Thanks for your comments on my last post. They were very informative and confirmed a number of things that I was thinking about the Android platform as a relative n00b. My only disappointment is that nobody commented on my really cool graphic of a silhouetted Android android listening to his iPod and dancing like one of those Apple ads. Oh, well.

One interesting overall observation was that comments tended to come from people who were more than techie, more than early adopters, but were developers themselves. This is consistent with the perception that Android is a more technically complex platform as compared to iPhone. The comments bore this out as well.

I summarized the comments this way. I divided them into comments from a consumer perspective, those from a programmer’s perspective, and comments related to unique features of the platform that we should look at.

Consumer Perspective

• Android Pros
  • Hard buttons (menu, back, search, etc.)
  • Apps are more collaborative
  • Implicit multitasking
  • Widgets
  • More customizable
  • Free integration with G-apps
• iPhone Pros
  • Apps are more polished
  • Apps are more similar - easier to learn
  • Overall easier to use
  • Apps are more trusted (Apple-vetted store)

Programmer Perspective

• Java!
• Simple background processes
• Other minor programming tasks may be easier to handle
• No App Store police
• “Intents” to communicate with other apps
• Ability to install outside App Store

Unique Features (not already mentioned)

• Speech-to-text; text-to-speech
• Publish a “Look up verse” intent
• “Verse of the day” widget

I, too, like the hard buttons. Right away I’m thinking we don’t have a toolbar like the iPhone app but instead rely on the menu button to cause a standard menu to be displayed. From there we can use a “more” button to expand the range of options that can be chosen from the menu. This will simplify the ui and provide more space for text without having to change any settings like you have to do on the iPhone.

I definitely agree with all the iPhone “pros” that were pointed out. There are small things about the iPhone that just make it feel better. For example, the little bounce you get at the end of a list to indicate that you’re at the end. You don’t notice how nice that is until you don’t have it on Android. And overall the operation of the device feels smooth and effortless.

I’m not a flaming Java fan yet. I’ve been programming in C and C++ for about 28 years. While Java is a descendant of C++, I don’t agree that the differences are necessarily better. They’re just different. For example, while I agree that there’s no real reason to separate the interface description of a class (i.e. the C++ .h file) from its implementation (the .cpp file), putting them together (in the .java file) necessitates the use of a separate “JavaDoc” tool to pull documentation out of the code. In C++ your .h file serves as the class documentation and typically contains no implementation to get in the way — it’s all about documenting the interfaces to your class. Again, not a big deal, but just different.

I’m also not sold on the necessity of eliminating the unsigned integer types. Seriously? I use unsigned ints all the time to indicate specifically that I don’t expect this value to be negative and to subsequently double the range of values that can be stored.

On the other hand I love the fact that the bit-width of each of the integer types is fixed by the language. We share code between several platforms and compilers and have to define types like “Int32″, “Int16″, “Int8″ and their “UInt32″, “UInt16″ and “UInt8″ counterparts for each platform so the shared code will be guaranteed to work right.

And it’s probably the bit-twiddler in me, but I’m not fond of garbage collection. I realize some of you n00bs don’t know how to manage the memory you allocate, but we experts don’t have a problem deleting everything we allocate with “new” and not leaving pointers dangling or memory orphaned. The idea of having a process fire up at some undetermined time and take some undetermined number of processor cycles to do memory management is disturbing. Sure, it’s convenient and this is the last time I’ll complain about it, but I’m just saying it’s disturbing.

Thanks again for the input. I’ve closed comments on the other post since I used this one to summarize them, but feel free to comment here.

OK we’ve been playing with the Android for a while now and have begun to get a feel for it. After spending the last couple of years developing for the iPhone, we have begun to develop some opinions on how the two platforms compare. But today I’m interested in yours, because it will help me shape the way I think about certain aspects of implementation of this app. If you have significant experience with both Android and iPhone, I’d like to hear what you think of the two platforms.

If you gave up iPhone for Android, I’m not interested in how you were treated by AT&T or how bad their coverage or 3G performance is in your area or how much their data plan costs — that doesn’t help me get my head where it needs to be. Instead, I’m looking for your reaction to the platforms themselves. What makes one or the other better? Which is more pleasant to use and why? What makes the applications for one better than those of the other?

Again, the fact that Android is experiencing rapid market share growth is irrelevant to this question. The fact that iPhone is only available on one carrier doesn’t matter. The fact that you can get Android phones from a variety of manufacturers won’t help me. I’m looking for your reaction to the look and feel of the operating system and the best apps on each phone.

In order to be relevant, you should have more than just passing familiarity with both platforms. I’m not looking for input from those who are die-hard fans of one platform but who have only passing knowledge of the other. I’m hoping to find a few people who have spent a couple months or more using each of these platforms as their primary phone and who have purchased a few apps for each.

Along the way you’ll pick up our opinion I’m sure. But right now I’m looking for yours. Thanks for your help.

Apple announced its long awaited iPad tablet device last week, and like you we were all anxious to see it.

What we’re being told is that it will run most iPhone apps unmodified. They will only take up about 1/4 of the screen, since the iPad screen is significantly larger than the iPhone. We don’t have any reason to believe PocketBible won’t run on the iPad, but we’re doing what we can to make sure.

While the SDK has been distributed to developers, it is only a beta and we are unable to build what Apple calls “universal apps” that will allow the same binary file to run on either an iPhone or an iPad. We also don’t have access to pre-production devices, so we can only run in the emulator that is built into the development tools. So we have some reason to believe that PocketBible will work as-is but can’t be absolutely sure at this point because we’ve never seen it run on a device.

There are some simple user interface changes we’ll be making in the short term to better take advantage of the iPad’s capabilities. In addition, there are some new capabilities in the iPad version of the OS that aren’t yet in the iPhone that we’d like to investigate — what Apple calls “Core Text” is at the top of that list.

It’s not obvious from the end-user point of view, but PocketBible pushes the limits of the iPhone’s abilities when it comes to displaying text. PocketBible is exactly the type of application that the iPhone OS was not designed for — that is, an app that does sophisticated text rendering. The new iPad, with its bigger screen and potentially more usable keyboard, invites applications like word processors that need sophisticated layout capabilities. PocketBible is in that camp.

