Wenlin is great, but their aversity to online ordering means someone needs to be pretty dedicated to getting it. I also think they're better for research than flashcard based study. ZDT is nice for free, but pretty flaky if used heavily in my experience. I don't think the desktop market really has all that many effective competitors, and the fact that you have a simple online ordering process puts you light years ahead of Wenlin. Granted they could fix that easily, but they don't seem to have much interest in that in the years I've watched.
Pleco Desktop
- Thread starter james
- Start date
Wenlin is definitely still being worked on, I think the apparent lack of activity lately has mostly been because Tom's been hard at work on the new bidirectional compact edition of the ABC (no longer particularly secret, as it was mentioned on John DeFrancis' memorial site). I can't reveal anything about their future product plans, of course, but you certainly shouldn't count them out. They just added an online store to their website recently, though it doesn't support downloads yet.
If I could find a remotely reasonable xp-compatible dictionary/flashcard program I probably wouldn't be bugging you guys for one. ZDT isn't bad for a one-man part time effort. It works alright as a rudimentary flashcard program but the dictionary is lacking and the last official beta release was over a year ago. If it's still being developed progress is imperceptable. Wenlin has a (single) pretty good dictionary but according to their FAQ "Flashcards are currently limited to single characters, as opposed to words and phrases of more than one syllable. The same limitation applies to the sound recordings." That to me is an absolute deal breaker.
So for me it's either wait for Pleco, or keep searching for a roughly equivalent alternative. I haven't found one yet.
So for me it's either wait for Pleco, or keep searching for a roughly equivalent alternative. I haven't found one yet.
Thanks! Though actually the iPhone version is helping with the desktop one in an indirect way - we developed an incredibly cool new feature on iPhone which we had to cut due to memory limitations (though the code's still around, so if Apple ever releases an iPhone with 256 MB of RAM we'll put it back in) but we should easily be able to get that same feature working in the desktop version once we release that.
Your thinking is flawed, there is a huge market out there if you were to release Pleco in a desktop version, you would "Immediately" blow everyone else away.
Wenlin is good, but it is dead meat, their in ability to use compound words in their flashcards makes it almost wothless to anyone beyond a mere beginner.
I have it and use it daily as a dictionary and often for stroke order when checking new characters.
Give us a desktop please.
Wenlin is good, but it is dead meat, their in ability to use compound words in their flashcards makes it almost wothless to anyone beyond a mere beginner.
I have it and use it daily as a dictionary and often for stroke order when checking new characters.
Give us a desktop please.
Wenlin may not have everything, but I'd hardly call it dead meat - they've got features we don't have and features implemented better than ours, not to mention a very different design focus (reader at the center of things instead of search), so flashcards notwithstanding, I don't think we'd blow them away even if we were designing this to do that rather than to complement the handheld version.
Sorry, this is a rant. Stop reading here if you're bothered by such posts.
Unfortunately, based on past decisions there will be Pre, then Android, then Symbian, then who knows what else before desktop. I've been waiting and waiting for Pleco desktop because the small screen, low power and to some extent high price of the current pda phones just make them a bad choice for me. On the other hand, the list of mids and netbooks running XP keeps growing and there are already hundreds of millions of XP PCs and laptops out there. You're right, there are also lots of iPhones... about 99.99% of which I believe will never even have an interest in licensing Pleco or any other non-novelty Chinese learning tool unless it's free. I think there's a good possibility the other 0.01% will become unhappy with it either because of the iPhone's lack of keyboard or stylus or multitasking. And then there's the huge population of non-AT&T customers who'll never own an iPhone.
It seems to me either there is a worthwhile market for Pleco desktop or their isn't. If you believe there is, then please put it on a definite time-line. If not then let us know you're cutting bait so those of us waiting for it can start seriously looking elsewhere.
BTW, I doubt Wenlin will ever be a viable alternative to Pleco's capabilities, no matter what it's focus. Its limitations are just too serious as most reviews of the product have already pointed out.
