Styletap palm emmulator for iphone

daniu

榜眼
Hi!

unfortunately this product will never be sold ...

but PD could _just_ program their own emulator. Since these guys could do it ...

best regards
Daniel

PS: I wonder when people realize that it is time steeling to use video to get information across. You cannot crossread a video ...
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Interesting, I wonder how they worked out the licensing end of this with Apple - it would provide a pretty easy way for developers to circumvent Apple's 30% commission and their lockdown on software distribution. Though obviously running an emulated Palm app won't be nearly as nice as running a native iPhone one, and you'll need some sort of third-party stylus to make a lot of applications (like Pleco) with tiny/hard-to-hit controls usable.
 
mikelove said:
Interesting, I wonder how they worked out the licensing end of this with Apple - it would provide a pretty easy way for developers to circumvent Apple's 30% commission and their lockdown on software distribution.

If you're concerned about it, just mark the iPhone versions of your product up an extra 30% to cover Apple's App Store service charge. Make it clear on pleco.com and in your App Store copy why the price hike is there. Nobody's going to scream at you for doing that.

Plus, if anybody wants to compete against you on the iPhone they are going to have that same 30% fee to pay. It's still a level playing field.

This is a classic example of disruptive technology. Ride the wave buddy. You're in a great spot. You could take a smaller slice, but the pie is about to get a whole lot bigger...
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Thanks, but that's not really a worry for us, we paid PalmGear more than that in the early days and managed fine with it.
 

ste5en

秀才
I really need Plecodict on the Iphone.

I just returned from China and many of the expats there who are learning Chinese want to use the Iphone, and a lot of them are using Plecodict. Every time I go to China I need to take several Iphones because people are requesting them. But I understand that Iphones will soon be available for purchase in China.

I read that you were developing an Iphone version. What is the schedule for that?

Steve Miller
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We're not saying anything about release dates for the iPhone version yet, in fact we may not say anything about them until we actually release it - we have a horrible track record with missing release dates and we'd rather not keep disappointing people.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Well if someone else wants to rush out a simple Chinese dictionary for iPhone they're welcome to - we're surprised there's so little competition on Palm/WM, actually. Pleco wasn't the first Chinese dictionary for Palm or WM either and we're still doing pretty well on those platforms. There are already quite a few Chinese dictionaries for jailbroken iPhones, and I'm sure better ones will come along at whatever point Apple launches AppStore in China - the Chinese market is a lot more interested in iPhone than it was in Palm/WM and it's inevitable there'll be a significant number of competitors coming from that direction at least.
 

Luhmann

举人
Well if someone else wants to rush out a simple Chinese dictionary for iPhone they're welcome to ...

There seem to be two options right now. One is a web-app which is just a iPhone optimized front-end to CDict. The other is a program called WeDict which was developed for jailbroken iPhones but is now out in free and "pro" versions on Apple's application store. WeDict offers a free English-Chinese dictionary and supposedly it is possible to install the Chinese-English StarDictionary on the pro version. (Side note: The lack of copy-paste support on iPhone apps really limits the usefulness of these dictionaries.)
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Yeah, not having copy-paste is definitely a problem. As is the lack of a shared user file storage - if we do a document reader on iPhone at all, actually getting documents loaded into it is going to be a major ordeal. (which is why it may be missing in the initial version at least)
 
I have lived in China for the past 5 years, and have a lot of friends who were previously using Palms/Treos - mainly because of PlecoDict. They were either English speakers who needed a good Chinese dictionary, or vice versa. Most of them have now switched over to the iPhone over the past year, and one of the things that they (and I, obviously), really wish we had on it was PlecoDict. Some have been able to use WeDict - but it is completely unsatisfactory.

Most of the folks with iPhones in China use US credit cards to buy applications from the US App Store. This has also been the case for those based in Singapore/Malaysia/Hong Kong, and many other countries in the region. With the "official" launch of the iPhone in Asia over the past month, the market for PlecoDict on the iPhone is even greater now.

To echo the sentiments of the folks above, I think most of the folks I know, who have depended on PlecoDict for business discussions etc in the past, wouldn't mind paying a tad more to cover the App Store cost, if need be (but, similar to the chap above, I do think the addressable market would be much bigger now).

Also, it should be noted that many companies are "beta-testing" their iPhone apps during their development period, with an intention to charge once their products are complete. One company that is doing this well is Omni (with Omnifocus). They post updates to their iPhone application on the AppStore on a daily basis, and building a great relationship with their current and future customers this way.

While Copy/Paste would certainly be useful in the future, for transferring data between apps/from SMSs etc - it is only a small part of what makes PlecoDict so useful. I do hope that Mike will consider developing it for the iPhone platform soon.

TT
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
I'd like nothing better than to be working on an iPhone version right now, but we have to get 2.0 finished on Palm/PPC first.

It's unlikely that we'll do any sort of public (even closed) beta-test for the iPhone version, though; too much of the design of that is going to depend on Apple's approval process. We don't want testers to get accustomed to a lot of great features that Apple makes us cut out, and licensing-wise we'd rather not distribute even 1 copy of some particular dictionary / module / etc on iPhone outside of Pleco if we're not going to be able to include it in the finished version. It should be possible for us to release a reasonably-stable iPhone version without a public beta test, since most of the tricky code is shared with the Palm/WM versions anyway, and of course once it's out we'll be very receptive to suggestions / bug reports / etc.
 
Hey Mike,

I unintentionally ended up with an iphone. Anyway, I have started to download many apps for it, including quite a few dictionaries. As you may know there is an OK selection of Japanese dictionaries out for the iphone, though they aren't the best quality in my opinon. Currently the Chinese situation is even worse. Anyway, I noticed that WeDict Pro has managed to put the free and pro version of their app in the Apple Store, and both of them not only allow users to add star dictionaries, but they also say on the app page, in itunes' app store, that you can download dictionary add ins for the app. How did they swing that one? Can you do the same thing?

The Chinese handwriting capability is much better than I had originally imagined, though it still is nothing as neat or as perfect as with a stylus. When programing your iphone version of PlecoDict, if you manage to add full screen handwriting it would make the Chinese handwriting experience much better. Writing characters in the tiny box is difficult enough, but writing characters with many strokes becomes quite challenging. I can only imagine how difficult it would be without full screen handwriting capability to write traditional characters (a good portion of your customers, right?).

Darrol
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We're optimistic that we can offer separate dictionary add-on sales/downloads as well, but we really don't want to promise anything until the software's actually released - it would be an absolute disaster if we announced that people would be able to switch their software over to iPhone without buying (most of) it again and then have to renege on that because Apple wouldn't let us do it, much better to just keep saying we're not sure.

We've already done some tests with full-screen handwriting and it works much much better than the little box - we think it'll be one of the biggest things differentiating us from the (inevitably a lot more serious in a few months) competition on iPhone, since it's unlikely anybody else would go to the trouble of licensing a separate Chinese handwriting recognizer for iPhone when there's already one built in.
 
Glad to hear the update.

I agree. It's better to promise nothing and then deliver a lot, than to promise the world and deliver nothing.

Go for it!
 

Luhmann

举人
Another somewhat unsatisfactory option which might help everyone waiting for Pleco for the iPhone is the mobile version of Google Translate. This will run inside Safari on the iPhone, but you can make a shortcut to the finder. If you have a wifi or 3G connection this can often find words not listed in the standard dictionaries.
 
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