This is not unique to the iPhone. Windows Mobile also lacks key text rendering capabilities that are present in its big brother, Windows on the desktop. For example, it’s not possible in Windows Mobile to accurately measure the width of a piece of text as it will be displayed on the screen. You can almost do it, but it doesn’t work right for bold and italics. So we’ve had to implement our own functions for this.

We could probably get into a lengthy discussion of whether or not this form factor is something the public will accept. I’ve seen everything from people who want it to replace their phone (assuming they can keep from knocking themselves unconscious when they answer it) to those who point out that tablet computers with full-blown operating systems have failed to capture consumer attention, which causes one to question whether a similar device with a mobile OS stands a chance.

That said, one of my long-standing complaints about devices such as the Sony Reader and the Kindle are that they don’t allow any kind of third-party software. (Or at least until recently when Amazon announced a “Kindle Developer’s Kit” for Kindle.) My Kindle is great, but it’s horrible for Bible study because the software simply doesn’t have the features you need to access an integrated Bible library, or even perform moderately sophisticated searches. Viewed as a souped-up e-book reader, the iPad may stand a chance. While it’s hard to imagine anyone beating Amazon’s selection of e-books for Kindle, if anyone has a chance of doing so it would be Apple.

The iPad could actually be the perfect electronic Bible study device. It’s just portable enough to be truly portable, while being large enough to facilitate convenient cross-referencing between titles.

From a developer’s standpoint there’s not a whole lot to complain about. It’s like a big iPhone, so everything we’ve learned about iPhone and Mac programming transfers painlessly to the iPad. We’re not crazy about the shortsightedness of some of their new features (”split views” being at the top of that list for you programmers) but we’ve also seen initial shortsightedness in the iPhone OS get repaired in subsequent releases. Unfortunately, like the similar issues that arose years ago on the Palm OS, by the time the official solutions are released everyone has already coded their own work-arounds to meet user demand.

What all this boils down to is that we fully plan to support the iPad and in fact enhance PocketBible over time to take advantage of unique iPad features. We think it could be an ideal Bible study platform for those who have the spare change to invest in one.

A few months ago Verizon started running some pretty obvious ads for those of us who use both Verizon and AT&T. They compared their 3G coverage map to AT&T’s. AT&T came up wanting.

AT&T fired back, saying that their 3G network covers 97% of cell phone users, and that it’s faster. They further brag that AT&T users can surf the Web while they’re on the phone.

I’m sitting here this morning using a Verizon 3G modem connected to my MacBook, writing code for the iPhone in my pocket. On a whim I went to speedtest.net on both the Mac and iPhone to see what the results would be.

Speedtest.net on the iPhone took me to the App Store to download their free native app. On the Mac, Speedtest.net runs in your Web browser. I downloaded the app to my iPhone and made sure both the Mac and iPhone were connecting to the same server in Kalamazoo, MI.

The results of three tests tests on each device are summarized below:

AT&T has an upload advantage, but most mobile Web surfing and email activity depends on download speed, not upload speed. Furthermore, AT&T’s overall speed (average of upload and download) is lower. So even if you did an equal amount of uploading and downloading (which would be very unusual), Verizon is faster.

This seems to undermine AT&T’s argument that their network, while covering very little of the geographic area of the US, is faster. It appears to me based on my one sample location (Coffee Emporium in Hiawatha, IA) that this is not true.

And while I may be able to surf and talk at the same time with my iPhone, if you read the fine print you’ll find out that only applies when you’re in 3G coverage. The one time I’ve needed to do it in the last two years I was not in 3G coverage and therefore couldn’t surf while I was on the phone.

The iPhone is a great device and if you live in certain areas of the country very close to an ocean you have great coverage. And the connection speed, while slower than Verizon, is certainly adequate for mobile Web and email activities. I really like my iPhone and recommend them to everyone. However, AT&T is its weak spot.

From time to time we’re approached by (or we approach) a publisher with a Bible or reference title they’d like to distribute through Laridian at no charge. That’s fine with us, of course, especially if they do all the work to create the title with BookBuilder. But some of these folks have second thoughts when they find out that we charge for our reader software. They feel uncomfortable having their work supporting a for-profit company. (Of course if they knew how little profit was in it, perhaps they’d change their minds.)

I used to use a biblical argument to support the idea that the “laborer is worthy of his wages”. Paul asks “Who serves as a soldier at his own expense?” (1 Cor 9) However, I found that people couldn’t follow this argument. It wasn’t that they thought it didn’t apply in our situation, but rather they just didn’t understand what the passage was even talking about.

So now I take a different tact: It’s OK for people to go to Best Buy and pay $1000 for a computer or $300 for a mobile phone on which to run Bible software. And it’s OK that $50-$100 of that purchase goes to Microsoft or Apple or some other company to pay for the operating system on that computer or phone. When they get the computer home, it’s OK to pay Qwest for high-speed internet access for the computer on which you’re going to do Bible study. Computers require electricity, so it’s OK to pay the local utility company for power to keep the computer running while you do your Bible study. Assuming we’re talking about a home user, and realizing that most people have a mortgage, it’s OK to pay interest to J.P. Morgan Chase or some other big bank for the privilege of having a roof over your computer.

Everyone agrees there’s nothing unbiblical about paying for your computer, operating system, internet access, electricity, and mortgage interest. However, next you want to install Bible software. But God forbid that we should pay the fellow believers who dedicate their lives to creating software to help people study the Bible! Sure, we’ll pay Best Buy, Microsoft, Apple, Qwest, the power company, and the bank — we all know how selflessly dedicated these companies are to advancing the goals of the Kingdom of God — but we’re certainly not going to pay fellow believers to create our Bible study software! That would violate our deeply held Christian principles!

