SoftMaker.com

This is a good market for your business I believe.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/t ... 47,00.html

iPhone is not an open platform for developers. We'll look at it again when they find that third-party software is a good thing.

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Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

Dear Martin,

As you very well know, since over half-a-year the iPhone OS is an open platform for developers. And it ís the best mobile platform in existence. I understand the restrictions of cut/copy-paste omission and a number of similarly trifling limitations (imposed by Apple on purpose - whatever it is (mainly for the sake of system stability), these are very easy to implement and will most certainly be added to the OS facilities in the near future).

I have one - and have had 3 Palm Tungsten units before - and 3 various PocketPC devices - and since my purchase of the iPhone half-a-year ago I revel in using it as much as I never had had in using any other pocketable computer substitute. I'm not advocating the iPhone, by no means - that in itself is not my intention. However, I like to invite your attention to a number of factors:

- First, your software I consider ever better than Documents to Go and Quick Office - and utterly superior - in terms of general stability - and feature abundance - to the nonsense called "MS Mobile Office Suite"! Yet, paradoxically, it runs on the worst-designed mobile operating system in existence, WM, exclusively! That's not a very prudent decision! Look around, and you'll see that although smartphone use has become increasingly widespread, in relative terms Windows Mobile as a (mobile) platform is losing in the most certain terms - I don't foresee this trend reversing - to competitors such as the iPhone OS, Blackberry, Symbian and (soon, mind my words!) WebOS. Now, back to the iPhone: some - in particular those who've never touched one - are very vocal about its "lack of physical keyboard"! Let me tell you that due to its fast-response (capacitative) touch-screen and the generally very efficient autocorrection feature I manage to type quite a bit faster on the iPhone than on a physical keyboard of the PocketPCs I've ever owned or that of a friend I troubleshoot at times. iPhone's screen needs not be stabbed with anything pointy and hard - the slightest touch of a finger is enough to invoke the intended function. That's yet another advantage of the iPhone over the competition, particularly well applicable for writing.


- My second argument is the following: SoftMaker Office (mobile version) is an excellent piece of software! As mentioned before, I believe, even better than the Documents to Go or QuickOffice suite. It is very, very feature-rich (more than the alternatives); has a generally very good interface (remarkably good for a WM OS - too good, in fact) and is many times more stable than MS's Mobile Office! Although both Dataviz and QuickOffice have pledged their commitment to the iPhone OS, but they're slow as snails in this endeavour. Their respective Office suites are very good, indeed, yet not as capable as yours.

If you were to ask me - which you probably aren't - why not make mobile software for the best portable pda in existence (without ceasing your work on WM version altogether)? The superior GUI and stability of the iPhone OS - matches your work so much better than the rubbish you design your excellent software for! Everything else notwithstanding, by now the iPhone is more popular any single one of the WM-operated devices. By all accounts, its popularity will only grow. That of WM will continue to shrink as competitors gain more and more market share. It would be quite a shame if SoftMaker failed to capitalise on this trend and port its singularly good software to platforms other than the one you've been tied to for so many years...

I would appreciate a response to my post (as I still hope that you may sooner rather than later make SoftMaker Office the best office suite available to iPhone users), thank you.

Yeah, quite a lot of things have changed about the iPhone compared to the time when I wrote my original post.

iPhone is under consideration again. We haven't done anything regarding it yet -- not for lack of interest, but right now for the lack of manpower.

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Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

Interesting timing. I hadn't considered this phone before. I was looking at the Blackberry, which my wife absolutely loves.

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Cheers
Jim

Thank you for your reply, Martin.

Many developers, previously unacquainted with the OS X (and lacking any experience coding for the iPhone OS) have written iPhone counterparts of their WM/Blackberry/Palm/a number of desktop applications with relative ease, as the SDK/APIs (if my use of the terms is correct) provided by Apple appear to be very "developer-friendly". That's, at any rate, the consensus. I've inferred that from a few promo films and articles on the web. Of course, I can't support my notion empyrically as I'm, alas, perfectly incompetent in this respect. Perhaps, this webpage might be a good start: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/ ? Also, I suggest that you see the iPhone SDK introduction video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J715B63ddfY (there are a number of related videos there as well). The full-length, high quality introduction video to the iPhone SDK, I believe, is stored somewhere on the Apple's servers...

I've also read (online) a number of formerly WM, etc. developers maintain that before they began developing for the iPhone they'd not have imagined that developing for a device could be so easy (some have even altogether given up on the platform they'd been originally writing code for) - that may explain why there are well over 15.000 applications (that's an official quote posted on Apple's website almost a month ago - I'm sure by now there are most likely quite a few more).

…and here's another reason - http://msmobiles.com/f/viewtopic.php?t=22350 - why developing for iPhone and distributing the application may take less time, require less resources and subsequently cost less than it would for the WM, yet be considerably more profitable in terms of financial gain. There is much more evidence to the thesis on the web.

An excerpt from the forum:


Also, AppStore (iTunes) application distribution costs about twice less than that through HandanGo, for instance.

