Hi!

I have been away from skritter for a few months, but now Im back.

Sadly, there are still some things that really bugs me.

One of those things are the example sentences, ESPECIALLY when studying characters.

Example:

The character is 秩 (zhi4).

The example sentence says:

主要重点放在法律和____上.

So Im thinking: "wtf, it should be "秩", but to put 秩 in that empty space is obviously wrong." But I write it anyways, and what was hidden in that empty space was not 秩 but 秩序...


The next character is "绅" (shen 1), the example sentence is:
温文有礼是____的特质.

温文有礼是绅的特质？？？ Thats not right, but I write it and it turns out that it was not 绅 but 绅士.


There are 3000 characters in my list, so I could bore you with 3000 more examples, but I think you get the point.

I believe that fixing basic errors like this is much more important than the iphone app (which far from all of us users that, btw, pay the same fee, can use).

I might sound a little harsh, but its not days, not weeks, not months, but YEARS now, and we still even cant write our own example sentences.

Obviously the example sentences for single characters should only leave an empty space for just that character, or maybe example words would be a better approach for single characters, like
__士 for 绅, and __序 for 秩.

Anyhow, please put stuff like this on TOP of the todo list, since its actually a pretty serious flaw.

DaXia, be patient. It is on the top of the list and has been for a long time. We are almost done with the app, and you are being too harsh.

@Nick I did not mean to be rude, and I know that you guys are working your behinds off.

....but....

The last 6 months or so it's all been about the iphone app this and the iphone app that, and you cant deny that. I think it's great that there will be an app that can make some of the users happy, but dont let it overshadow everything else. I for one will have no use for this app since I dont use an iphone. I wish that more time could be spent on "the real" skritter. It's like the iphone users gets a lot more bang for their buck if you know what I mean.

DaXia has a point. Even though the iOS app will be useful while travelling, most people will likely continue to use the web app as their main way to skritter. After all, it is far more comfortable and easier to do things on the side on a laptop or desktop.
Now that I have access to a (very quiet) training room at work, I eat all my meals there while skrittering, which is quite comfortable just using the mouse on a nice desktop and large LCD screen. Hence, I have no need any more for the iOS app during work. I will be really happy with it when travelling to Belgium or China but only have so many vacation days a year. Perhaps a poll is in order here so you can get some bearings on this?

"I think I will be using the iOS app:

a) exclusively
b) nearly all the time
c) as often as the web app
d) not nearly as often as the web app
e) not at all"

I gathered that you are hoping the iOS version will dramatically expand your user base. I hope that will be true, as it would warrant not only further development of the iOS app but possibly also an expansion of the team. You can only do so much with just two developers. A third developer would add more redundancy and flexibility in further improving the feature set of both the web and iOS app. Perhaps it would even make it possible to venture into Android land (tease, tease).

I disagree I think the iPhone app will become the "real Skritter" for many users once it comes out. Given how close they are to finishing the iPhone app it wouldn't make sense to focus on the web app now. Also taking a poll won't be nearly as useful as comparing real number after it has come out. As a Japanese user I am still waiting on example sentences and though I don't study Chinese I get the feeling example sentences are even more important to Japanese than Chinese (every kanji has multiple readings that can only be know through context). I really hope that after the Chinese launch they get it added for the Japanese launch.

We've spent over 20,000 hours on the web app so far. The iOS app has 3000 hours into it. Half of our current web users have iOS devices, and most of those will switch for most of their Skrittering, because the app can offer a better experience. We hope that many more users will join from the App Store, too. If we've misallocated development priorities up until now, it's been to focus too much on the web version, not the iOS app. (Let alone an Android solution, which has had even less priority than would benefit many.)

Going forward, we'll be making improvements to the web app again, but it doesn't make sense to think of the web version as the "real" Skritter and the iOS version as some accessory.

范博涵 , I have been testing the app since October, and I respectfully disagree with you. As the app became less buggy and crashed less often, the amount of time I logged in the website decreased.

Now that the app is pretty polished, I log into here to manage my vocab lists and check out the forums. That's it - no studying. After using the app for so long, I've come to think that using the website really is pretty awkward. Everything is mediated - to write on the screen, you have to manipulate a mouse which pulls a spot of ink across a virtual page. Or you write with a stylus on a pad, to make lines appear on your computer screen.