I know that 99% of you reading this blog agree with my argument. It’s great that there are brothers and sisters who donate their time to advancing the Kingdom. But there are some of us who have no other means of support other than what we do to help others understand and apply the scriptures. If we “donate” our time, our kids go hungry. We all think this is obvious, but not everyone does. I thought you might find it interesting that there really are Christians out there who have no trouble supporting secular programmers but balk at supporting their brothers and sisters.

And if you’re in the “Bible software should be free” camp I hope you’ll take a minute to think about who you willingly give your money to (your grocer, mortgage holder, utility company, doctor, plumber, paper boy, internet service provider, mechanic, movie theater, dentist, garbage man, and others) and who you think should go without (your brothers and sisters in Christ) so that you can have cool stuff.

It’s been a long six weeks since we released Beta 1 of our native version of PocketBible for iPhone. At the time I said we were expecting the beta period to be short. Needless to say I was wrong.

A Wrench in the Works

Two major things happened to really slow us down. First, we have been really struggling to get adequate performance out of our code to allow you to be able to smoothly scroll through the Bible like you would a Web page in Safari on the iPhone. Safari has the advantage of being able to render the entire page. Once that is done, scrolling around on it — even zooming in and out — is pretty easy with the features of the iPhone OS. In our case, however, we can’t render the entire Bible while you wait. We have to load it into memory in pieces. Unfortunately, computers can only do one thing at once and while it was busy loading the next chunk of text it needed to display, the scrolling would get clunky. It wouldn’t keep up with your finger motions.

We actually got to the point where it was working pretty well. We were loading text in a separate thread and drawing during otherwise idle times (say, while the graphics processor was busy animating the motion of the text). But then we installed the OS 3 SDK and things fell apart.

We couldn’t afford to take the time to figure out how and why the new version was causing us problems. Suffice to say that the particular functionality we were taking advantage of was rewritten for version 3, and in so doing the handling of touch events changed in ways that may not be significant to some applications but were significant to us.

As a simple example, when you’re tracking a touch event, the system can send you a “cancel” message. This means the phone is ringing or some other event has happened and your program needs to stop what it’s doing and let something more important take over. Well, with version 3 we’d be happily tracking a touch event and suddenly we’d get a “cancel” message. It seems the system was watching the touch events and had decided that the touches weren’t doing anything it cared about, so it told us to cancel our handling of those events. We could’ve ignored the “cancel” message (knowing it was just the OS trying to take over touch handling) but since the “cancel” message also means “really — the phone is ringing — you need to stop right now” we couldn’t afford to make that assumption.

Anyway, the end result was we threw out about six months worth of work and in about a day I coded a replacement that doesn’t depend on a lot of fancy background threads, idle-time drawing, or system touch event handling. The new user interface is simple, practical, and best of all — it’s done.

As if That Wasn’t Enough…

So as we’re recovering from that crisis, the 3GS is released. Now, when you’re developing for the iPhone there are some strict procedures you have to follow to install your program on your phone. Apple wants to make sure all program distribution happens through the App Store, so they limit how many devices you can install your app on outside the App Store. Every time we distribute a beta version (or even one of our own builds we do internally and install on our own phones) we have to identify exactly which phones it will run on. Apple lets us install on no more than 100 devices outside the App Store.

To manage this, developers maintain a list of “unique device ID’s” (UDIDs) in their account on the Apple Web site. Each phone as a UDID that uniquely identifies it. We ask all of our beta testers for their UDIDs and enter those at the Apple site. When we distribute a new build we request a certificate from Apple that contains all the UDIDs we want the program to run on.

So as I was saying, the 3GS was released. Jeff bought one for us to test with. A bunch of our beta testers bought them. So anticipating the release of Beta 2, I started collecting all these new UDIDs so I could update our account on the Apple site and create the new distribution certificate with everyone’s new UDID in it. I got about half way through entering them and the site told me I couldn’t enter any more. It said I had already used my 100 devices.

I only had 82 devices in my list. Turns out when you change someone’s UDID it counts as a new device. I had added 85 devices, deleted 3, and made 15 changes. When you delete a device you don’t get its “slot” back, so from Apple’s perspective the total was 100.

After several email, support forum, and telephone conversations with Apple and other developers, we concluded that we were out of luck. We had to wait until our annual program renewed on July 12. At that time, Apple said our device count would reset. We could delete all our devices and start over. But once we started adding devices, we were stuck with those for a year.

One thing that meant is that we couldn’t have 82 beta testers. We needed to cut the list dramatically. I wanted to get down around 40 testers. That would allow us to add some people over the next year and have room for device upgrades. We should be able to struggle through until Apple figures out that its developers aren’t trying to rip it off; we’re just trying to test our software.

So last week we sent out an email “firing” about half our testers. It wasn’t pleasant, but we had to do it. I think we have a pretty good group left. I can tell they’re good because I disagree with them most of the time. It’s good to be challenged to look at things a new way, and these folks are definitely keeping us honest.

Beta 2 Features

There are some notable features in Beta 2 that the testers will be looking at over the next week or two. These include:

• Easily navigate to the next/previous page, chapter, or verse using simple taps and gestures.
• Rotate between open books and Bibles with a tap or a swipe.
• Hide all controls including the system status bar for full-screen reading, while having instant access to all the controls with a tap.
• Search for words, phrases, and combinations of words using Boolean logic. Limit searches to any passage, book of the Bible, or range of books. Limit searches to only verses you’ve highlighted in a particular color or bookmarked in a particular category.
• Add books from your Laridian account. Purchase books at our Web site and download them directly into PocketBible. Remove books as needed to free up memory (just download and install them any time you need them again).
• Select from any installed font and font sizes from 8 to 72 points.
• Lots of customization options, and many more features….

What’s Next?

There will be at least one more beta version before we submit PocketBible to the App Store. We’ll post an article like this one when Beta 3 is released, and another article when we send PocketBible to the App Store.

Once submitted, it will take a while for Apple to approve it. They might send it back and ask us to make changes. There’s no way of knowing how long that process will take. Sometimes it takes just a few days or a couple weeks. Other times it takes six months by the time you make all the changes they want and submit version after version for review. We don’t anticipate it will take that long but we have no way of knowing.

