Thanks Adam.
It's incredibly difficult to say what I mean about development without sounding like I'm knocking you guys, which I'm not because I think it's incredible that you're willing to put time into porting apps across for no reward.
But, the iLiad badly needs some serious development. It's a fantastic piece of hardware, badly let down by p!$$ poor software, at least on the note taking side of things.
As a selfish user I don't actually care who does the developing, swo long as it gets done. I also don't think of it like a computer or even a PDA that needs a huge range of applications. What it needs is to have the dogs b0££0*%$ of software to support it's features and obvious (to me) market.
So, IMHO it needs:
- Absolutely top notch notes software. And that means hand-written notes, NOT typed ones. If I want typed notes, I'll use my laptop, not peck away at an on screen keyboard. No-ones ever had any problem with the fact you can't type on a notepad, just with the fact they could never find the note afterwards, so why should it be an issue on an electronic replacement for one?
Top notch means with customisable auto-naming, save as, templates, previews, anti-aliasing if the technology allows, zoom, some way to allow accurate drawing in any orientation, image import page by page, ability to set default pen colour and width (and/or remember the last setting used), shortcut/s (long press/es?) to launching new notes, select area and cut/copy/paste/drag/clear etc, drawing tools like fill, circle/ellipse, rectangle, straight line etc, and the ability to get notes onto the desktop AND a USB stick (so my client can have a copy) seamlessly without having to think about it.
- On machine, or at least transparent-in-the-background-while-syncing handwriting recognition, NOT repeat NOT to convert notes to 100% accurate text docs, because the technology simply isn't there yet, but to create a searchable index of the hand-written notes.
- A proper, intuitive file manager to allow stuff to be moved around (from USB to memory, into folders, etc). I applaud the comunity for porting an app to do this, but I don't think anyone would claim it was intuitive on this platform.
- Web access and content browser ONLY for obtaining content manually and automatically, including RSS. This is NOT a tool for web browsing.
- Although I don't find any issues with the built in pdf and book readers as I can read using them just fine, I guess features like form and template support would be good. Other formats too if people need them. I don't.
- Ability to use it as a card reader, only because it's a handy and obvious thing to do. Not core functionality though.
And that's it. I don't think it needs to be or could be a good PIM or word processor or web browser. There are far better tools for those.
I could name developers I'd like to see working on each of those, but they are so core to the devices success IMHO that it should be iRex doing it. Without decent software the thing will never become mainstream, and until it's mainstream it won't attract the best of the commercial developers.
I have to say that unless iRex get their finger out pretty soon, I think the iLiad is doomed to failure despite it's potential. People don't buy potential
Mark