Why I'm Not Getting An iPad

[Glenn]

One the learning issue, when I first saw the keynote speech for the iPad I was excited about the possibilities for learning languages period. Having text that you could highlight and have read to you, for instance, or having a video on a page that reads the text on it, being able to touch a word and get a pop-up definition, or maybe even be able to have pinyin in-line with the text as a feature that you can turn off, and going farther even have literal and natural translations in-line with the Chinese text would all be possible as far as I can see. You could have pronunciation guides for other languages, like French, for example. You could have an IPA transcription in-line with French (or whatever) text, turn accent marks on and off, etc. I got so excited about the potential for language-learning when I saw that speech I wanted to start a company that produced those sorts of software. Then I realized I don't know how to write software, I don't know much about business, I don't have money, I don't have connections, I have no idea how I would make it work...

[mikelove]

FWIW, I had no business knowledge / money / connections when I started Pleco either, so I wouldn't let that stop you - content licenses aren't as expensive as you might think, and connections-wise, I have yet to encounter a publisher who's even required proof that Pleco actually exists / that I'm not 11 years old or a convicted felon / etc; a few publishers are snooty about doing business with small companies, but most of them are pretty small themselves. Business knowledge is something that can really only be acquired through hard experience, which running a startup gives you an ample supply of :-)

Even writing software has gotten a whole lot easier in the last decade, though you'd find a much larger and easier-to-use array of developer tools on Windows than on iPad or Android. Anyway startups generally work better when they have more than one cofounder, though admittedly the cofounder-who-does-the-programming is usually the hardest one to find and can generally dictate his/her own terms. (or run away and re-create / own the whole thing him/herself if you're not careful about legal agreements - Mark Zuckerberg says hello)

Whole-sentence translation is very complicated, though - way beyond what any startup can realistically do, particularly a startup in the painfully low-margin mobile software business - so that's really only feasible if you hook into an online service like Google Translate. Though something like you describe might work better on the web anyway - certain things like detecting exactly which character a person tapped on are actually really complicated on iPhone OS, and could be considerably easier if you were laying out the text yourself in HTML / CSS.

[Glenn]

Wow. That certainly gives me a different perspective, not to mention it's quite impressive. I suppose it might do me well to start thinking about the idea more seriously again. Thanks for the advice/encouragement!

[flippant]

I love the iPad.

The old trope about it being for content consumption, however, rings (almost) completely true. It's good enough to write mail or short lecture notes, but it's not fantastic for text entry.

I bought it for Chinese study primarily, but also because I like gadgets and wanted an e-book reader (and fate conspired to have me in the US for the first time just as it was launching). It also kicks ass as an RSS reader. Using an RSS app, you can easily collate all the blogs and sites you follow and have them compiled into a newspaper of sorts, that you can read in bed or with your coffee. It works for me ;)

Now, it's not the be all and end all of electronic devices or Chinese learning. What it is, is a handy tool for reading, or using as a dictionary. The book metaphor works as a dictionary as well - the large display lets you see a lot of information in a spacious way that an iPhone just won't allow. Compared to an iPhone, it's also snappy as all hell.

The Pleco reader is a big sticking point for me, and lets me actually read texts quickly and easily, which is a fun change of pace from the hard slog of reading them "manually". It's like Wenlin in a lot of ways, but for me it is much more natural this way. Now, you won't learn the language as effectively doing this, but you do get to enjoy a bit of reading for once. As of right now, it has issues with longer texts, but blog posts and shorter texts are doable.

But the price, unfortunately, is rather steep. Since I bought it in the states, I got it for pretty much as cheap as it gets, which for me was the only way I could even half way rationalize spending that much money.

It has a lot of other uses I won't enumerate here, but in that sense it's just a variation on a laptop.