But with the app, I've got a stylus, and I draw write on the screen and make lines appear. It is direct, more natural, and much faster. I clear about 600 prompts in an hour, just flicking my stylus on the screen over and over again.

Not only that, but with the website I would go through phases when I would stop using Skritter because I felt chained to my desktop. Studies have shown that changing your study environment will improve retention. Especially in the summer months, I hated being chained to my desktop. I still have my morning routine - get a cup of coffee and Skritter at my desk for an hour before work. But instead of using my computer, I've got my ipod Touch on my desk. It isn't any less "comfortable."

Anyway, as a testimonial from an app tester, the app completely blows away the website. I would be very surprised if anyone uses the app for a decent amount of time, but still preferred to log their study time in on their computers.

I also think the Skritter guys have made very clear their priorities - app first, sentences later. I understand that people will be upset from time to time, and it's a good thing to tell them what you're missing in the product, so they know there is a demand for it. But you can't be upset about the communication from them. They've been very clear they want to do a complete overhaul of the sentences, but it's a lower priority than the app.

It's irrelevant either way, as it looks like they've just finished the app. But to spring to the developers defense, I'm one of the people who love the idea of Skritter, want to use it regularly, but hate the experience of being shackled to a computer while doing it.

I'm super-excited about the app, because without it I wouldn't continue to subscribe. The videos look fantastic, and it seems to be much much faster than using the website. So I'd be one to answer your poll with (a).

Beyond myself, it seems obvious that apps are a vital part of the future and ios is the most profitable platform. People are using their desktops/laptops less and less, and it would be terrible for Skritter if a rival developer made a skrittereque app first.

Overall, it would be far more worrying if they hadn't been making an app - good choice guys. Now release that app! :P

Well, barring some last bits and pieces, it's at this point finished enough to be released, but there are still things that we'll want to finish soon after, in particular the Japanese app and a handful of useful but not vital features such as studying single lists or starred words, and native versions of features that are currently relying on web-views. So to be clear, our focus will remain on the app even after release, but once that has settled down, yes we'll work on example sentences and general site optimizations and improvements that are overdue.

....and the Android app? :) I'm ever hopeful! Thanks guys!

atdlouis, some of us will never ever buy an iOS device and Skritter is not going to change our minds. Therefore, the release of the iOS app doesn't matter for us at all. I don't mean to devalue all the hard work that's in the app development; I'm just not in the target group.

And from what I've read in the forum so far, I know I'm not the only one here. Quite a few of us will continue skrittering on the web.

I understand that iphone users are excited over the app, but I hope that they can understand that the rest of us will benefit exactly nothing from it. I wish that the functions added to the app would also have been added to the webpage so they could be enjoyed by everyone.

There are some things that are very weird about the whole skritter experience. It's like its excessively complicated.
For example, I want to study only single characters atm. There is no option for choosing single characters, so I had to delete all lists except my single character list. This also didnt work because there were a lot of none single character words in "my words". It all ended with me having to delete all the content in "my words". For some reason, deleting "my words" also deletes your entire progress, like if deleting words from my words also would delete them from your mind.

Another thing is the temporary parts study. I have to change this pretty often, because its not very 方便 to write pinyin on my (android) phone. The fact that there are two places to change what parts to study is enough confusing in itself. What makes it worse is the message that pops up when u select what temporary parts to study, that you are only "reviewing" words and for some reason cant add new ones, whatever that means.

I could go on forever about these very annoying "bugs". It makes it feel like skritter is actually just in its beta stage. I understand that the iphone app will be released very soon, and I am not completely unreasonable. I understand the excitement, although I myself will gain exactly zip from it.

But after the app is released, I really really hope that you guys will plow through those years overdue "todo list" changes.

Schnabelhund, I was responding to 范博涵's statement:

"Even though the iOS app will be useful while travelling, most people will likely continue to use the web app as their main way to skritter. After all, it is far more comfortable and easier to do things on the side on a laptop or desktop."

范博涵 has said before he has an iOS device; here I interpreted him to mean that side by side, he thinks people will prefer a computer over using the app, and will only resort to the app when their desktop isn't available. I disagreed, and I gave my reasons for it.

(deleted)

My 2 cents worth.