Any Bibles or books you buy today for any platform will be accessible from PocketBible for iPhone.

Laridian VIP Ed Hansberry posts the following on InformationWeek.com: Too Many Mobile OS’s Limiting Development For Companies.

Ed writes, “…there are a bewildering number of platforms and variations within the platforms to develop for. Enterprises will take the easy way out and just stick to one platform and a precious few models. Software developers that are selling their apps will have to have enough penetration for each platform to make development worthwhile. Each platform requires its own development team or at least a dedicated development process that takes time away from other supported platforms…. While phone carriers may support six or more mobile platforms, I am not sure the software industry will.”

We’ve been talking about this problem for some time:

• Palm Pre
• On the Problems of Designing User-Friendly Software for PDAs and Smart Phones
• The Hidden Complexity of the Cell Phone Market
• When is a Smartphone Not a Smartphone?
• …and any number of posts when the iPhone first came out.

Ed makes a good observation: There are at least six major mobile platforms. What if there were six desktop platforms? The software industry would be a significantly different place as companies tried to solve the huge problem of cross-platform development, multiple-platform development, and having enough market on any one platform to justify the incremental cost of maintaining or entering the market on that platform.

One thing you can say about Windows: By dominating the market Microsoft makes it easy for developers on desktop platforms. You can focus your development on one operating system. If you make it there you can consider Mac if you have enough users to justify the expense. Once you’ve covered Windows you have 80%-90% of the market. Whether you go for the 10%-15% represented by the Mac OS is a big decision, but at least it’s the only decision you’ll have to make.

For those of us writing software for mobile platforms there’s not only the issue of supporting a large number of platforms, but there’s the fact that the relative mix of market share on these platforms changes over time. Palm OS used to be our largest platform. Today the Palm OS is dead. Palm and Windows Mobile used to dominate the market; today iPhone and Windows Mobile hold the dominant share of customers. Deciding how we allocate development time and money is an ongoing process that changes a couple times every year.

Meanwhile Apple doesn’t make it easy to develop for the iPhone. I am having a major problem with getting the XCode programming tools to talk to my new 3G iPhone. The information at the Apple developer site is insufficient, and the developer forums they provide have numerous questions identical to mine that have gone unanswered for months. When you call “developer support” at Apple you get a guy in Great Britain who admits he has absolutely no idea how to solve the problem because he’s not a programmer and knows nothing about programming. He points me to the documentation, which is what I’ve been following to get me into the predicament I’m in.

It’s actually encouraging to see a major company like Yahoo make the decision to abandon all other platforms but the iPhone. (Actually, they’re supporting other platforms through customizations to their Web-based products.) It makes it easier for us to consider similar options.

Several months have passed since the original Palm Pre announcement, and our original article on the Palm Pre. Please keep in mind that we don’t have any special “inside information” about the Pre, and that we have not announced any plans regarding software that we may or may not offer for the Pre.

As you probably know, the Palm Pre uses a new operating system called Web OS. Palm has announced that existing Palm OS programs, such as MyBible, are not compatible with Web OS. There have been differing reports on whether a Palm OS emulator, allowing programs such as MyBible to work on the Pre, would be included.

However, MotionApps is developing a product called Classic that will allow some “classic” Palm OS applications to work on the new Palm Pre.

MotionApps has announced that they are performing compatibility testing with some popular products. You can let them know of your own favorite products and perhaps influence which products will be tested for compatibility. To express your interest in using MyBible on a Pre via Classic to MotionApps, click here and fill out the resulting form. (Any information you provide is sent to MotionApps, not Laridian.)

Palm, maker of the popular Treo and Centro phones and the venerable Palm OS organizers (also known as connected organizers and the original Palm Pilot), has announced a new phone, called the Pre. You can read about it here: www.palm.com

If you’re into technical details, you can find some here: http://developer.palm.com

While there are some nice Web pages and pre-ads (pun intended) for the Pre, there is surprisingly little information about adding programs to the Pre.

However, based on what we’ve read, this is what we “know” right now:

1. The Pre uses a new operating system
2. Palm will be making additional information available to developers “over the coming weeks and months”
3. Although it’s not been expressly stated, it appears that existing Palm OS programs will not run on the Pre
4. It will be possible to add 3rd party programs to the Pre
5. These new Pre programs are completely new, and not based upon existing Palm OS programs
6. These new Pre programs are more similar to Web pages than to traditional programs written in languages such as C and C++

So, if you’re a MyBible user or are hoping to be a Pre early adopter, what does this all mean? It means:

1. You should not expect MyBible to work on a Pre
2. You should not expect any existing Palm OS applications to work on a Pre
3. There will be confusion about which programs work on older Palm devices and which work on the Pre
4. No one can start working on programs designed for the Pre until Palm releases more information “over the coming weeks and months”

What do we think about the new Pre? On the one hand, it looks like another cool new phone. On the other hand, it looks like just another cool new phone. As a cool new phone, unrelated to the current Palm models except by name, it will require an investment to create a cool new program that will work on it.

As Palm releases more information about the Pre, we’ll have the information we need to evaluate if and when there might be a version of PocketBible for the Pre.

For those of you who have written expressing some confusion about a product called “pocket-bible” for the iPhone 2, no, that isn’t our product.

Yes, we do have a registered trademark on the term “PocketBible”. Our version of PocketBible for iPhone and iPod Touch is called iPocketBible but the trademark covers any software that is used to display the Bible text, regardless of platform.

We’ve had to deal with a number of trademark infringements over the years and so far they’ve all been handled very reasonably. We hope this one will be no exception.

One of the more common questions that we receive related to our mobile PocketBible product line is this: “I have a Windows PDA, but how do I know if it is a Pocket PC or a Smartphone?” This can be especially confusing because some Pocket PCs are also phones, and the marketing names for these devices has changed several times over the last few years. These various devices have been referred to as Windows CE, Palm-size PCs, Handheld PCs, Handheld PC Professionals, Handheld PC 2000s, Pocket PCs, Pocket PC 2002, Smartphones, Smartphone 2002, Pocket PC 2003, Pocket PC 2003 second edition, Smartphone 2003 and now Windows Mobile Classic, Standard, and Professional. Whew. You can understand how some one might be confused. (And I might have even left out a few names!)

