Pleco equivalent for desktop PC

[roddy]

I had this really weird dream that Windows 11 will be able to use Android apps via some odd Amazon App Store work around and I don’t know why I’m even posting this, it couldn’t be any use. 

[mikelove]

According to this tweet from Miguel de Icaza at Microsoft, you won't actually need to use the Amazon App Store for this and can just load an APK directly, and we already offer that on our website. (I have no desire to accommodate another App Store in my life so I really hope this policy holds)

 

But I expect the experience will be fairly similar to that of running our Android app in an emulator now, i.e. somewhat creaky / limited - it seems like they're basically just building an Android emulator into Windows, I don't see any sign of a special set of APIs specifically for writing Android apps that integrate with Windows yet. And Android doesn't currently have the wealth of mouse / stylus / menu / large-screen-related APIs that iOS does. That being said, generally the best way to get Google to add something to Android is for another company to do it their own way in an Android fork - Samsung's done this a bunch of times - so if this Microsoft effort is successful (no guarantee it will be, Catalyst has been kind of a dud for Apple) they might find themselves feeling pressure to make it an official/standard Android thing.

 

In the meantime, it seems like the main point of this will be to enable Windows users to access interesting services that are not available as web apps, like TikTok. Gaming is probably less of a priority for Microsoft than it was for Apple with Catalyst because Windows already has the greatest game collection of any platform in history and doesn't need to pad it out with a bunch of mobile games.

[mungouk]

So @mikelove, how about Pleco on MacOS with Catalyst... is that getting any closer? 

 

I realise that getting the UX right when moving to a desktop platform is challenging, but... it would be so great to have.

 

 

[mikelove]

Depends on your definition of "closer," but it's working pretty well on my Mac. There have been a few challenges - mouseover support is mostly working but it's been a massive pain in the butt because it had to work in web pages, PDFs, image files, and two different kinds of text views - and there may be a few other bits that are missing / unrefined in the first beta, but I'm optimistic it'll be available on Mac at the same time as or soon after it's available on iOS.

[mungouk]

7 minutes ago, mikelove said:

Depends on your definition of "closer,"

 

I can only think of one right now... ?

Will this be the fabled 4.0 release?

 

And btw is there a way to get invited to testflight betas?

 

 

[mikelove]

2 minutes ago, mungouk said:

Will this be the fabled 4.0 release?

 

Yes. And I look forward to seeing the 'OMG it's actually real' reactions when the thing ships; I'm pretty sure a large % of people have concluded it's vaporware and I can't really even blame them for doing so.

 

2 minutes ago, mungouk said:

And btw is there a way to get invited to testflight betas?

 

We'll broadcast it pretty widely once we have a beta ready - current limit is I believe 10,000 testers so I don't think we're likely to run out of slots.

[mungouk]

? ? ?  

 

[NinKenDo]

If you guys ever get around to doing a Windows version, please consider Wine compatibility as a feature ?

[mikelove]

1 hour ago, NinKenDo said:

If you guys ever get around to doing a Windows version, please consider Wine compatibility as a feature ?

Would that actually be likely to deliver a better experience than an Android emulator?

[NinKenDo]

21 hours ago, mikelove said:

Would that actually be likely to deliver a better experience than an Android emulator?

Yes, most definitely, for much the same reasons I run Wenlin through Wine and not through a WIndows virtual machine.

 

1) Performance.

2) Actually cooperates with a window management solution that isn't GNOME or KDE.

3) More reliable integration with things like the clipboard.

 

Those are just off the top of my head. I simply don't use Pleco through an emulator because it is completely dysfunctional, I'd rather just have 5 different dictionary applications and websites open given the current state of usability.

[mikelove]

Thanks.

 

There's a plausible scenario where the combination of Catalyst + this new Windows thing result in users being mostly unwilling to pay to use a mobile app on a desktop - we should get a good sense of that from what sort of sales numbers our Mac version does / how many angry "I bought a copy of Pleco for my Palm Pilot in 2005, HOW DARE you charge me to install it on my Mac in 2022" emails we get - in which case a future Windows port might instead take the form of an offline web app, which would have the side benefit of being really easy to port to Linux ?

[大块头]

On 6/25/2021 at 3:07 AM, roddy said:

I had this really weird dream that Windows 11 will be able to use Android apps via some odd Amazon App Store work around and I don’t know why I’m even posting this, it couldn’t be any use. 