I've been skrittering more with the iphone app and its pretty good but IMO its not a full replacement for the site.

Doing the stroke order with your finger tip/thumb isn't exactly the same as using a pen , its close but a finger tip doesn't give the fine control of a pen , pencil or brush (unlike a wacom tablet and skritter.com) especially with large fingers.

With flash slowly on the way out ,I see the skritter guys as needing to go html5 eventually to support windows 8 (and windows rt) especially for metro mode.
Which should make it easier to have an offline mode that'll work on pc's (windows , mac, linux etc) and tablets and other devices (tv's etc).

Being the only or the better chinese language app in the windows 8 app store would help grab some extra subscribers/sales.




Metro mode in windows 8 doesn't allow any plugins to be loaded just html and javascript.
So to run skritter you have to go to desktop mode and start a web browser(same as in windows 7).

NB "Plug-in free support: notifications for sites requiring activeX"
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/03/13/web-browsing-in-windows-8-consumer-preview-with-ie10.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/17/delivering-reliable-and-trustworthy-metro-style-apps.aspx

Also very hard to get used to not having the start button(and the hot corners suck)

Few more links
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229512
http://ashfurrow.com/2011/12/overview-of-metro-apps/

Can get windows 8 consumer preview from
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/download?ocid=W_MSC_W8P_DevCenter_MetroApps_EN-US
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/apps/br229516
It runs nicely in vmware or virtual box.

I'm studying Chinese at a Chinese University in Sichuan and I can't wait for the iPad app.

IMO the example sentences are a much lower priority.

@atdlouis
Ah I see, my misunderstanding. Sorry about that!

I almost never read the example sentences.

@Nick & Scott congratulations on finishing the app. I'm looking forward to hearing the tentative release date

Have to agree that the app completely blows away the website. I only use the website to check progress and read the forums. Wacom is gathering dust as we speak.

I would highly recommend getting a cheap/used 3rd/4th gen iPod Touch over the tablet+website solution. App runs great even on 2010 iOS hardware (retina display preferred of course).

@DaXia actually those of us who don't have iPhones might still benefit if the app is a big success, because it might open up a large new pool of users and money to the Skritter guys, which would mean they would have more money to throw at EVERYTHING, not just the iPhone app. So for example if they wanted to hire some new people or pay to license better sentence data they would be in a better financial position to do so.

James

@james, money is honey!

Hey guys,
I am planning to buy my first mobile phone ever this year, I am gonne invest in the best I can get, but one of the main reasons I want to buy one was to practice Chinese (with Skritter) everywhere.

Originally I was going to buy a HTC with Android, because I HATE APPLE! :P

But now I read they are only working on a iphone app for Skritter? So if I would buy a Android phone I couldnt use Skritter with it?

great point made by James. I totally agree with that.

Another thing that some people should realize is that sometimes there will be features that don't benefit a large portion of users. For example, I don't care the least bit about the sentences on Skritter, but I realize that lots of other users do care about them. So if the Skritter guys invest time/resources for that feature, I'm not going to complain to them about it, because I know that not every new feature that is added to the site will be advantageous to me.

One thing I admire about the Skritter management is that they make the community of Skritter users feel like we're on the board of directors and have a say in what steps the company takes. Nick and Scott read every single comment that's left in the forum and often reply super quickly, if necessary. I don't know any other CEOs who do that

@Schnabelhund - no problem. I should have quoted the part I was responding to; it would have been clearer that way.

fangshi: no development has started on an Android app. The Skritter team has said that it is something they will consider in the future, but as of right now they aren't working on it.

You could use Skritter with your Android phone, but not with a dedicated app. You'd have to use it to surf the web and go to the Skritter website that way.

That's an advantage of Pleco - you can use the dictionaries to find good example sentences.

ON Skritter I am waiting to try the mobile app too. I just ignore the example sentences.

@atdlouis: Thank you.

@Daxia: "I wish that the functions added to the app would also have been added to the webpage so they could be enjoyed by everyone."

There are no functions added to the app the site doesn't already have. All we've been doing is rebuilding much of what the site already has, but for iOS, and redoing the interface to fit into the tiny resolution. Strictly speaking the site has more features than the iOS app.