While all Windows Mobile devices use a version of the Windows Mobile operating system, there are significant differences between the various classification of devices (Classic, Standard, Professional).

Both the Classic and the Professional devices include a touch-sensitive screen. The Professional device also includes a phone. The Windows Mobile Standard device is also a phone, but does not include a touch-sensitive screen. We tend to call the former devices Pocket PCs and the latter devices Smartphones.

So, how do you know what kind of Windows Mobile device you have? Take this simple quiz:

1. Does your device have both a touch-sensitive screen and a cell phone? If so, then it is a Windows Mobile Professional, which we sometimes also call a Pocket PC.
2. Does your device have a touch-sensitive screen but not have a cell phone? If so, then it is a Windows Mobile Classic, which we sometimes call a Pocket PC.
3. Does your device have a cell phone, but not a touch-sensitive screen? If so, then it is a Windows Mobile Standard, which we sometimes call a Smartphone.

Prior to our recent release of PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile, we packaged our PocketBible program in a Pocket PC version and in a separate Smartphone version. As noted above, it wasn’t uncommon to receive questions about whether a particular device was a Pocket PC or a Smartphone. It also wasn’t uncommon to have someone buy the Smartphone version, but really need the Pocket PC version. While this was easily corrected by contacting our technical support department, it wasn’t always convenient.

However, now with the release of PocketBible 4 for Windows Mobile, we have packaged a version of PocketBible designed for the touch-sensitive screen models (Pocket PC, Classic, Professional) along with a version of PocketBible designed for the non-touch-sensitive screen models (Smartphone, Standard). Our setup program will then determine which version to install to your device based on the information about itself that the device supplies to ActiveSync or the Mobile Device Center. While the features between these two versions of PocketBible differ (since the devices themselves are very different), the PocketBible setup program will now automatically determine the correct version of PocketBible to install.

You will still see some of our products referred to as “for Pocket PC”. This simply indicates that that program is available only for the Pocket PC (aka Windows Mobile Classic and Windows Mobile Professional) devices, and not for Smartphones (aka Windows Mobile Standard).

And as time goes on, you may even find that I refer to these handheld computers less and less as Pocket PCs or Smartphones, and more and more by their new name du jour!

A comment from one of our PocketBible 4 beta testers got me thinking about the nature of what we do and what users complain about. I’ve expressed this with respect to the iPhone but I haven’t put it into a larger context that might help people understand what software designers are up against when we implement a solution, regardless of the platform. These issues are especially true of the mobile device market but the same ideas apply to the desktop and other general-purpose computing platforms.

If you start from the beginning, you find a user with a problem. It might be: “How do I take my contact database with me?” or “How can I work on my spreadsheets on the train?” or “How can I browse the Web when I’m away from my computer?”. Hardware companies like Sony, Apple, HP, and HTC get together with software companies like Microsoft and whatever Palm is calling itself today and come up with a device and operating system software that address those problems. In the course of doing so, they create a way for third parties (that’s us) to create software for their new device/OS platform.

By the time we consumer software companies (independent software vendors or ISVs) get our hands on these products, we’re no longer solving the original customer problem. Instead, we’re programming for a device, and the device is solving the problem. When we program for a device we have certain limitations imposed by the hardware and software. The screen is only so big. There may or may not be a keyboard. There may or may not be much memory. There may or may not be good internet connectivity. The tools provided by the OS software developer may not be very powerful. There are a host of these limitations, and we have no control over them. It is the sandbox in which we have to play if we’re going to play at all.

We might have solved the customer’s original problem differently. But that’s water under the bridge. We can only operate within the limitations of the platform.

Some of the limitations imposed on us are not necessarily firmly fixed in hardware. They might be user interface standards that are intended to give the user a common UI experience as he or she moves from application to application on the device. So we all put scrollbars on the right even though lefties might like them on the left. Menus, buttons, toolbars, etc. are generally drawn from a common source so they all look the same and are sized and placed the same in all applications.

Obeying the philosophical limitations is just as important as obeying the hardware limitations, even though the former is not as rigidly enforced. Depending on the platform, a device from another manufacturer might expect you to have followed the rules. It may implement new features, which, as long as you’ve followed the rules, fit seamlessly into your existing program with no changes. So it’s to our advantage (and by extension, our customers’ advantage) for us to play within all the rules.

So what does this all mean? It means that when you have an iPhone, you don’t have a clipboard. It’s not the case that iPocketBible doesn’t have a clipboard, it’s that your iPhone doesn’t have a clipboard. As of right now, it means that you depend on Internet access because all your third-party apps are Web-based. It’s not that Laridian screwed up by only providing a Web-based application for your iPhone, it’s that Apple screwed up by not supporting native, third-party apps right out of the box.

It means if you have a Nokia phone you can’t tell if software is going to run on it because it doesn’t tell you anywhere what version of the operating system you’re running. Yes, if you’re an expert user you already know you have an S60 or whatever, but the average person who reads the Bible and bought a Nokia phone “because it’s blue” isn’t going to be able to tell whether a particular piece of software will run on the phone or not.

It means that if you have a Pocket PC, it’s hard to operate programs with your fingers instead of a stylus. The buttons are too small, the keyboard input methods are too dumb, and many of the controls are simply impossible to operate with something as big as a man-sized finger. It doesn’t mean that PocketBible is hard to operate with your fingertip, it means that Microsoft expects you to use a stylus and designed their device that way.

Sure, we could make our buttons really big and give you all kinds of flexibility for defining how the d-pad buttons work with our program, but eventually you’re going to have to type a note on that little software keyboard that pops up at the bottom of the screen, or select an option from a little combo box or menu, or try to tap on just one Strong’s number in a sea of blue underlined links. We can’t do enough to overcome the limitations imposed on us by the underlying software and hardware, for which we have no responsibility.

