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PocketBible for iPad Preview
April 16th, 2010
I’ve uploaded a video preview of PocketBible for iPad to YouTube at www.youtube.com/user/laridianinc. Because the video resolution isn’t as good as the iPad screen resolution, I’ve reproduced some representative screen shots below. Click on the screen shot to see the full-resolution image.
We reserve the right to make changes to the user interface (UI) and to functionality before we ship. In fact, there are a few things still in flux and at least one major feature that hasn’t been plugged into the new UI yet. So expect changes from what you see here.
We’re especially excited about the flexibility the control panel gives us for new features and for giving you instant access to search results and bookmarks. We also have enjoyed just reading the Bible in full-screen mode.
While the iPad is faster than the iPhone, we’ve also made changes to the code that have really sped up the display of text, making scrolling by verses and even chapters significantly more useful. The nice thing is that the iPhone and iPad code is the same at this level so the improvements will spill over to the iPhone.
Having said that, it should be obvious that not all the features of PocketBible for iPad will find their way to the iPhone. We’ll probably add split-screen, but not more than two windows.
One thing we’re concerned about is app approval times on the App Store. We submitted Romans Road for release on the April 3 iPad release date. We followed Apple’s instructions for making sure our app was available on April 3, but then we never heard anything further from them so we’re not sure what the status of that app is. We’ve heard the same thing from other developers.
We don’t have a schedule for releasing this version of PocketBible yet. As you can see it’s very nearly complete but there are some big features that need to be plugged in.
PocketBible for iPad Preview
April 16th, 2010I’ve uploaded a video preview of PocketBible for iPad to YouTube at www.youtube.com/user/laridianinc. Because the video resolution isn’t as good as the iPad screen resolution, I’ve reproduced some representative screen shots below. Click on the screen shot to see the full-resolution image.
We reserve the right to make changes to the user interface (UI) and to functionality before we ship. In fact, there are a few things still in flux and at least one major feature that hasn’t been plugged into the new UI yet. So expect changes from what you see here.
We’re especially excited about the flexibility the control panel gives us for new features and for giving you instant access to search results and bookmarks. We also have enjoyed just reading the Bible in full-screen mode.
While the iPad is faster than the iPhone, we’ve also made changes to the code that have really sped up the display of text, making scrolling by verses and even chapters significantly more useful. The nice thing is that the iPhone and iPad code is the same at this level so the improvements will spill over to the iPhone.
Having said that, it should be obvious that not all the features of PocketBible for iPad will find their way to the iPhone. We’ll probably add split-screen, but not more than two windows.
One thing we’re concerned about is app approval times on the App Store. We submitted Romans Road for release on the April 3 iPad release date. We followed Apple’s instructions for making sure our app was available on April 3, but then we never heard anything further from them so we’re not sure what the status of that app is. We’ve heard the same thing from other developers.
We don’t have a schedule for releasing this version of PocketBible yet. As you can see it’s very nearly complete but there are some big features that need to be plugged in.
Straight Talk about Android and Laridian
April 8th, 2010
We’ve received a lot of comments here in the blog and via email about Android. You obviously are interested in a version of PocketBible for Android and that is exciting. We’re interested in a version of PocketBible for Android, too.
The way we see it there are six important mobile platforms right now:
1. iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad
2. Android
3. Blackberry
4. webOS
5. Windows Phone 7
6. Symbian
We have a product for iPhone. It has rather quickly become our flagship product, given the demise of both the Palm and Windows Mobile operating systems. (Both Palm and Microsoft have abandoned their legacy operating systems in favor of webOS and Windows Phone 7, respectively. Old apps won’t run on these new platforms.)
We have a partnership with BEIKS on the Blackberry platform. It’s a great platform but it tends to be more of an enterprise device rather than a consumer device and as a result the demand for third-party software, especially in our niche, is less than what you might expect based on the size of its market.
We have a partnership with Bits of God Software on webOS. We decided not to do our own development for this platform because its market share is relatively small and it does not support traditional programming languages like C++ and Java that would allow us to leverage our existing code.
Windows Phone 7 is a big TBD. Obviously there are zero devices right now and it has zero market share. We include it in the list only because it’s Microsoft, so we anticipate it will be a player. In the meantime we continue to support and release new content for PocketBible for the old/current Windows Mobile operating system
Symbian has problems we’ve addressed before here in the blog. It’s very difficult to successfully market a Symbian product. We’ve attended more than one Nokia/Symbian developer’s conference. We know what’s involved. The problem is not developing, it’s selling. We don’t have any plan to do a Symbian product.
That leaves Android. I can tell you now that we intend to develop a version of PocketBible for Android. But we think there’s more you need to know to understand where we’re coming from.
Sometimes I think people get the impression that we’re bigger than we are. On the one hand, that’s good, because it implies that we’re providing customer service at a level you expect from a bigger company, but on the other hand it can lead to unfounded expectations.
When it comes to product development, there’s just me and Jeff Wheeler here. We have some talented part-time employees who, while they’re skilled at what they do, only add up to the equivalent of a little over one more person. We use some outside contractors for content development (Bibles and reference books). That’s it. Needless to say, that limits what we can do.
Jeff and I used to work at Parsons Technology. I wrote the original version of QuickVerse and brought it to Parsons in 1988. Jeff and I had previously worked together and I hired him in to work at Parsons 1989. He eventually took over QuickVerse development and was the lead programmer for QuickVerse for Windows.