Was this experience trying to study single characters recent, or before the new list system was implemented last year? If you already were studying a list that had what you wanted to study by itself, you can study any list by itself. Go to http://www.skritter.com/study and click 'study single list' then the study button for whichever list you want to study. You don't need to delete anything to do that. And though unnecessary, removing lists from your studies should have worked as you expected. Did you send us a bug report so we could look into it?

I feel like I may be opening a floodgate here, but if there's something that bothers you about the site, you can contact us anytime (press 'contact' at the bottom of any page on the site) and we can discuss how to fix it/improve it, or if you want to talk about it with everyone, start a topic specifically about it and present your opinion. We're not infallible with our decision making, but we do have reasons for setting up the site the way it is, that make it more difficult than you imagine to come up with a better solution that satisfies all our goals and ideals. And though we have focused on iOS lately, we do fix critical bugs with the site first and foremost.

@Scott

I know that you guys are working like crazy to make everyone happy, and I hope that you dont take anything I write personally.

What bothers me the most with skritter, is the little things.

It's stuff like you can only view 10 words at a time when going through the 1000's of words in my words (might have been 15. Cant check it since I deleted them all.)

It's stuff like that your progress gets deleted when you delete my words.

It's stuff like you can only chose to study 1 list or all lists, but not 2 or 3 lists.

It's stuff like progress does not get saved when doing temporary parts study.

It's stuff like (this might be wrong) progress is saved into every and each word/character and not to your account, making every word in my words hold very much information. I dont know if this is how it works, but it feels like that since deleting and browsing words in my words takes so much time.

It's stuff like the empty spaces in the example sentences hides 2 characters instead of 1 when studying characters.

It's stuff like there is no choice to study only words, or only characters, or both.

It's stuff like you can never have a set amount of words due, and you can never "finish" one session, since the words due never ends. You could make it like you could reach the end of the list, and when you finish your session you could have a "congratulations, you finished your session" message pop up, and the you could have the option of "keep studying" or something like that.

None of these are "major bugs" in themselves, but when you add them together you get bad overall experience.

Also, like jww1066 said. Money is important so I hope that you will charge extra for the iphone app. I am sure that everyone would be more than happy to pay, and this will also make it feel more fair to the rest of us, since we pay the same fee, but get a lot less for the money. Maybe you could use that extra money to hire someone that could work fulltime on the app and you guys could focus on the webpage?

DaXia, you could have had more, but you chose not to when you decided to purchase an Android phone instead of an iPhone, knowing that the Skritter team was developing an iOS app.
It seems inevitable that there will be a much improved Android experience down the road, although I personally think it will not take the shape of a dedicated app. It would be easier for them to continue to maintain the iOS app but focus from here on in on an HTML5/CSS3/Javascript web site replacement that would work across all platforms (current Windows versions, Windows 8, Linux, Android, Windows Phone, etc.) But it stands to reason that they will first focus on Skritter's set of features and continue to make things more polished, making improvements to the iOS app and porting those changes to the web site, or vice versa.
As it is, the web site is hardly useless. But yeah, there is always room for improvement.

I'd like to note here that my favorite (one of my favorite) things about Skritter over other SRS clients is that the word list never ends. It allows me to study for hours on end (yesterday I studied for five and a half hours).

DaXia about the charging, there are two ways to look at it, I could also argue its more unfair for the people who are thinking about buying an iOS device to suddenly have to pay not only for the device but also for the app. That would be a double hurdle.
I think from a business perspective making the app free and asking one price for everything whatever way you 'chose' to study makes sense and is fair enough. It's just a case of life isn't perfect and clever decisions need to be made in order to make profit. They don't wanna scare away new customers with two payments.

About all these little annoying bugs I think they have been discussed before and it has been made clear the iOS app is a priority. It s*cks but this is a period where always one side is going to be annoyed, people waiting for the app or people using the website. I guess if they concentrate on both sides, both will feel left behind. They gotta make choices and they've given reasons why for months now on the forums. At least the full time work assault on the app seems to be near conclusion..

"Money is important so I hope that you will charge extra for the iphone app. I am sure that everyone would be more than happy to pay, and this will also make it feel more fair to the rest of us, since we pay the same fee, but get a lot less for the money."