It’s fairly common for people to complain to the wrong party about these things. Since we’re the last link in the OEM - OS - ISV chain, we get blamed for a lot of the problems of our software running on these devices — problems that actually are the result of limitations dictated to us by those who came before us. So if you have fat fingers or you don’t have WiFi at your church, I’m afraid we can’t help you. Someone else stuck you with a bad solution before we got to you. The best we can do is create software that works well on the platform you’ve chosen. Whether that platform is right for you is a decision you have to make, and one that the OEMs and OS developers are more responsible for than we are.

From time to time we’re asked how a person can contribute to our work here. They like what we do and they want to be a part of it. Frankly, we’re really touched by such requests and appreciate the attitude that is contained in questions like that.

Needless to say, we’re a commercial venture. We’re not a charity, nor a “ministry” except in the broadest sense of the word. We pay our bills by selling the product of our programming and editorial efforts. While we think it might be profitable to put a “Donate to Laridian” button on our Web site, we’re concerned about conveying the idea that we’re something different than we really are. We have competitors who are just as profit-minded as we are, yet organize themselves as non-profit organizations and even charitable organizations in order to be able to tug at people’s spiritual sensitivities and hopefully get paid for doing nothing. We don’t want to even come close to being seen that way.

While we make no secret of being a commercial company (and will defend that position from scripture if you press us), we really are humbled when people like what we do so much that they want to just give us money for being us and doing what we do. That’s pretty cool. So what we usually suggest is that they buy one of our CD-ROM or USB Drive collections and give it away. That way they bless us with their purchase and they bless someone else with an unexpected gift of software to help them better comprehend the Bible. Everybody wins.

Please note the date on this post. Read our more recent posts on the iPhone for more up-to-date information.

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Just got back from BibleTech:2008 in Seattle. About 90-100 developers, ministry leaders, academians, content-owners, and end-users met for two-days of in-depth technical sessions on the current state of technical challenges facing Bible software.

I handed out several of our Gold Edition USB Library devices to blog readers who were in attendance. Unfortunately I put the same serial number on all the devices, so they’ll have to contact tech support to get a fresh serial number. Sorry about that.

I did a session late in the day on Saturday on synchronizing user-created data and proposed the possibility that we could exchange notes, highlights and bookmarks (and potentially other user-created data) between various Bible software based on our model. There was some interest, but these things always sound more exciting when you’re right there than when you get back to your desk on Monday morning and there’s a pile of work to do. So it’s hard to say where that will go.

As part of my presentation I demonstrated creating a note and highlighting a verse on my Pocket PC, then sync’ing that to the desktop where it is displayed in PocketBible for Windows. I then edited the note and changed the highlight color and sync’ed to my iPhone over the internet. When I selected the verse number in iPocketBible I saw my note, which I then edited again. While I was there I changed the highlight color yet again, then sync’ed up to the desktop. There was my note, with all the edits from the Pocket PC, desktop PC, and iPhone; along with the verse highlighted in the color I’d chosen on the iPhone.

We made some good business contacts there and perhaps you’ll see something come of those in the future. However, I also took away a number of small points that are worth mentioning here.

• One publisher admitted that digital rights management (DRM) was a losing battle. He cited several cases where DRM schemes were defeated within days of a new product being introduced. He lamented the opportunities lost by publishers who are waiting for a perfect solution to security of their data. This is something we’ve been preaching for twenty years.
• The open-source/freeware community was chastised by one Greek professor in attendance for distributing and promoting “classic” commentaries from the 19th century. While her calls for publication of these materials to be suppressed were perhaps over-the-top, she makes a good point: We have so many more manuscripts and archaeological evidence today than we had 150 years ago that it’s a shame that we promote these dated materials just because there’s no royalties on them (they’re old enough that they’re in the public domain). Since the open-source/freeware guys aren’t in business to sell things (and thus collect and pay royalties) they tend not to have the more contemporary resources available to them that are the bulk of what we do here at Laridian and at the other commercial Bible software houses.
• Crossway gave quite a presentation on the marketing research they have done with respect to the English Standard Version (ESV). It was pretty impressive to see how much time they spend thinking about who their readers are and where, when, why, and how they’ll be reading the ESV. This allows them to better tune their product development and marketing to meet readers where they are instead of where Crossway wants them to be.
• The Crossway presentation also included a couple quotes from Business Week. One, from 1998, stated that “practical e-book devices have finally arrived”. None of those devices are available today. A second recent quote said the new Amazon Kindle is the “iPod of e-book readers”. We’ll see.
• The only commercial Bible software companies represented there were us, Logos, OliveTree, and e-Sword. I was disappointed not to see anyone from the major Bible software companies like Findex (QuickVerse) and Biblesoft (PC Study Bible). I realize these companies are not generally considered “leading edge” when it comes to technology, but it would’ve been nice to see them all again.

Ironically, a Logos employee won the prize for answering my trivia question correctly at the beginning of my presentation. Twenty years ago this month I started work on the product that would become QuickVerse. The question: What was the name of that program when I first started selling it in September, 1988?

I get several emails every month from people running QuickVerse 4 and needing help to install it on a new machine, or to install some add-on product. Or they want to know where to find a particular QuickVerse 4 Bible, CD, or other related program.

I’ve made a decision tonight to just be done with that topic. Laridian has its own Bible software for Windows now, so there’s no need for anyone to keep using QuickVerse. If Findex wants to support their product, they can do it. I’m not going to do it anymore.
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I’ve found myself having to address this question several times in the past few months, mostly in the comments to these blog articles. For the convenience of all you Mac users, I’m going to put this in its own article. (more…)

As many of you have already seen in a recent newsletter, PocketBible software will be coming soon to your Windows desktop. The newsletter was somewhat vague about features so I thought I’d take a few minutes to provide some details.

Briefly, PocketBible for Windows is the desktop version of our PocketBible software. It uses the same LBK file format as our PocketBible program for Pocket PC, but adds a tiled user interface with windows for your Bibles, commentaries, dictionaries, devotionals, and other books. You can hover your mouse cursor over any Bible reference to instantly see the text of that verse. And of course you can search, annotate, highlight, and bookmark the text just like on your PDA.

