Official iPad Thread

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Post any thoughts / questions on Pleco and the almost-certainly-going-to-be-announced-on-Wednesday Apple tablet here. I'll try to make a few posts with initial reactions during the announcement according to what I see in the various feeds / liveblogs / press releases / etc.

The announcement, BTW, is scheduled for 10am Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday; I believe that's 6pm GMT, or 2am Thursday Beijing time.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Re: Official Apple Tablet Thread

Interesting... looks very very similar to the iPhone UI-wise. Should be nice and easy to port to, though there's a lot that still needs to be filled in on that...
 

numble

状元
Re: Official Apple Tablet Thread

iPad runs iPhone/iPod Touch apps. Same size as on iPhone/iPod, or automatically scaled to full screen.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Re: Official Apple Tablet Thread

True, but that doesn't necessarily work so well for text-based apps; excellent use for our combined list/definition view, though.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Re: Official Apple Tablet Thread

Base price $499, available in 60 days. Haven't seen the developer kit, but based on the iPhone-like UI controls I think there's a pretty good chance we could have an iPad-optimized, flashcard-equipped version of Pleco out by the time it launches.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Re: Official Apple Tablet Thread

At which point we'd get right to work on the desktop version :)
 

sfrrr

状元
Re: Official Apple Tablet Thread

mikelove said:
Base price $499, available in 60 days. Haven't seen the developer kit, but based on the iPhone-like UI controls I think there's a pretty good chance we could have an iPad-optimized, flashcard-equipped version of Pleco out by the time it launches.

Base price? $130 extra for 3G. Thus, base price $630 for the teeny weeny RAM 16 GB version; 64 GB (omigod :roll: ) plus 3G brings us pretty close to $1,000. puh-leeze.

(Just thought I'd ignite a flaming war within the previously peaceful PD community. Not really. I'm disappointed that Apple is doing it again, offering too little for too much. I really wanted one of those things. Guess I'll wait a little longer for a cheaper, more powerful Windows tablet.)
 

ciaocibai

进士
Re: Official Apple Tablet Thread

After all the rumours about the amazing input methods, I'm pretty underwhelmed. I mean, it's pretty much just a scaled up iPod, right? I was watched both the Engadget and Gdgt coverage, and it was like they were both waiting for the killer feature to be announced and it just didn't come...

And what is a micro-sim? Where are they available? I agree, $140 just for 3G is overpriced, but it would be a pretty awesome device for web surfing etc. on the move.

Hopefully it's more open in some ways the the iPod - like can use bluetooth headsets with mics to make calls, bluetooth gps devices (I'm currently doing that on my iPod touch, courtesy of an app for jailbroken devices) and the like. Not too sure though.

I'll put it this way - based on the rumours I was planning on pre-ordering a device right away, now I'm going to wait to play with it and see what it's really like, and what it has that my iPod doesn't. That said, if it really works well and has good input methods, and, fingers crossed, can be jailbroken for bluetooth GPS, I think it might be a goer.
 

character

状元
Re: Official Apple Tablet Thread

Let me just say I was surprised to have called the 'will run iPhone apps' right.

sfrrr said:
(Just thought I'd ignite a flaming war within the previously peaceful PD community. Not really. I'm disappointed that Apple is doing it again, offering too little for too much. I really wanted one of those things. Guess I'll wait a little longer for a cheaper, more powerful Windows tablet.)
I'm underwhelmed too, but I'm probably going to get one; actually disappointed I can't buy one right now. Main disappointment is with the resolution (1024x768). That extra delay for 3G IMO means they are running pretty close to the edge, production-wise, and didn't have anything ready to go the FCC.
 

ciaocibai

进士
Re: Official Apple Tablet Thread

Oh, but think about it versus a netbook, which I suppose is what it's competing against (based on price and all), I'd get this any day of the week. I currently have an MSI Wind, used to have an EEEEEEE, and while they are Ok, just like everything Apple does this should be a really smooth experience.

How does $500-800ish dollars sit versus netbook prices in the US?

