Pleco for Mac Update?

Shun

状元
Yes, Jobs was a visionary with extremely deep insights (one of the few humans I really admire :)) and a product person, but Cook is very smart and exacting, too, just a lot more grounded and realistic. Of course you could say Cook is a lot more "normal". But as I've said, I think there is nothing greedy about Apple's pricing if you consider the actual value of a device to the user instead of the technical cost of making it. You're not supposed to question every technical choice Apple made or generally to second-guess them, because you're supposed to—and you can—trust their intuition when they say a product is worth a particular price, that that is what it is worth to them and everyone else. That is just Apple's philosophy, you take it or leave it. The good thing is that technical users are also usually happiest with Macs, with their rock-solid FreeBSD Unix foundation and adoption of open standards. Thanks to that smart choice—combining support of open standards with ease of use—, Apple's ambit has grown considerably in the last 20-25 years.

Regarding the garbage apps, I think it's OK as long as they're in conformity with the law. You can't tell people not to use a particular kind of app, that would be particularly patronizing and would immediately be criticized, wouldn't it? :)

Perhaps you remember, Jobs was so radical about a clean iPhone platform that the idea of an App Store had to be forced on him at first. He then soon relented with iOS 2, I believe.

I've read they're upping the minimum RAM configuration to 12 GB or maybe even 16 GB soon, which I also think is a smart choice.

Jobs said Apple shouldn't remain the same, Apple should follow Cook, because if Cook is doing his best, everyone is. You surely agree that one can't freeze a company's culture at any date, it should just be healthy and thriving, and that happens when it is able to adapt and grow. Whenever something grows, something new has to emerge in it; there is no other way.
 
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Fernando

榜眼
One interesting tidbit I read about Job's leadership style is that he used to take people who were at loggerheads and *force* them to work together. And because of his strong personality, they would work together and produce results. Basically he'd take conflict and get it to generate good ideas overall. Cook can't do that, he picks a side and dismisses the other, because apparently he can't stand conflict.

As for the garbage addictive apps, I have no mercy. They are evil. I have an elderly aunt who ended up spending about 700€ on trashy virtual thingamabobs from a "collect-stuff" game because she was lonely and it was just easy to keep spending, 5€ here 10€ there. And Apple, of course, got their share for 'facilitating' the transactions. I can see how people can end up spending even more than that. I get it that people should be free to do as they please, but if you're getting into something addictive there should be some friction. And Apple removes that friction, because money.
 

Shun

状元
One interesting tidbit I read about Job's leadership style is that he used to take people who were at loggerheads and *force* them to work together. And because of his strong personality, they would work together and produce results. Basically he'd take conflict and get it to generate good ideas overall. Cook can't do that, he picks a side and dismisses the other, because apparently he can't stand conflict.

Oh true, thanks, I missed that. But if Cook can't do it, he shouldn't try. In return, he can do many other things better than Jobs.

As for the garbage addictive apps, I have no mercy. They are evil. I have an elderly aunt who ended up spending about 700€ on trashy virtual thingamabobs from a "collect-stuff" game because she was lonely and it was just easy to keep spending, 5€ here 10€ there. And Apple, of course, got their share for 'facilitating' the transactions. I can see how people can end up spending even more than that. I get it that people should be free to do as they please, but if you're getting into something addictive there should be some friction. And Apple removes that friction, because money.

I'm sorry to hear that. That experience of course predisposes one in a particular direction. I'd agree that collecting stuff or basically images inside an app for money should be forbidden (or any amounts over 1 USD), just gambling should stay.

Have a good one, Shun
 
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Fernando

榜眼
Anyhow, sorry for the off-topic. macos 15 public beta will be released in July, so I'm sure people will be testing how iPhone Mirroring works (or doesn't work) with Pleco.
 
I hate to be the one mentioning potentially bad news, but doesn't the just-announced iPhone Mirroring feature obviate the need for a dedicated Mac Pleco app for about 90% of people?
As a power user I would much rather have a native mac app with keyboard shortcuts and a fully resizable window than use a clunky touchscreen-optimized version on mac. If you've tried the Xcode iPhone simulators you'll know what I mean...

So how's the Mac version coming? Any idea when the beta will be opened up, or what the price point will be? Sorry if I'm bugging you about this, but I'm just really excited to finally have a sleek, "ridiculously awesome" Chinese dictionary for my main device so I don't have to fish it out of my pocket all the time. (pun not intended)
 
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mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
So how's the Mac version coming?
Nothing new to share on that, I've been extremely distracted from Pleco stuff for the last 3 months for personal reasons (nothing bad - wife had to change jobs in March and so we're selling our house and moving to a new state) and there's only a limited amount that can happen on Mac without me driving it. (which also explains the relatively thin 4.0 updates)

The tentative roadmap is that at some point we're going to do a big-ish 4.0 update redesigning a lot of settings and some other stuff to make it less expert-y and more releasable, then after we feel good about that (probably with a few minor bug fix updates) we'll polish up the Mac version based on it, the thinking being that the Mac release is our last chance to have a lot of people download + test 4.0 and we'd like it to be in as complete a state as possible before then.
 
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