From about 1994 until 1998 when Jeff and I left, he had 10-12 programmers working for him. Most of those were working on QuickVerse. There was a similarly sized group of editors who created new content (Bibles and reference books) for QuickVerse. I had a small marketing group (two people) and a sales group (three or four people). All told there were about 30-35 people just in the Church Software Division. In addition to those we had access to telemarketing, direct sales, support, production and shipping, human resources, accounting, and other departments which we shared with the rest of the company. At our peak in the late 90’s Parsons had about 1200 total employees and the Church Software Division was about 10%-15% of the company’s annual sales. So you could argue that we supported about 120-180 employees.
You can do a lot with 180 people. If something new comes along, you can put a small team on it and get it done. You can’t do the same with three people.
In some respects this doesn’t bother us. We left Parsons Technology in order to be small. (See this article from Christian Computing Magazine which appeared on an old version of our Web site in 2001.) We’ve been big. We know what that’s like. We choose to be small. We enjoy what we do and wouldn’t have it any other way. But realistically, it affects what we can get done in a given period of time. We understand that.
We actually “started working” on an Android version of PocketBible a while back. But then Apple announced the iPad. We felt it was important to make sure that our existing PocketBible app would work well on the iPad. At first we were assured that would not be a problem (all well-behaved iPhone apps work on the iPad) but when we researched it further we realized we’d need to make some changes to optimize our performance on the iPad. We both dropped what we were doing and started work toward getting an iPad-aware version of PocketBible out the door.
This has proven to be challenging. We realized in order to take advantage of the cool new features of the iPad we’d have to re-architect the PocketBible user interface to better take advantage of the larger screen. At the same time, when we’re done the same code needs to run on the iPhone. So all of this has to be done carefully. (You’re going to love the iPad app by the way.)
So when I say “we intend to develop PocketBible for Android” you need to understand that doesn’t mean it will be done next month. It might not even be started by next month.
Furthermore, when we went from developing for Palm OS and Windows Mobile to developing for iPhone, we were able to bring along a lot of code from our previous projects because the iPhone “understands” the language in which it is written. We cannot run any of our existing code on Android. So we’ll be starting from scratch.
To put this in perspective, it took us about a year to release the first version of PocketBible for iPhone when we started with our existing code. It’s been almost two years now and we’re almost (not quite) done implementing all the features of our Windows Mobile app for the iPhone.
For Android we’re starting from nothing. I can’t say at this point how long it will take to develop PocketBible for Android. It’s probably not the case that it will take the year it took for the iPhone program plus the time to write the code we borrowed from our older programs. But at this point I can’t say.
While we are saying we intend to develop for Android, you also have to understand that we have lots of other requests and ideas on our to-do lists. Our Memorize! users would really like to see that app on the iPhone. Our PrayerPartner users are going to want us to port it to the iPad. So even once we start on Android, it might not be the only thing we’re doing.
This all helps explain why we don’t like to talk about what we may or may not do in the future. If we had told you on the day we started working on Android that we were working on Android, we’d have to tell you shortly after that that we had abandoned our work on Android to work on iPad. And now we’re telling you we “intend” to do an Android version but the schedule is unknowable. This won’t be a problem for those of you who are familiar with software development and understand what all is involved, but for those of you who are unfamiliar with software development you’ll probably get the wrong idea about the schedule — either thinking it will take us longer than it will or that it will be done sooner than is physically possible.
For a small company like ours these are exciting times. Back when Palm OS and Windows Mobile ruled the mobile space, we were riding pretty high. Things have changed quickly, and we’re working on responding to the changes. Thanks for sticking with us. We hope you’ll continue to do so.
iPad Update
March 27th, 2010
With the WiFi iPads shipping for delivery in less than a week, I thought we should update you on our status.
Today (March 27) is the last day to submit apps to the App Store and be guaranteed they’ll be available on the iPad App Store on its official release date (April 3). For a while that was our goal, but as time went on we realized it would be in everyone’s best interest if we had a chance to see what PocketBible looked like on the actual hardware. The emulator we run on our Macs is good, but it’s not the real hardware. We’re concerned about performance and simple things like the usability of the user interface, given that we can’t really tell how big our buttons are or what it’s going to “feel” like on a real device until we have one in our hands.
So, we won’t release a product to the App Store until we have a chance to see it running on real hardware. So that means sometime after April 3.
The great thing about the iPad is that it runs our iPhone code pretty much as-is. The bad thing is that it runs our iPhone code as-is. The experience of running an iPhone app on the iPad will be less than optimum, but it at least will give the iPad a couple hundred thousand apps on day one. Ideally, every iPhone developer will be customizing their apps for the iPad, and that’s what we’ve been doing.
While the iPad is a mobile device, it has the screen real estate of a desktop or laptop device (1024 x 768). That means while we’re using our iPhone code as a base, we have to think like we’re developing for the desktop. Not a desktop computer with a mouse and a real keyboard, though, but a desktop computer you operate with your fingers and type on a pop-up keyboard. So the interface is an interesting intersection of desktop and mobile paradigms.
So what will be new or different on the iPad? First, You’ll have plenty of space on the screen for some controls to be present all the time, just like on your desktop where menus and toolbars are generally always there. This makes it easier and more intuitive to get around.
Second, the bigger screen means there’s room to split the screen and show you more than one book at a time if you want.
Third, we’ve taken advantage of this opportunity to add a frequently requested feature: The ability to search your entire library at one time. The larger screen means there’s room to give you both a search results browser and a library browser at the same time. We think this is going to be a great addition to the program.
Finally, you can expect changes to how you open books and navigate within books. It should take fewer touches to find your way around your library.
We’ll post some more details as we get closer to releasing the product. With the actual release of the iPad itself coming up, we just wanted to give you some advance notice of what’s coming. We think you’re going to like it.