Yeah, and I can see Pleco being killer on this.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Interestingly, Apple's website lists "Simplified Chinese" among the supported languages, but not traditional; this could actually give us a brief monopoly on fantizi handwriting recognition on iPad.
 

ciaocibai

进士
Curious to know why it seems only apple.com has information on the iPad at this time as well... Normally all the Apple websites seem to be updated together... Thoughts?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
I don't think it's launching internationally until summer - they alluded to hoping to have international 3G data agreements worked out by then.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
BTW, already downloaded the SDK - surprisingly fast download given that I'm sure tens of thousands of other people are pounding Apple Developer Connection's servers now - but since it's under NDA, I can't say anything about it until other people violate their NDAs by posting about it and I cite their postings :) But suffice it to say, there are a number of little Pleco-friendly things that weren't mentioned in the presentation.

$500 isn't too bad compared to US netbook prices, and I do think this could be a lovely system for running Pleco - our first crack at it probably wouldn't do much more than resize the default text controls / clean up the (pixelated ?) icons / add more toolbar buttons / etc, but there's a whole lot of interesting potential for showing that much text on the screen at once; there's never been a stronger argument for merging results from multiple dictionaries, for example. And of course there's a ton of cool stuff we can do with the document reader...
 

dcarpent

榜眼
I don't know how many Pleco users are trying to learn to write characters as well as read, but I think the iPad would have real potential for replacing the small format white board that I now use to practice writing. I hate to use up reams of paper writing characters over and over, but writing them many times is the best way to learn them. I also get tired of cleaning my white board fairly often, and buying new dry erase pens. I would find it very useful if there were a fairly large writing area (a virtual white board) next to the pinyin + definition flashcards where I could write the character and then have the correct character with correct stroke order show when I "turn over" the flash card, so I could compare how I did, and then clear the screen by double tapping it and try again. This would be a very efficient way to practice writing as I go through flashcards. One thing that I've noticed as I've switch from making physical flashcards to using Pleco is that I practice writing less often. Having a built-in white board would be a great help. I even wonder if there would be a way to do this on the iPod Touch and Windows Mobile versions On Windows Mobile flashcards there is a large empty space on screen below the pinyin and definition on a flashcard, but you cannot write in this space. Would it be possible to make this space touch sensitive for writing characters? The best solution, however, would require more space, and thus the iPad, since it would be best to have your attempt to write the character and Pleco's stroke diagram showing at the same time, side by side.
 
Pleco on iPad

So Mike,

I'm sure you've seen the release of the iPad. I haven't looked into it much beyond one news story. It sounds like all iPhone apps will be supported, but possibly need to be updated to properly support the larger resolution, etc.

It sounds like Pleco would be awesome on one of these things, and probably open up the possibility for a lot of new features.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
westmeadboy - I'd venture to guess that a lot of the iPad's limitations will be resolved with iPhone OS 4.0; Apple seems to want to get this thing out / get developers started on optimizing their apps for the big screen ASAP, but when OS 4.0 comes out (this summer?) I'm betting we'll see proper multitasking and a lot of the other things the iPhone's been lacking then. Along with a new iPhone sporting one of Apple's cool new Snapdragon-beating processors.

dcarpent - interesting idea... it might be difficult to do that sort of writing practice on an iPhone screen, you'd need to show the outline / animation in the background or as an overlay or something, but I'd think it would be workable even on those, and certainly on an iPad there's a ton of room for that sort of thing.

tonyblum1343 - merged your post in here; perhaps I shouldn't have made it an Announcement since that separates it from the main page.

Anyway, the latest version of Pleco didn't actually run correctly on the iPad's iPhone simulator, but it does now, so it should at least be usable in that sense when the iPad launches.

As for a fully iPad-optimized version, whether / when we develop one of those depends both on how long it takes to finish up the last few bits of flashcard work and on how long it looks like the iPad optimizations will take. We really do need to get some sort of desktop version out by the end of the year one way or another, so iPad development may have to wait at least a month or two while we whip out a desktop "preview"/beta so that we can be sure we have something official / fleshed--out debugged on desktops by the end of the year. Windows Mobile 7 could also affect this, if that's hitting later in the year and we have limited time to get a WM7-optimized version ready we may have to prioritize that over the iPad as well.
 
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