Pleco for iPhone Available Friday

[mikelove]

Just a quick note to let everyone know that the first iPhone release of our Chinese dictionary software is scheduled to go on sale this Friday. The first release doesn't include flashcard support (that's coming early 2010 - not a difficult thing to port over from Palm/WM, fortunately), but all of the other features we're known for are there, including our fantastic new full-screen Chinese handwriting recognizer and an integrated document reader.

More product info will be posted on our website shortly, in the meantime you can see demo videos at

or (if you can't access YouTube) http://www.plecomirror.com/ipdemovid.html and the instruction manual is now online at http://www.pleco.com/ipmanual/.

Oh, and BTW, if you go into App Store right now and do a search for "pleco" the search results may show a couple of other Chinese learning apps that don't have Pleco in their names - those are NOT affiliated with us, they're just leeching off of our trademark in their search keywords, so please don't buy them thinking they're in any way Pleco-related. The official Pleco iPhone app will be listed as "Pleco Chinese Dictionary" - icon has a big traditional-character 魚 on it just as on our Palm / Windows Mobile apps.

[Xiwang]

Thank you. I love you.

[stoney]

Can my pleco palm license be transferred to iphone?

[mikelove]

Yes, details on how that works should be posted on our website Thursday.

[OneEye]

Sweet! Good timing too. I was about to just buy another WM phone next week because of all the uncertainty.

[mikelove]

Yeah, we really wanted to get it out before Christmas for the sake of people's hardware-buying plans. And given how late 春节 is this year, we're hoping we might at least have a demo video / more specific release date target for the flashcard-equipped version ready by then - not really as much of a gift-giving holiday but an excellent time to go new-phone-shopping.

[Gleaves]

真棒.

I look forward to the handwriting recognition, as I have been struggling with my ipod a bit lately. I often choose a character too early by accident by brushing up against the choices. Hopefully, pleco is a little more forgiving on stroke order as well. The two-finger tap to select looks sweet.

[Hobbes828]

similar to above... I was wondering if I got the iPhone version but my phone breaks or I get an Android later on or w/e, will that license also be transferrable? I assume this will be answered in the same place but I just wanted to throw the question out there in case you were wondering if people cared

[mikelove]

If you replace it with another iPhone / iPod it should certainly be transferable - in fact Apple pretty much requires that we make it so - but as far as other platforms, we really can't make any predictions about a future platform version until we've lined up all of the necessary licenses for it.

But we're not currently planning an Android version at all; porting all of our painstakingly-developed engine code from C (used by Palm / Windows Mobile / desktop Windows / iPhone / Mac OS X / Linux / Symbian / pretty much every other major computer or smartphone platform) to Java (used by Android and, rather awkwardly, by BlackBerry) would be a massive undertaking.

If the iPhone version sells really well we certainly might consider investing in an Android version at that point, but for the moment we prefer to focus on iPhone and on some possible future desktop / web-based products.

[roddy]

on some possible future desktop / web-based products.

You tease, Mike, you tease Web-based, eh . . .

[mikelove]

Well online is a logical place to go, though personally I hate JavaScript almost as much as I hate regular Java.

The main problem is finding enough stuff you can put online that actually benefits from being put online; just taking an offline dictionary / flashcard app and sticking it on a website doesn't really leave you with a product that's any better than an offline app with some rudimentary online sync / auto-update features. (our iPhone version already has the latter and should get the former once we add flashcards; our CC-CEDICT may not be quite as up-to-date as the one on mdbg's website, but it'll probably never be more than a couple of weeks behind it)

On the other hand, finding interesting new ways for people to collaborate in their online Chinese learning is both fun and potentially lucrative, which is why I'm intrigued by lang-8 (though I don't think it goes far enough).

[keitha]

I was really impressed with the videon on youtube. The program works on the ipod touch also? As I really don't use my cell phone that much, so I figured I might buy an Ipod Touch instead.

[mikelove]

Yes, it works on both iPhone and iPod Touch, and on every model of each. (though it does requires the newest iPhone OS version 3.0)

[sirslope]

I bought a Palm TX just for PlecoDict and I'm ---[ this ]--- close to picking up an iPhone for the same reason. In any case, Apple (and the rest of us) has Pleco to thank for finally delivering a worthy piece of Chinese translator software to the iPhone!

[OneEye]

Mike,

I wonder if a Japanese version would ever be a possibility? I'd think there would be a huge market for something like that.

[Ole]

The new Pleco-app is online.

I upgraded from Palm to iPhone.

I could take almost all of my dictionaries and stuff with me.

Everthing for free!

thank you Mike Love!

[keitha]

Is the 8GB Ipod Touch 3G powerful enough to run the program without slowing down?

The 8gb version is built with the old second gen hardware, but the 32gb version is too expensive for me.

If so I will definitly buy one just for this app.

[gerri]

Haven't used everything yet, only bought some add-ons I think I should really need (dictionaries are not cheap), but I'm running PlecoDict on 3g iPod touch 8GB and haven't seen any problems so far.

Had to set up an ad-hoc network because otherwise I wouldn't have WiFi, and I wonder somewhat if iTunes, when it syncs applications, also saves the add-ons (or if I would have to download them again if disaster struck my iPod), but all that seems to be working just fine.

Hoping the flashcards part will be coming sooner rather than later; and I'll have to check out how exactly the Reader part works... (also, I didn't get the handwriting add-on, I'm fine with the iPod's inbuilt recognition)

[imron]

I have a 1st-gen iPhone and Pleco runs on it just fine. I imagine the iPod Touch 3G should run it without any problems.

[mikelove]

sirslope - thanks!

OneEye - certainly a possibility, though there are some very nice Japanese apps for iPhone already and it's not a market we have much of a history in (-> hard to break in).

Ole - you're very welcome!

gerri - iTunes does indeed save those add-on downloads when it backs up your system, so they should still be there if you have to do a system restore.