 

Are you sure you're Roddy dreaming of emulating Pleco, or Pleco dreaming of emulating Roddy?

[Demonic_Duck]

11 hours ago, 大块头 said:

Are you sure you're Roddy dreaming of emulating Pleco, or Pleco dreaming of emulating Roddy?

 

Oh. My. God.

[imron]

18 hours ago, mikelove said:

how many angry "I bought a copy of Pleco for my Palm Pilot in 2005, HOW DARE you charge me to install it on my Mac in 2022"

I’m just happy you didn’t charge to upgrade from palm to the iOS version ? going nearly 15 years strong now. 

[mikelove]

3 hours ago, imron said:

I’m just happy you didn’t charge to upgrade from palm to the iOS version ? going nearly 15 years strong now. 

 

Heh, yeah, that one not only made for happy customers but was also a pretty effective business tactic, in that it greatly boosted our review / download / etc numbers after getting a late start + launching in December '09 into an App Store that had half a dozen decent Chinese dictionary apps already. (though even then it took us like a year to climb to the #1 result for "chinese dictionary," with a key additional boost provided by a few weeks of crazy numbers after we launched OCR and people were writing 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' pieces about Pleco)

[querido]

Those of you who have been holding your breath for nine years, carry on.

[mikelove]

Honestly I spent most of those 9 years expecting that both macOS and Windows would be dead within a few years, macOS replaced by more powerful iPads and Windows replaced by Chromebooks running Android apps. And so I’ve spent much of the time basically sitting back and waiting to see what would happen with the market. (Also somewhat relevant in discussions of this time period is the fact that my oldest kid is 8 and a half)

 

Google actually did move pretty fast with Android on Chrome, but that seems to have had barely any impact on the market; Chromebooks remain niche educational devices and schools don’t seem at all interested in using them for anything except web apps.

 

Apple never figured out how to make iPads replace Macs, dithered around for years trying to work out a path forward for Mac, and seems to have finally hit on the current M1 + iOS app idea mostly because their supply chain obsessed CEO wanted to start making his own desktop CPUs.

 

And Windows… endured, somehow, a testament to the impossibility of changing people’s habits.

 

I’ve nevertheless mostly finished desktop optimizing 4.0 on Mac, but I’m not at all confident it’ll make any money, and frankly I don’t know if I ever would have gotten around to doing it if Apple hadn’t come up with this fast porting path from iOS (something I’ve half expected them to do since the beginning, as iOS and Mac have always shared much of the same technical foundation). So it’s finally happening now because the desktop market remains stubbornly intransigent a decade later and meanwhile Apple has proffered this useful shortcut to spur me along.

 

EDIT: re the “dead in a few years” thing, it’s also worth noting that back in 2012 I had in fact just witnessed the demise of PalmOS and Windows Mobile, shortly after I’d released a major new update on them. So fear of wasting my time on yet another doomed legacy OS was a big driver of my lack of enthusiasm for desktop apps.

[Insectosaurus]

3 hours ago, mikelove said:

And Windows… endured, somehow, a testament to the impossibility of changing people’s habits.

As long as Windows remains the only viable options for gaming I have no way of changing OS. To this day Windows have a lot of arguments going for it  among the general public, both when it comes to price and usability. I don't know if Windows 11 will be as gamer friendly, but I expect it will.

[mikelove]

4 hours ago, Insectosaurus said:

As long as Windows remains the only viable options for gaming I have no way of changing OS.

I've been waiting on the demise of Windows gaming for *20* years now, actually - I thought that was doomed back when Microsoft bought Bungie and announced that Halo was going to be not a Windows but an Xbox exclusive.

[NinKenDo]

There was also just a lot of hype train around that time about how desktop PCs were dead, laptop PCs are dead, blah blah blah. Not to sound negative but you drank hard on the cool-aid, and that's all it ever was. Desktop PC experience is never going away, that should have started to become obvious when Microsoft made the most used desktop operating system in the world completely tablet-centric (Windows 8) and rather than start switching device, everybody simply decided it was unusable trash. I don't think making decisions around dictionary software based on an 8 year old's computing habits was sound market research ;) And please know I mean this in the best humour, although I am a little frustrated.