I can insist that I do not want to be paying for your example sentences or any of the extra features you are using. Then it becomes complicated. Everyone wants to use a different part of the Skritter package. 1 price fits all seems to be a good way of accommodating everyone.

"Money is important so I hope that you will charge extra for the iphone app."

I can only say that during the last months I haven't been skrittering at all, because since I started to use my ipad, I have no motivation at all to sit down in front of the computer in my free time, especially not sitting there uncomfortably and writing Hanzi on the Wacom... I wanna go into the garden or park, or hang around at Starbucks or in public tansport, and skritter there.

So for me it was clear, without the app I would've most likely stopped studying characters completely.
And in any case I doubt I would have paid for Skritter on a regular basis, as my own experience showed me that even if I pay, the few hours a month I manage to motivate myself to study, it didn't really seem reasonable (I am not complaining about the pricing at all, I just say, for me and my Skritter behavior, it didn't make much sense).

Now with the app, I really want to support the development, because I feel I finally get what I need, and for this reason I think it's worth to pay for it :) I will also go for the 2 years suscription, since the price is really fair and I *do* expect a significant discount if I commit myself to a 2 years pay, similar like Chinesepod. I think it's also win-win, because many people will drop the subscription on a regular base, when they have a big workload in the office, when they go on vacation etc. etc.
So the long-term subscribers are "good" payers in this sense. Beside that Nick and Scott can go on the well-deserved holiday if all of us pay directly for the next 2 years ;-) But then I expect some pictures of you guys skrittering at the beach or in a cocktail bar in Indonesia, ok?

So, Nick, Scott... right now everything is fine :) Just get the damn thing goin' ;o)

I understand that a large part of the delay in getting the app out there is coming from designing features to attract new users from the App Store. While I get this strategy, I frankly have my doubts about it. I'm not criticizing your business decision; I'm honestly curious because I had a similar debate with some friends recently about an unrelated app. I'd be really interested to know, if you guys are willing to share it, six months after release what percentage of new subscribers are coming from the app store versus the regular web. I just don't see it being that huge. The potential customer pool just seems really small; you're talking about a person who a)is independently studying chinese; b) has never heard of web-based skritter or bothered to google for character learning software and c) stumbles upon the app in the store decides to type in their credit card info to sign up. It's hard for me to picture this customer. But like I said, I'd be really interested to be proven wrong. Maybe I'm just old fashioned. In my day, when we needed something, we broke out the yellowpages--er, google; we didn't have any of this fancy app store nonsense.

Somewhat related to this, I might suggest a different approach if and when you all decide to do an Android app. It doesn't strike me that the mobile version needs to reproduce every feature of the website; there are some things (like signing up for a new account, or managing/remixing lists) that are just never going to be convenient on a 4-inch screen. A clean, tight interface for just mobile studying and nothing else would satisfy all my needs; list management could be done through the website. And I would say that for Android, doing that first makes more sense than it did for iOS for at least three reasons: 1) there are no restrictions on beta releases or updates; you can always go back and add more features later; 2) you could post the development app on the website with a total warranty disclaimer during development to silence the complaints of the impatient; 3) android market customers are notoriously more tight-fisted than App Store customers about even paying for apps, much less signing up for a monthly service, so even if I'm wrong and you are attracting a lot of new users through the iOS app, there's a good possibility the ROI on new user features for android would be lower anyway.

Just some thoughts, take them for what they're worth.

I have several friends who've said they'd subscribe to Skritter if there were an iphone app. So there definitely are customers, and at least a few people who have been waiting for the app release to subscribe to Skritter.

Personally, I'm still pining away for the Android app but I don't let it get in the way of my Skritter time :)

Right, I totally get that there are people out there who aren't signing up for skritter because there's no mobile version, and that the app will bring in revenue from these customers. But the people you're talking about are people who already know about skritter and don't need to be marketed to; they presumably would be willing to sign up through the web and use the website as we do, they just want the added convenience of being able to study on mobile before it's worth the money to them. For them, a light version of the app that just does studying would be fine. By contrast, it seems like a lot of energy has gone into designing features for the app (sign up, tutorial, etc.) to market to people who DON'T know about skritter and are learning about it for the first time through the app store, and that type of customer is the one about which I was expressing doubt.

Actually they are not willing to sign up and pay for the website.