Unfortunately, based on past decisions there will be Pre, then Android, then Symbian, then who knows what else before desktop. I've been waiting and waiting for Pleco desktop because the small screen, low power and to some extent high price of the current pda phones just make them a bad choice for me. On the other hand, the list of mids and netbooks running XP keeps growing and there are already hundreds of millions of XP PCs and laptops out there. You're right, there are also lots of iPhones... about 99.99% of which I believe will never even have an interest in licensing Pleco or any other non-novelty Chinese learning tool unless it's free. I think there's a good possibility the other 0.01% will become unhappy with it either because of the iPhone's lack of keyboard or stylus or multitasking. And then there's the huge population of non-AT&T customers who'll never own an iPhone.
It seems to me either there is a worthwhile market for Pleco desktop or their isn't. If you believe there is, then please put it on a definite time-line. If not then let us know you're cutting bait so those of us waiting for it can start seriously looking elsewhere.
BTW, I doubt Wenlin will ever be a viable alternative to Pleco's capabilities, no matter what it's focus. Its limitations are just too serious as most reviews of the product have already pointed out.
That's a fair point, but the problem for us is that while we're eager to expand to a new market like desktops, we don't want to do that at the expense of losing the handheld market. At some point, even if we have what is far and away the best handheld Chinese dictionary available, if it's only available on a couple of platforms that nobody seems very excited about anymore, people are going to stop buying it - they'll opt for an inferior alternative because it's convenient and runs on an operating system that they can actually stand to use. The complaints we get about Windows Mobile both in this forum and by e-mail are frequent and insistent - even if I think (as I do) that on the whole it's better than any other alternative, I can't expect everyone else to agree with me on that.
I do think there's a worthwhile market for a desktop version of Pleco, and if we had the resources to do more than one product at once we'd have a team of people working on it right now, but we don't, and the first priority has to be maintaining our successful business in handheld Chinese dictionaries. We've actually wasted a fair amount of money on desktop-related license fees because we wanted to lock a couple of key components down to guard against them becoming more expensive / unavailable in the future, so the delay is hurting us too.
As far as definite timelines, I've said we're going to start working on it as soon as the iPhone version's done, and I stand by that - I can't realistically imagine a scenario where Android / webOS reaches such an overwhelming position market-share-wise by the time the iPhone version is done that we have to drop what we're doing and port to one of those instead, and Symbian already does dominate in market share (and has for years) and we've gotten by perfectly well without supporting that. iPhone we're choosing not because of its market share but because it's relatively easy to port to and because many of the same people who can't stand WM seem very enthusiastic about it. That reference I made to a generic Mobile OS We Absolutely Have To Support was more of a long-shot hypothetical than an actual plan
I'm not quite sure what you mean about past decisions, though - the only concrete case of our putting off the desktop version to support something else was iPhone, and I'm hopeful that'll be a one-time thing. The desktop version was (IIRC) always going to come after 2.0 was out, 2.0 just took much much longer than we anticipated to finish (which hurt things on the iPhone front too). As far as people refusing to buy our software on iPhone, I have a stack of "I'll pay anything, just get it out NOW" e-mails that suggest otherwise; as far as multitasking, Palm OS doesn't support that either and we've sold a whole lot of copies of Pleco on that, and as far as the lack of a stylus, having been using the Pleco for iPhone handwriting input system for a couple of months now I actually find using a stylus more cumbersome than not using one (for reasons that should hopefully become clear once we post a demo video). A lot of people will likely prefer the openness / multitasking / stylus support of WM, but I think a pretty significant number will be delighted to use and pay for our software on iPhone.
I do think there's a worthwhile market for a desktop version of Pleco, and if we had the resources to do more than one product at once we'd have a team of people working on it right now, but we don't, and the first priority has to be maintaining our successful business in handheld Chinese dictionaries. We've actually wasted a fair amount of money on desktop-related license fees because we wanted to lock a couple of key components down to guard against them becoming more expensive / unavailable in the future, so the delay is hurting us too.
