Yesterday's Forbes
reports, "Microsoft has confirmed that it is working with Google to improve the experience of Progressive Web Apps (PWA) in the mobile operating system."
So, Mike Love is correct here! My limited understanding on this topic is that while PWA's (programmed in HTML, CSS, JSON, and JavaScript--I read) can run through Google Play store, normal more powerful Android apps must be written in other not web-based programming languages (mostly Java, but also other languages--and in Pleco's case, as I understand it, C and C++). Microsoft will abandon their Edge browser for a new Google Chrome based Edge browser in the next Window's update, so they have been helping Google in Chrome
development now including web apps.
The problem with Windows, more than the Edge browser though, is the terrible Windows Store. If Windows also sold Android API's for download, less customers would abandon Windows for the Mac/Apple Ecosystem. Moreover, even if Microsoft could negotiate a cut of Google's 30% commission for sales, it seems reasonable to think in consideration of the many desirable Android programs unavailable on the Windows system, that both parties might end up with a few more bucks after giving payment to the software developers tasked to such a project.
I like to idea of downloading and paying to the Pleco website directly, to support independent software developers while giving no cuts to the App Stores of Big Tech. Sounds like the winning strategy!
To take absolute full control though, to bring the impetus of this strategy to its logical conclusion--☆dedicated Pleco hardware☆!
Many moons ago in 2008, I spent an initial year studying Chinese in China using a dedicated electronic dictionary I purchased at an electronics store there for about 600 RMB ($90 USD). This dictionary had a monochrome touch enabled LCD display of not great resolution which folded into a simple clamshell design where there was a smaller second touch screen, a small dedicated keyboard, and housing for a stylus used for writing characters or selecting them on both displays. The only dictionaries I remember it having were Oxford C-E and E-C, and an all Chinese dictionary (could have been
Xindai guifan). The brand was Besta, and the design resembled very much the model in this
link, though I might have had a slightly different or earlier model. Although "Plecodict," as it was known then on the internet forums about Chinese learning, was of course also around in 2008, most of the other Americans and other native English speakers l knew still did not have smartphones at that time and used these kinds of electronic dictionaries. My first smartphone ever was a Windows Mobile phone, I purchased the following year in 2009, specifically for the purpose of using Pleco and the superior ABC dictionaries it had licensed.
I certainly am not a Luddite, but for all the convivence of having Pleco on a smartphone, tablet, or now a desktop computer, I also see benefit in having Pleco on a format similar to the electronic dictionary I had so long ago. The battery to that device would go on and on and would only rarely (if ever?) require replacement with standard batteries available for purchase anywhere. It did not beep, vibrate, deliver phone calls, browse the internet, or take photographs--yet I found the ergonomic experience of the clamshell design, with the dedicated character writing screen at the bottom, superior to that of using a finger to write characters on a flat device. I also have run into a specific use case of libraries which disallow devices with cameras (that is smartphones) from being used in their reading rooms out of concern of photographs being taken of their collections, so "the Pleco" as I imagine it would have no camera.
The caveat I give to this suggestion is that I am currently located in Tokyo where outdated technology like fax machines, CD and DVD rental stores, and, yes, large sections of electronics stores dedicated specifically to the latest electronic dictionaries by brands like Casio and Sharp are still a thing. So, such an idea does not seem so far-fetched to me in my surroundings. Also, I wouldn't suggest an immediate beginning of a Kickstarter campaign or search for specific wholesale suppliers that could carry out such a design. Rather, for now, perhaps the software design of Pleco across the various formats of desktop and mobile design could somehow benefit in an indirect way from asking such questions as-- what would be the Platonic ideal of hardware to run Pleco? Would it be the same as an iPad or different? Would the handwriting input be on a vertical screen or horizontally flat on the desk? Would it need to be in color? Or would it be e-ink? How could Pleco serve the needs or parents and educators who would want thier children or pupils to have a Pleco but not a smartphone? And so on.
Also, whether on desktop or mobile platform, I think it might look elegant for Pleco to separate example sentences by a pilcrow ¶ at the top of each entry rather than by the vertical lines which runs along the left-hand side of the example sentences in Pleco's current format. Chinese reference works would traditionally use a circle 〇 to mark new entries. So, my vision is that Pleco would make its own stylized pilcrow symbol to mark these example sentences that would somehow resemble a design of European book tradition (§ ⸿ ❡ etc.), would resemble enough the quite imperfect circles of East Asian tradition while also looking a little ☯ in its circular middle as achieved by a stripe and a couple dots, then at the same time--get this--it is also an image of the Pleco fish branding turned 90° counterclockwise! How about that?
Then the slogan for the new hardware: Pleco brings together East and West, Pleco balances yin and yang, a Pleco in every pocket!
