Member
Hi Mike,
I know you probably get plenty of people asking you this: Can you give us an update on the status of Pleco for the iPhone? I have been waiting for the iPhone version ever since you announced that you are working on an iPhone version of Pleco. I am studying in China right now and the Chinese dictionaries that I bought from the App store is simply not good enough anymore. Is it possible to give us a rough tentative release date? I know it might take a while for Apple to approve the app, but do you think you can release the app now and work on debugging it slowly? I rather have a buggy version than waiting for a feature rich, less buggy version.
HELP - In desperate need of a better Chinese dictionary,
Dean
I know you probably get plenty of people asking you this: Can you give us an update on the status of Pleco for the iPhone? I have been waiting for the iPhone version ever since you announced that you are working on an iPhone version of Pleco. I am studying in China right now and the Chinese dictionaries that I bought from the App store is simply not good enough anymore. Is it possible to give us a rough tentative release date? I know it might take a while for Apple to approve the app, but do you think you can release the app now and work on debugging it slowly? I rather have a buggy version than waiting for a feature rich, less buggy version.
HELP - In desperate need of a better Chinese dictionary,
Dean
I know its only been 12 days but any news now? I had a palm with pleco on it that got stolen sadly, and I've been without pleco for months now, and its killing me. The only reason I haven't gone out and gotten pleco again is I want an iPhone version. I hated carrying around the palm and a phone. Im going back to the states soon and Im thinking of picking one up there for the trip back home and really wish you cold give out SOME kind of time line. I mean are we talking September or are we talking June 2010? Also you mentioned that jailbreak might create conflicts. But i would think something like 80% of your users are going to have jailbroken iPhones here in China wouldnt you think so?
Used Palm / WM handhelds are so cheap now that if you really need a Chinese dictionary you could just buy one of those for the duration - not certain yet whether and how much you'll have to pay to move your license over to Pleco iPhone, but you definitely won't have to pay to move it to another Palm / WM device.
I don't think jailbreaking will cause problems, but as with everything else about the iPhone version there's no way to know about that for certain until the software is actually released. Of course there's also the (admittedly-unlikely) possibility that Apple might refuse to ever list Pleco in iTunes, in which case jailbreaking would be the only way to get it. So there's a small possibility that you'll only be able to get Pleco if you don't jailbreak, and a small possibility that you'll only be able to get Pleco if you do jailbreak, but the most likely possibility is that it'll work either way.
I don't think jailbreaking will cause problems, but as with everything else about the iPhone version there's no way to know about that for certain until the software is actually released. Of course there's also the (admittedly-unlikely) possibility that Apple might refuse to ever list Pleco in iTunes, in which case jailbreaking would be the only way to get it. So there's a small possibility that you'll only be able to get Pleco if you don't jailbreak, and a small possibility that you'll only be able to get Pleco if you do jailbreak, but the most likely possibility is that it'll work either way.
gierkep said:
you're not alone - I lost my phone+pleco recently and it was really awful...
I'm waiting too for the iphone+pleco version, and these days have been terrible! The only positive thing was that I was able to become familiar again with my paper dictionaries, a skill that I was risking to lose.
I do not like too much the suggestion to buy a used WM device, so I'm here too, waiting...
alessandro
panamajack
举人
Alexxx & gierkep,
Similar thing occurred to me, and I discovered after months of mourning my loss discovered that there are TONS of low cost used Palm devices available online and in used electronic shops for next to nothing. Replacing my stolen T|X would be costly, but I got a Tungsten T for practically nothing.
Similar thing occurred to me, and I discovered after months of mourning my loss discovered that there are TONS of low cost used Palm devices available online and in used electronic shops for next to nothing. Replacing my stolen T|X would be costly, but I got a Tungsten T for practically nothing.
As a software developer I appreciate Mike's reluctance to commit to any timeframe. One good reason could be not wanting to lose sales of the Palm/WM versions as people hold off for the iPhone version. Given how many loyal customers are waiting to make decisions on purchasing hardware and software, though, I hope Mike changes his mind, sucks it up, and gives us a timeframe soon. In some instances this is the professional thing to do, and if timelines change, you have to let the customer know that, too.
Personally I used Iced Pro 99% of the time and hardly ever bust out Pleco on the Palm anymore, despite it being the superior product. Tactically, I reckon getting into the market with fewer features would be better that releasing a "perfect" product down the line, as not everyone will keep checking back for updates.
I guess poor Mike has heard all this over and over again, so apologies - at least there are customers who care a lot about what's going on!
Personally I used Iced Pro 99% of the time and hardly ever bust out Pleco on the Palm anymore, despite it being the superior product. Tactically, I reckon getting into the market with fewer features would be better that releasing a "perfect" product down the line, as not everyone will keep checking back for updates.
I guess poor Mike has heard all this over and over again, so apologies - at least there are customers who care a lot about what's going on!
Getting into the market with a product that's only sort-of better than the competition isn't enough - the goal is to utterly decimate every other Chinese dictionary product on iPhone, and at least from our internal betas I'm feeling pretty confident that we can - everything that they do we do (much) better, and we've managed to implement a number of other things that nobody's done in any iPhone software before (let alone any iPhone Chinese dictionary). But none of the other products cost very much, so I'm not that worried about people buying into them and then feeling like they can't spend the money on Pleco later - if someone's that lukewarm they probably weren't going to be interested in Pleco anyway.
Yeah, funny how I keep conveniently forgetting to respond to those parts of people's posts...
I will say, however, that October 1st is a big day for us (8th anniversary of our first product release) and there might be at least a little more information coming out in celebration of that...
I will say, however, that October 1st is a big day for us (8th anniversary of our first product release) and there might be at least a little more information coming out in celebration of that...
I'm a palm / HTC girl so this isn't immediately relevant to me. But you do need to know the following. A lot of my classmates are trendy i-phone users and they love Pleco but don't want to have another gadget / phone.
AND Hong Kong University is trying to get more grant money to create what appears to me to be a vastly inferior and mediocre product (http://mobilese.cite.hku.hk/) which has the claim to fame that it will be used on the i-phone.
We've been asked our opinions on it, they claim there is NOTHING else out there (like they can't google phone applications to learn chinese)...
AND Hong Kong University is trying to get more grant money to create what appears to me to be a vastly inferior and mediocre product (http://mobilese.cite.hku.hk/) which has the claim to fame that it will be used on the i-phone.
We've been asked our opinions on it, they claim there is NOTHING else out there (like they can't google phone applications to learn chinese)...