As far as definite timelines, I've said we're going to start working on it as soon as the iPhone version's done, and I stand by that - I can't realistically imagine a scenario where Android / webOS reaches such an overwhelming position market-share-wise by the time the iPhone version is done that we have to drop what we're doing and port to one of those instead, and Symbian already does dominate in market share (and has for years) and we've gotten by perfectly well without supporting that. iPhone we're choosing not because of its market share but because it's relatively easy to port to and because many of the same people who can't stand WM seem very enthusiastic about it. That reference I made to a generic Mobile OS We Absolutely Have To Support was more of a long-shot hypothetical than an actual plan
I'm not quite sure what you mean about past decisions, though - the only concrete case of our putting off the desktop version to support something else was iPhone, and I'm hopeful that'll be a one-time thing. The desktop version was (IIRC) always going to come after 2.0 was out, 2.0 just took much much longer than we anticipated to finish (which hurt things on the iPhone front too). As far as people refusing to buy our software on iPhone, I have a stack of "I'll pay anything, just get it out NOW" e-mails that suggest otherwise; as far as multitasking, Palm OS doesn't support that either and we've sold a whole lot of copies of Pleco on that, and as far as the lack of a stylus, having been using the Pleco for iPhone handwriting input system for a couple of months now I actually find using a stylus more cumbersome than not using one (for reasons that should hopefully become clear once we post a demo video). A lot of people will likely prefer the openness / multitasking / stylus support of WM, but I think a pretty significant number will be delighted to use and pay for our software on iPhone.
Mike, regarding your comment "I'm not quite sure what you mean about past decisions", I was referring to the change in plan from Pleco desktop coming immediately after 2.0 to coming after iPhone, and then in your note of 3/31 above your comment "assuming of course that some other Mobile OS We Absolutely Have To Support doesn't show up before then" which led me to believe desktop still isn't a definite plan. I completely understand your need to make decisions in whatever way you think is best for your business. It's just that for me a firm commitment one way or the other would be easier to plan around than a soft one.
I agree, you should give us a time frame.
THE JOB WILL TAKE AS LONG AS THE ALLOTTED TIME!!!
I feel like I am beating a dead horse, but you have been talking about a desktop version for at least 3 1/2 years.
With the economy the way it is you could get some good help very cheap. Take what you have now, the mobile version and turn it into a desktop. Give us something. All of the students in my classes have laptops, but not everyone has a PDA.
Step up to the plate. You have to take a swing to get a hit.
At the current rate, I will have already learned Chinese and won't need a desktop version!
THE JOB WILL TAKE AS LONG AS THE ALLOTTED TIME!!!
I feel like I am beating a dead horse, but you have been talking about a desktop version for at least 3 1/2 years.
With the economy the way it is you could get some good help very cheap. Take what you have now, the mobile version and turn it into a desktop. Give us something. All of the students in my classes have laptops, but not everyone has a PDA.
Step up to the plate. You have to take a swing to get a hit.
At the current rate, I will have already learned Chinese and won't need a desktop version!
thph2006 - Well I have to leave a tiny bit of wiggle room there - when we started 2.0 the iPhone hadn't even been announced yet, after all, writing mobile software you can never be too sure how the market will change. But I'd say it's 99% certain that desktop will be the next Pleco project after iPhone, at the very least in a "preview" form like I've mentioned here before.
MALAILI - We don't even have a timeframe on iPhone - that's mainly because of Apple's uncertain approval process, but also at least a little bit because we absolutely suck at estimating how long it will take to finish things. Very cheap help isn't going to result in a product that many of you can be happy with - if we started, say, outsourcing everything to India we could be on 9 platforms now but our products for those 9 platforms would be as awful as Rosetta Stone.
Also, while as I said I think there's a worthwhile market for desktops, I really don't know how big it's likely to be - there are some free online dictionaries now that offer most of the features we do, after all, including similarly high-quality dictionary databases, and the argument for keeping software offline on PCs (which are pretty much always connected to the internet anyway) isn't nearly as strong as the one for keeping it offline on handhelds. So I think a desktop version is worth pursuing but I don't think it's worth betting the company on.
MALAILI - We don't even have a timeframe on iPhone - that's mainly because of Apple's uncertain approval process, but also at least a little bit because we absolutely suck at estimating how long it will take to finish things. Very cheap help isn't going to result in a product that many of you can be happy with - if we started, say, outsourcing everything to India we could be on 9 platforms now but our products for those 9 platforms would be as awful as Rosetta Stone.