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Please note the date on this post. Read our more recent posts on the iPhone for more up-to-date information.

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Please note the date on this post. Read our more recent posts on the iPhone for more up-to-date information.

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If you’ve been thinking about purchasing a GPS device, Jim VanDuzer shares his experience with the HP Travel Companion, a GPS device that runs the Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC OS, in his regular column at Christian Computing Magazine (links to PDF).

If you know someone who is in the market for their first PDA device, we suggest another article by Jim, What are you looking for? (links to PDF). Here he discusses the big picture of a PDA purchase, rather than a specific device.

This question really has a simple answer: Because it wouldn’t shut up.

I’m not a huge fan of instant messaging. You’d think I would be, what with my fascination with high-tech doodads. But frankly instant messaging is disruptive. It’s not like text messaging, where I can ignore the message while I finish a phone call or some other activity. No, IMs jump to the foreground, in some cases capturing whatever keystrokes you were entering into another app. Even if you disable this stupid feature, you still have to deal with the IM in order to get your task bar to hide (assuming you use that feature of the task bar).

There are times I think IM’s are appropriate. The other night around 10:30 PM I was working on a project and needed to use a little tool one of the programmers here created. I checked Yahoo Messenger and saw that his status was “online” so I sent him a quick message to get a link to the documentation for the program. Since we all work from home, I didn’t want to call and wake everyone up. IM worked great for that.

There are other times when IM’s are inappropriate. Anything that could’ve been said in an email shouldn’t be said in an IM. And anything that is important enough for an IM is probably important enough for a phone call. It’s quicker and more information is exchanged per unit of time than an IM.

But the thing that finally crossed the line with AIM were their Flash ads. I don’t mind the ads in general — the app is free so they have to generate revenue somehow — but lately AOL has been serving up ads that include sound. It started with a short 4-note melody that apparently was just supposed to get my attention. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but eventually discovered that if I told AIM to never play any sounds at all for any reason, it quit making that noise.

But yesterday AIM started serving me an ad for some hip-hop gangsta ringtones. I’m just sitting here and all of a sudden I’m treated to some rap crap full volume over my speakers. Turns out AIM was inviting me to download ringtones.

That was enough of that. I did some searching through the options to figure out how to turn off sounds (again) but I didn’t come up with anything. So goodbye AIM.

I still use MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. So far they haven’t annoyed me enough to uninstall them. But AIM is gone.

Now that Iowa ambulance-chaser Roxanne Conlin has come to terms with Microsoft in the last remaining Microsoft antitrust case, I feel free to disclose that I was one of a half-dozen or so Iowans asked to testify on behalf of Microsoft. Had the trial continued, I would’ve been on the stand sometime in April.

This all started when I heard about this class-action suit and chose to opt out of the class. Apparently about 1500 Iowans felt strongly enough about this that they sent a postcard or email to Conlin’s office requesting to opt out. Microsoft’s lawyers got ahold of this list and started making phone calls.

Among the 1500 they found the usual mix of crazies, curmudgeons, and the simply confused. But in there they also found a handful like me — the pearls among the swine (an apt metaphor given the locale). So I was invited to testify.

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ZDNet reports that Windows Mobile 6 is on the way. We most likely won’t see devices using the new OS until late this year.

ZDNet writes, “Because it uses the same core–Windows CE 5–the new mobile operating system is expected to work with nearly all the existing Windows Mobile 5 applications.” That’s of course good news for everyone, though we’ll see if they can pull it off.

One of the things we’ve all come to know and love about Microsoft is their constant rebranding of these devices. Bless their hearts, they do not disappoint: “Microsoft has changed the names of the two types this go-around. Pocket PC Phone Edition, for touch screens, becomes Windows Mobile Professional, while Smartphone edition, for non touch screens, becomes Windows Mobile Standard. A third version, Windows Mobile Classic, is designed for PDAs without phone capabilities….” Got it? Your Pocket PC is now running Windows Mobile Classic, unless it also has a phone transceiver, then it’s Windows Mobile Professional. Except when the phone doesn’t have a touchscreen, then it’s Windows Mobile Standard. I guarantee you we’ll see devices with phones running the Windows Mobile Classic OS, and someone will come out with a touch-screen phone that runs Windows Mobile Standard.

Finally, a tempting little nugget for the programmers: “In the longer term, Microsoft will still try to unify its historically separate Pocket PC and Smartphone code bases. The next version of Windows Mobile, expected to be based on Windows CE 6, aims to create a common code base, potentially simplifying the process for application developers.” You can tell you’re reading a professional tech journalist when they use “Microsoft”, “Windows Mobile” and “simplifying the process for application developers” in the same sentence.

Please note the date on this post. Read our more recent posts on the iPhone for more up-to-date information.

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The Google acquisition of YouTube has me reflecting on the seemingly never-ending stream of fads, fashions, and favorites that come and go like waves pounding against the shore. What strikes me as odd is that despite the fact that one wave follows the next with the predictability of time itself moving forward, there seems to be an endless supply of investors, pundits, and egomaniacal corporate executives who are sure that this wave is the one. (more…)

If you’re in the market for a new Pocket PC device, be sure to check out Craig Rairdin’s article on this subject published in the latest edition of Christian Computing Magazine (links to PDF file). He offers some tips on getting a good deal on used Pocket PCs on eBay.

One of the issues that we frequently run into with customers is that some customers are not receiving the emails we send to them. Here are a couple of examples:

1. Suzie orders new software. At the completion of the order we state that an email has been sent with instructions. Suzie checks her email. No email from Laridian. She doesn’t have the instructions nor does she have a receipt for her records.

2. Suzie forgot her password. She goes to the Login page and clicks the link for “Have You Forgotten Your Password?”. She enters the email address that is in her Laridian account. She clicks the send button. It states “We’ve sent your Customer ID and Password to you at [susie’s email address]”. This indicates that Suzie has entered a valid email address that matches our records. Suzie checks her email. No email from Laridian. She tries again (and again, and again), same thing. Suzie gets frustrated and calls or sends us an email asking why we aren’t responding to her request.

