Official iPad Thread

[character]

mikelove - With most of my study time occurring when I'm mobile, it would be hard to justify a license for the iPad without an enhanced reader or more engaging (graded) reading material available. OTOH, I'm glad Pleco works so well on the iPad -- a desktop version of Pleco makes more sense to me now.

 

[mikelove]

Well, except for people transferring over old licenses from Palm/WM there's not going to be any need to buy a new license on iPad - absent any weirdness from Apple we're planning to keep things dual-platform, one iTunes purchase of Pleco should work on both. iPad is really more about reaching new customers who wouldn't buy our software at all otherwise - institutional purchases by schools / universities are the biggest target - than about wringing more money out of the people who've already bought it; we're happy to have you guys just using it and sending feedback so that we can get it really nice and polished for those big buyers.

But yes, the coolness of the iPad version even in its current unrefined state definitely has me feeling good about what we can do on desktops.

 

[dcarpent]

With flashcards for both the iPhone/iPod Touch and the iPad soon to be available, and as the owner of a new iPad as well as an iPod Touch, I face a minor dilemma. Many times I practice with flashcards when out and about, and so the only way to do this is with a mobile device, for me currently on an HTC WM device, but soon I hope on an iPod Touch. But when I am studying at home I will prefer to use the iPad, given its screen size, and will naturally want to use flashcards on the iPad as well. So the dilemma is that I want to be able to practice with flashcards on both devices and to have the progress that I made on the iPod Touch, for instance, reflected on the iPad, and vice versa. If I add new flashcards on one device I want to see them on the other device as well. Will it be possible to sync both via iTunes, in the way that one can sync two different iPods to the same iTunes account? I'm guessing this isn't possible, since it would require having the flashcard data stored in iTunes, which probably isn't possible. But I thought I'd ask, just in case. As people begin using Pleco on the iPad I suspect this will become a common issue, since for many I think Pleco on an iPad will complement rather than replace Pleco on the iPhone. If an iTunes based sync isn't possible, how streamlined can the process be? Will it always entail creating a backup on one device, transferring it to the other device manually and then manually updating the second device from within Pleco? Going back and forth like this on virtually a daily basis will be a real pain, and perhaps one will have be resigned to using flashcards exclusively on one device only.

 

[numble]

With flashcards for both the iPhone/iPod Touch and the iPad soon to be available, and as the owner of a new iPad as well as an iPod Touch, I face a minor dilemma. Many times I practice with flashcards when out and about, and so the only way to do this is with a mobile device, for me currently on an HTC WM device, but soon I hope on an iPod Touch. But when I am studying at home I will prefer to use the iPad, given its screen size, and will naturally want to use flashcards on the iPad as well. So the dilemma is that I want to be able to practice with flashcards on both devices and to have the progress that I made on the iPod Touch, for instance, reflected on the iPad, and vice versa. If I add new flashcards on one device I want to see them on the other device as well. Will it be possible to sync both via iTunes, in the way that one can sync two different iPods to the same iTunes account? I'm guessing this isn't possible, since it would require having the flashcard data stored in iTunes, which probably isn't possible. But I thought I'd ask, just in case. As people begin using Pleco on the iPad I suspect this will become a common issue, since for many I think Pleco on an iPad will complement rather than replace Pleco on the iPhone. If an iTunes based sync isn't possible, how streamlined can the process be? Will it always entail creating a backup on one device, transferring it to the other device manually and then manually updating the second device from within Pleco? Going back and forth like this on virtually a daily basis will be a real pain, and perhaps one will have be resigned to using flashcards exclusively on one device only.

The solution that Anki uses, is to have everything synced online. I can test flashcards on my desktop, on my iPhone, and on a web browser when I am on someone else's computer. It even allows syncing to third party servers like Dropbox, though I've never bothered to figure out how that works. Maybe Pleco can do something like that.

 

[scorpiojing]

I would love to see the Pleco document reader somehow active in the iPad's iBooks. Being able to download a Chinese language eBook, and then using the Pleco dictionary capabilities like in Pleco's document reader would be amazing.

 

[mikelove]

dcarpent / numble - an online sync is certainly a possibility, but we could also share files over Bluetooth; that would have the added advantage of working even when you were away from a WiFi hotspot. Initially we may just add a feature to send a database backup file from one device to the other, but full-on sync is certainly a possibility for a future release too; working out the code for that first over Bluetooth would actually be sort-of ideal since we could flesh out all of the synchronization code on just one platform / programming language first before porting it to PHP or whatever we used for an online sync / backup feature. In general, though, I'd rather get a few other pending flashcard features fleshed out first (more detailed statistics tracking, annotations, unlimited-depth categories) before getting to work on sync so that we can write the sync code once and have it be relatively stable for a while.

scorpiojing - that's tricky since there's not really a good way for third-party applications to access iBooks content (at least not yet). However, we can certainly expand our own support for eBooks, adding support for the standard ePub format, vastly expanding the collection of free downloadable titles on our website, etc - that's particularly high up on our to-do list now that we have an iPad version.

 

[panamajack]

Hi Mike,

When time permits, could you post another one of those Youtube /Vimeo demos showing off iPad Pleco ? I think I sold you 3-4 copies of the iPhone app after you posted those videos some months past and I could simply send friends the link.

 

[gato]

Use a better camera this time. ;-)

 

[mikelove]

Ah, yes, something other than a 2-year-old pocket digicam would probably be nice Scrambling to finish up a few other things for the release right now (flashcard tutorial being chief among them) but we'll probably do both a flashcard demo video and an iPad video at some point soon; maybe also update the regular demo since the design / features have changed a little bit since then.