Also, while as I said I think there's a worthwhile market for desktops, I really don't know how big it's likely to be - there are some free online dictionaries now that offer most of the features we do, after all, including similarly high-quality dictionary databases, and the argument for keeping software offline on PCs (which are pretty much always connected to the internet anyway) isn't nearly as strong as the one for keeping it offline on handhelds. So I think a desktop version is worth pursuing but I don't think it's worth betting the company on.
I understand completely.
It's your company and you have to do what you think is best. On the other side, we are your customers and we have wants as well.
The reference to cheap help was in reference to the economy, there are a lot of "good" unemployed people who you could get relatively cheaply.
As far as your doubts as to the viability of a desktop market, I can only urge you to re-think. I use Pleco, whenever I am mobile, but never at home. At home, it is soo...much faster and more convenient to use other software such as Wenlin, Yellowbridge, etc.
Finally, 3 1/2 years is a long long time. (My cusotmers would never wait that long)
Enough from me.
It's your company and you have to do what you think is best. On the other side, we are your customers and we have wants as well.
The reference to cheap help was in reference to the economy, there are a lot of "good" unemployed people who you could get relatively cheaply.
As far as your doubts as to the viability of a desktop market, I can only urge you to re-think. I use Pleco, whenever I am mobile, but never at home. At home, it is soo...much faster and more convenient to use other software such as Wenlin, Yellowbridge, etc.
Finally, 3 1/2 years is a long long time. (My cusotmers would never wait that long)
Enough from me.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm still eager to do a desktop version - if the iPhone didn't seem so critical to Pleco's future survival I'd have wanted to do that first, it presents a much more interesting design challenge really since it's so different from anything we've done before. But it does, so we can't. I've got a little notebook full of desktop-related design sketches, and the second the iPhone version is out collecting its iReviews and iCongratulations and (hopefully) iDollars we'll be eagerly gearing up for iPhone.
I said we've been wasting money letting desktop-related licenses sit fallow and that ticks me off to no end, and see my many (many) rants on the evils of porting (e.g. in the Android thread) for more on how much I loathe the idea of spending large amounts of time and money just to get the exact same thing we already had working on another platform working on something people like better. I dream of a world where Microsoft rules everything and one can support 99% of computer users by developing for just one (open-for-anyone-to-develop-for-without-code-signing) platform, but in the meantime, Pleco's continued success unfortunately means getting it running on at least one platform most users will be happy with, and Windows Mobile doesn't seem to be that platform for enough people anymore.
I said we've been wasting money letting desktop-related licenses sit fallow and that ticks me off to no end, and see my many (many) rants on the evils of porting (e.g. in the Android thread) for more on how much I loathe the idea of spending large amounts of time and money just to get the exact same thing we already had working on another platform working on something people like better. I dream of a world where Microsoft rules everything and one can support 99% of computer users by developing for just one (open-for-anyone-to-develop-for-without-code-signing) platform, but in the meantime, Pleco's continued success unfortunately means getting it running on at least one platform most users will be happy with, and Windows Mobile doesn't seem to be that platform for enough people anymore.
Michael,
I know that I don't know anything, but the most popular platform is Windows (not mobile). Students study at their desk.
I definitely feel like I am beating a dead horse, but I am so sure the desktop market will far far and away bring you more new business than the I-phone ever will.
Too bad you can't do Blackberry; there's a mobile market!
As a side note, "NOW" is the time to get going. When times get tough, you can make a lot of money. Everyone (of your competitors) is cutting back and downsizing, you on the other hand could be ramping up.
I made alot of money several times during the economic downturns, doing just the opposite of what everyone else did. Give it some thought.
Finally, and I promise not to post anymore responses, why don't you advertise, I never see PLECO anywhere and the people I show it to (people studying Chinese), have never heard of it.
IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE!
I know that I don't know anything, but the most popular platform is Windows (not mobile). Students study at their desk.
I definitely feel like I am beating a dead horse, but I am so sure the desktop market will far far and away bring you more new business than the I-phone ever will.