At the moment there is not a single true word processor (as opposed to note-taking applications with a very limited character format support; even .doc editing hasn't made it to the iPhone yet) for iPhone OS. QuickOffice and Dataviz are expected to introduce their respective office suites, but neither have announced their roadmap clearly ("later in 2009" is given as an availability date for QuickOffice suite, and none - for Documents to Go). As we all know - and I'd not failed to mention in my previous post - SoftMaker suite has advantages over both QO and DTG in terms of its features, if not the interface. There are hundreds of thousands of iPhone owners longing for something like the SoftMaker suite. The faster it's ported the more both the company and users will profit.


Hoping very much to soon purchase a copy of SoftMaker for iPhone,

cordially,

Art

I'm neither a developer nor even an owner of an iPhone, but your argumentation seems sound. iPhones are a fast growing market.

Thank you, Jossi. I've weighted all the factors. I even allow that although programming for the iPhone OS would most likely be much easier for the extant SF team than they now think, there might be one challenge ahead: iPhone's input system requires, as a rule, a slightly larger area for any given button/command, as a finger is thicker than a stylus, and therefore the GUI would probably have to be tailored somewhat for finger input. But that, too, will be resolved by the very talented SoftMaker team, I'm convinced.

As a sidenote: the experience with coding for a Multi-touch system would suffice for utilisation thereof with other multi-touch devices [now slowly (but surely) beginning to surface], such as the almost equally intriguing Palm Pré (not strange: if not for (the ex-Apple) Rubinstein, there would exist no Pré and Palm would go completely bankrupt in the coming few months) and a few others. That's an unequivocal gain for SoftMaker, a "gain-gain situation", as they say. Not so for QuickOffice or Dataviz, that's clear…

Manpower shortage - that's understandable. But SoftMaker 4.x is so feature-rich and mature that (unless bugfixing is the main focus of the team at the moment) brisk updates of the WM verison appear to make little sense. Instead, team's efforts could be directed to development on the iPhone for the coming few months - and less effort/manpower assigned to the former. Later Blackberry and Palm (and even Symbian), too, might be embraced, if you will. But, please, iPhone first!..

Thank you in advance,

Well, I haven't had much of a chance to check out the iphone today, but the Blackberry Bold is looking pretty good so far.

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Cheers
Jim

Dear Jim, I think that the Blackberry Bold is one of the better iPhone alternatives.

However, as an iPhone owner I will admit there is nothing on this earth in the capacity to persuade me to swap it for anything else. Of course, that's a matter of taste, commitment to the OS and so on (I'm a long-time Apple user and a great fan of the OS X and everything Mac).
I advise you to have a few minutes with the iPhone as well (and perhaps a number of alternatives) to extend your aposteriori reference frame. It's important to know that there are devices of ostensibly better specifications, but I've learnt to take specs on paper cum grano salis.

If you ask me, in terms of the GUI and the user experience I think nothing comes quite as close to the iPhone as the - insofar as I may claim on the premises of a lengthy WebOS introduction video I've closely watched - Palm Pré - but of course, it's still unavailable, and won't be for a few more months. Palm Pré will also boast the same capacitative multi-touch screen as the iPhone's. Blackberry (Bold) fans might be appreciative of its physical keyboard. However, its somewhat effeminate design might deter some (I personally find it beautiful).



Here is a comparative review of the Bold (pre-production) and the iPhone, if you haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl7cqFQatP4 . There's much more on the web.

Here's more information on the Palm Pré, if you like to wait a few months to acquire one: http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/index.html
…and screenshots here: http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/index.html

PS: I presume your wife might well favour the Pré above the Bold.

In my case, I am looking for something that has everything I guess, but emphasis on office packages together with a good bang for the buck. What does the iphone have in terms of office software now?

Oh... as to my wife, she doesn't really have a choice. She loves the Blackberry, but even if she didn't the hospital only provides that specific model.

Okay... well, I had a look at the YouTube video and the iphone is definitely cool for people that like to SEE video, images etc and like the touch screen, but the lack of office software (at least in the video) makes this a non-issue for me... Blackberry. The iphone is VERY cool otherwise though

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Cheers
Jim

Well, that's what this thread is all about: Oedipus wants SM Office to become the first office suite for iPhone. An intriguing idea, but... the SoftMaker team is still tackling the (obviously quite difficult) issue of getting DataMaker working. The iPhone would be a completely new field of programming for them, so this would probably mean hiring additional developers, and that's a risky decision for a comparatively small firm like SoftMaker.

If you had sm office on the iphone you would be catapulted instantly into the front pages of the news media. It would be that much of a big deal. I believe it would transform your company overnight. I think your hesitation is hurting you badly. Cut and paste is on the iphone in version 3 of the software in July 2009, which you can get now thru a developer's sdk. Now is the time to jump in... Perhaps starting with the textmaker application and following up with the other modules is your best bet.

Go, SoftMaker, go. Hey, you made this work on Pocket PCs, so why not on iPhones?

Because they never bothered to learn the OS/X API's despite being urged for years to do so by early movers in technology.