 

[numble]

Yes, please make some new videos soon, and I will send it on to professors at my undergraduate college to potentially advertise to their students.

An updated video would be great too, especially if it wasn't broken up into 2 parts.

 

[mikelove]

The 2-part thing has to do with YouTube's 10-minute limit; we could easily post a single longer video on our own site, though. (which makes sense anyway for the sake of effective Great Firewall avoidance)

 

[stephanhodges]

Ah, yes, something other than a 2-year-old pocket digicam would probably be nice Scrambling to finish up a few other things for the release right now (flashcard tutorial being chief among them) but we'll probably do both a flashcard demo video and an iPad video at some point soon; maybe also update the regular demo since the design / features have changed a little bit since then.

Also, I suggest looking at the Anki demo series now, and the one from Calibre (great video intro for their free eBook converter (http://calibre-ebook.com/) YouTube now allows you to upload a sequence of clips and automatically play one after the other so a longer piece is almost the same as a single longer one.

However, please do consider making it downloadable from your site, since we can use it for demo purposes too. Of course, a version for laptop as well as mobile device. I use Powerdirector 8, btw, which does a good job with multiple formats, as well as optimized HD youtube uploads.

Isn't it possible to do a screen recording on your Mac, running the emulator? If it's the same, I'd personally rather see that for tutorials. Of course, if it's mainly advertisement, then you have to use a real device!

 

[mikelove]

Didn't know they were allowing that now. Downloadable videos would make sense, yes - it's actually pretty easy to download the source .flvs from the mirror site (and not even that difficult to download them from YouTube), but we might as well make it more straightforward for people.

Screen recording on the Mac is tricky because the emulator makes certain things - handwriting for example - difficult to record reliably; there are programs that you can use to control that from an iPhone, though, so it might make sense to give that a try for the next round of demos.

(and welcome back!)

 

[stephanhodges]

I've been here (lurking)...

And, btw, I really want a desktop version too :shock: I'd use it for a) reading b) adding and organizing vocabulary c) syncing with a mobile version (meaning I'd want to run on both places even if two licenses, etc).

I think one of the best ways to take a poll would be to accept deposits (real money). You could always refund money if within 30 days (on paypal I believe) for the "loosers" of the poll...

 

[character]

Mike, now that flashcards are out, could you share what you'll be working on next? I'll again advocate for an enhanced dual-window reader, or failing that licensing deals for some good graded texts.

 

[mikelove]

stephanhodges - pre-ordering gets us into all sorts of legal issues - we can't actually charge anybody's credit card before we're about to ship / release the product - on top of which, between the uncertainty of how much development time it would take and (at least on Android) how the license deals would shake out there's no way we could know that early what we'd potentially be charging for this thing. And a lot of people would inevitably misinterpret our pre-ordering as a commitment to actually developing / releasing the product in question at some point, and get ticked off at us even if we never charged their credit card.

character - see the post I'm about to make on 2.2.

 

[stephanhodges]

I was mostly looking to see if anyone had any other types of proposals that would be an accurate test of actual commitment <smile>. Of course, polling the "choir" as it were might not give you the best picture either...

I'd say you need to look towards broadening your base of offerings, rather than just deepening income from existing customers (i.e. more dictionaries). Don't get me wrong, I might be interested in books, dictionaries, study materials, etc. but then again, maybe not. There's a lot of that already out there.

I'd like to see Pleco on another pad, similar to iPad. I don't want Apple to be the only game in town, even though I'm very interested in getting an iPad, just to use for Chinese (larger screen, a usable keyboard, etc). I've always wanted a Pleco like device to "outperform" the small dictionaries that all the Korean students brought to class, with keyboards, large displays, a large database of Chengyu, and other materials along with the dictionary.

 

[numble]

Until there is another viable slate-like device on the market, I think it is imprudent to suggest that time should be spent on developing for nonexistent platforms.

 

[LiAnCrow]

Well, except for people transferring over old licenses from Palm/WM there's not going to be any need to buy a new license on iPad - absent any weirdness from Apple we're planning to keep things dual-platform, one iTunes purchase of Pleco should work on both.

Wait..so what you're saying is that if we transferred a Palm/WM license to iPhone then we must purchase a whole new license for iPad? If I continue to use the free bundle on my iPad and complete on my iPhone what sort of issues will I encounter when transferring over flash cards?

btw...could just be my device but seems that if you try to delete "Uncategorized" in the flashcard list the app crashes.

 

[mikelove]

Licenses transferred over from Palm/WM are subject to the same one-device-at-a-time rule they were on those, so you're certainly welcome to deactivate your license on your iPhone and move it over to your iPad, but you can't have it active on both at the same time. Not much we can do about this since it's stipulated in several of the copyright licenses we've signed - they only make an exception for products purchased originally on iPhone / iPad, and that only because Apple specifically requires that every device that links to a given iTunes account be able to access all content purchased under that account.

If you've got a lot of flashcards linking to dictionaries that you only have on one device then they're not going to translate over correctly to the other one - you'd want to remap all of your cards to entries in PLC or CC-CEDICT or Adso first. (and you'd need to buy the flashcard module on the iPad if you only have the free version of Pleco on there now)

How are you able to delete "Uncategorized"? It shouldn't even be possible to select it for deletion - is there a check mark next to it or are you deleting all categories on that root screen and encountering a crash at some point during that?