Too bad you can't do Blackberry; there's a mobile market!
As a side note, "NOW" is the time to get going. When times get tough, you can make a lot of money. Everyone (of your competitors) is cutting back and downsizing, you on the other hand could be ramping up.
I made alot of money several times during the economic downturns, doing just the opposite of what everyone else did. Give it some thought.
Finally, and I promise not to post anymore responses, why don't you advertise, I never see PLECO anywhere and the people I show it to (people studying Chinese), have never heard of it.
IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE!
Students study at their desks, but they encounter Chinese words they don't know while walking around, and they review flashcards on buses. And with more and more textbooks adding online components there's less of a need to look up unknown Chinese words in those.
Pleco's competitors aren't downsizing, they're multiplying - the down economy is if anything making it more appealing for people to strike out their own and start little mobile software companies, and quite a few of them are working on Chinese. We're not making auto parts here, more and more people are buying smartphones and more and more people are studying Chinese.
And where do you propose we advertise? It's not like it'd be cost-effective to run TV or billboard ads - aside from search engine ads and banners on a few popular sites (both of which we already do) there's not a whole lot we can do on that front. The best thing we can do marketing-wise is make it easier for people to try out Pleco, something tricky now both because of the necessarily-crippled demo version and because depressingly few people already own Windows Mobile or Palm OS phones - we could run an ad during the Super Bowl and most of the people who came to our website as a result would look around for a minute, notice that they had to buy a new handheld / smartphone to run Pleco, chuckle, and wander off. Hence, an iPhone version with a better free demo (which it will be) can do more for us sales-wise than any ad campaign.
Pleco's competitors aren't downsizing, they're multiplying - the down economy is if anything making it more appealing for people to strike out their own and start little mobile software companies, and quite a few of them are working on Chinese. We're not making auto parts here, more and more people are buying smartphones and more and more people are studying Chinese.
And where do you propose we advertise? It's not like it'd be cost-effective to run TV or billboard ads - aside from search engine ads and banners on a few popular sites (both of which we already do) there's not a whole lot we can do on that front. The best thing we can do marketing-wise is make it easier for people to try out Pleco, something tricky now both because of the necessarily-crippled demo version and because depressingly few people already own Windows Mobile or Palm OS phones - we could run an ad during the Super Bowl and most of the people who came to our website as a result would look around for a minute, notice that they had to buy a new handheld / smartphone to run Pleco, chuckle, and wander off. Hence, an iPhone version with a better free demo (which it will be) can do more for us sales-wise than any ad campaign.
Most of what you say is true, except students looking up words while out and about. (Your assuming they have a PDA or smartphone). In my ventures outside, I haven't see that.
Lastly, where are your ads, I haven't see one anywhere. If someone hadn't told me about you, I would never bought Pleco.
Lastly, where are your ads, I haven't see one anywhere. If someone hadn't told me about you, I would never bought Pleco.
I must agree with Malali at least regarding Europe,
according to my experience, here in Europe. Few students own an IPhone or a smart phone. But almost each of them has a notebook running mostly XP and sometimes Vista. I am not very experienced with the guys studying Chinese language as a major. Furthermore in Germany, there is not even one professional German-Chinese e-Dictionary avalable.
The interesting point for me woul be how to use the handwriting recognizer on a desktop version. A mouse is not convenient and I dont know wheather a touchpad could be used.
I think there would be definetly a market for a desktop version in Europe. After all, Mike has certainly more overview about the portation cost and the necessary amount of users to armotize it.
according to my experience, here in Europe. Few students own an IPhone or a smart phone. But almost each of them has a notebook running mostly XP and sometimes Vista. I am not very experienced with the guys studying Chinese language as a major. Furthermore in Germany, there is not even one professional German-Chinese e-Dictionary avalable.
The interesting point for me woul be how to use the handwriting recognizer on a desktop version. A mouse is not convenient and I dont know wheather a touchpad could be used.
I think there would be definetly a market for a desktop version in Europe. After all, Mike has certainly more overview about the portation cost and the necessary amount of users to armotize it.