In both of these circumstances our automated system has immediately sent out the email. So why isn’t Suzie receiving them?

The most common cause is due to a spam filter.

Now if Suzie is running a spam filter that has blocked us, that’s ok. Suzie may determine what email messages she does and does not want to receive. Once Suzie recognizes that Laridian is being blocked as a result of her settings, the local spam filter can be adjusted to allow Laridian email. Suzie can add us to her email address book or “Safe List” to ensure that our messages are received in the future. The following link is one that I’ve recently run into that provides good information on doing this with several of the major email providers. http://images.ed4.net/images/htdocs/addressbook/

But what if Suzie isn’t running a spam filter or Laridian has been added to her safe list and she still doesn’t get our messages? The next most likely cause is that Suzie’s ISP (Internet Service Provider) is blocking our messages to her. This is like Suzie’s mailman going through her mail and deciding what Suzie does and does not want. It’s a form of censorship. If you don’t want your postal service to do that then why would you want your ISP to do this?

If you find that your ISP is blocking legitimate messages (for instance, if you’ve requested information from a company but never receive it), the best thing you can do is contact the ISP. Find out what can be done to let the messages through that you want to receive. Be ready with some type of proof that you are not getting all of your email. Examples like I provided above in not receiving confirmation emails from a specific company can help you.

To be fair to the ISPs, this problem is due to people like you and me complaining to their ISPs (or the government) about getting too much spam. As a result, some ISPs have been forced to add these measures to their system. Until a perfect system is found, these types of issues will continue to occur. Educating yourself on such issues can help you continue receiving the e-mail messages that are important to you.

In the latest PC Magazine, Michael Miller writes about the cool new things happening on mobile phones and opines that “consumers should be able to pick applications regardless of phone or carrier.” This is a wonderful idea, but is idealistic to such a degree as to be laughable.

This fact doesn’t escape Miller’s attention. He adds: “There are multiple impediments: a bunch of different platforms that developers write for, a bunch of different phone makers, and four big national wireless carriers that want to control the applications on your phone.”

But the scope of these impediments is wider than one might imagine. To illustrate, I looked at the only the phones offered by Nokia, and only those Nokia phones available in North America, then specifically only those offered in the United States.

Nokia phones come with one of three different operating systems. Each of these operating systems has had more than one edition. Some editions break compatibility with prior editions. That is, programs written for edition 2 may not run on edition 3. Between the three current major operating systems supported by Nokia (Series 40, 60, and 80) there are eight editions. Software written for one Series does not run on the other Series’. In some cases the programming languages supported on one Series are not supported on the other Series’.

Within a Series there are variations on the services available to programmers, and as I mentioned before, between editions there can be major changes that make it so programs written for one edition will not run on the next. This is equivalent to Microsoft making it so that no program written for Windows 98 would run on Windows XP. There are already enough apps that break for some reason even though Microsoft tries to maintain compatibility between versions. Imagine if they intentionally broke all apps when they released a new version. This is unimaginable on the desktop, yet it happens all the time on mobile phones.

Continuing with the Nokia illustration, Nokia offers 123 models of phone in the United States. They have a huge market share and hundreds of millions of customers. However, only about 1/4th of those phones are programmable. The vast majority offer limited capability for third-party additions beyond ringtones.

Of the 30 or so phones that are possible targets for programmers, half are running an older version of the Series 60 operating system that is incompatible with programs written for the latest version. And of the 15 models that are thus targetable for software developers, only one or two have been picked up by any carriers here in the US. As a result, even though hundreds of millions of people are carrying Nokia phones, only thousands are carrying phones that are potential targets for current developers.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m picking on Nokia. I’m just using them as an illustration. The rest of the industry is similar: There are thousands of models of phones each running some highly customized version of some proprietary operating system, making it impossible for the sharing of programs or even data beyond a very limited subset of particular models of phones.

So the dream of running any cell phone software on any cell phone is a long way off — unless Microsoft or Palm comes to dominate the cell phone market and establishes their OS as the standard. And furthermore, the dream of seeing a big uptick in a broad range of software applications for these devices is severely hampered by the inability of the cell phone manufacturers to adopt a standard operating system (or even two or three). Without that, it’s difficult for developers to commit resources to the mobile phone market.

This should not be interpreted as a position statement from Laridian with respect to the direction of its development. We were developing for Windows CE long before it had a measurable fraction of market share, and it could be argued that the BlackBerry is an inhospitable platform for Bible software because so many of them are controlled by corporate IT departments which restrict the installation of third-party apps on the devices. This is merely a commentary on the sad state of the mobile phone market from the perspective of independant software developers.

If you are reading these blogs I can probably make two assumptions about you: 1.) you are technologically literate, probably above average and 2.) you use a PDA. As such, what I’m going to say here may not be anything new.

If you’re using Internet Explorer on your PocketPC, our blogs don’t display well.

But, there is a really nice solution to that.

Our friends over at Ilium Software have a very nice program for PocketPC and Smartphone called NewsBreak that handles RSS feeds very nicely. Laridian’s blog site is available as an RSS feed and can be viewed using NewsBreak on your PocketPC or Smartphone.

Once you’ve purchased NewsBreak and installed it on your handheld tap New and then select “I know the Channel’s URL (RSS)” and tap Next. In the first field (”Enter the URL for the new Channel”) type in

http://blog.laridian.com/?feed=rss2

If you’re connected to the Internet tap “Download Default Name” and “Laridian Electronic Publishing” will show up in the “Enter a name for the new Channel” field. If you’re not connected to the Internet, simply type it in. Tap Finish and you’re done.

You can also add the comments from the Laridian blog to NewsBreak by going through the same steps but putting

http://blog.laridian.com/?feed=comments-rss2

in the URL field and “Comments for Laridian Electronic Publishing” in the name field.

After refreshing your channels you will now have Laridian’s blog on your PDA in a more readable form.

Enjoy!
Jim