They will be getting both for the same price. But feel free to direct them to this thread if they feel like complaining. ;-)

Complaining is actually another vital part of the skritter experience that I don't think will ever be convenient on mobile. But if it really is the mission to duplicate every feature of the website in the iOS version, maybe Nick and Scott could consider a menu-driven system with some pre-written complaints that could be easily clicked on and posted without having to type them out on a tiny mobile keyboard. ("Pace of development is too slow", "Absolutely Essential Feature has been shamefully neglected to waste time on useless feature that won't benefit me," "Example sentences suck," "Support Linux better," etc.) I still don't think it would really replace full-featured complaining with a real keyboard for me, but I guess it might help some people.

Nah. The app should be focussed on learning the characters. And there is enough negativity in the world as-is. People should lighten up and be happy with the fact that Skritter actually exists and continues to improve, even if not at the rate that they want.

I still believe that charging a little extra for the iphone app is a must. I know that I would definitively be happy to pay extra for an android app if there ever will be one.

Maybe you could have 3 payment options. 1 price for the webversion, being the same fee as we pay now.

Another one time price to buy the iphone app, and a reduced monthly fee, includes limited webfunctions, like editing/adding lists and stuff, forum access, etc. (So that those who only want the app dont have to subscribe and pay for something they dont use.)

And a third slightly reduced price for both.

I mean, come one. With the amount of work they have put down on this app, anything but charging something would simply be wrong. The iphone app is NOT included in the 9.95$ we pay each month, but a whole new feature. Why should those who get this extra feature not pay for it?

Daxia, if you change the "get" to "use" then it makes sense that it is free. Just as using the example sentences is free for you. I also have to pay for something I am not using. Example sentences or whatever.

Everybody use a different part of the product but everybody "gets" the same product for the same price. What you use is up to you.

@aharlekyn

Well, first of all you already pay for the example sentences, since that is a part of skritter. The problem is that they dont work. If you chose not to use them, thats your choice, but you CAN use them.
There are plenty of features that I can use, but chose not to. I still pay for the choice of using them or not.
Those of us without an iphone dont have that choice. We CANT use the iphone app, no matter if we want to or not.

And those who have iOS cannot use Skritter because of lacking flash support.. whereas Android users at least can access with their browser. See?

You will always find a way to argument in your own interest ;-) In my opinion this discussion is getting quite annoying, so I guess I am out.

Shouldn't waste so much energy on complaining but invest it into the improvements of Skritter (whether web, iOS, Android, Windows Phone or whatever).

Cheers.

@zhangyanglu

You still dont get it. Android phones use the webversion of skritter. There is no specially made android application for skritter, and although they have put down a reasonable amount of time enhancing the experience of skritter using a portable device, its not comparable to having a specially made freestanding application.

Sorry for being rude, but stop being so cheap! They have put down hundreds of hours of hard work into making this app, and they deserve to get payed for that work.

Nowhere on the pricing page does it say that the 9.95 includes an iphone application, its outside the deal. Maybe Scott and Nick will be kind enough to make the iphone app available for all subscribers without extra fee's but imho, the deserve to, and should get payed extra for it. Not only because the hours of hard work they put down, but also because the hours of extra hard work they will have to put down in the future, having a whole new application with bugs etc that needs to be fixed. Perhaps they have to expand the team, and the money to do that wont just come from nowhere.

(deleted)

Android market share is now close to 60%

(Overheard from a student to their teacher when he found out the teacher was making Skritter available for study outside of class)

I think it's great that there will be a web page that can make some hanzi learners happy, but don't let it overshadow everything else. I for one will have no use for this website since I don't use a computer. I wish more time could be spent on "real" learning. It's like the computer users get a lot more bang for their buck if you know what I mean.

Teacher:
We've spent over 20,000 hours on the class so far. The web app has 3000 hours into it. Half of our current in-class students have computers, and most of those will switch for most of their learning, because the app can offer a better experience. We hope that many more students will join from the website, too.

Student:
I understand that computer users are excited over the web page, but I hope that they can understand that the rest of us will benefit exactly nothing from it. I wish that the functions added by the website would also be added to the in-class paper writing so they could be enjoyed by everyone.

Teacher:
There are no functions on the website that the class doesn't already have. All we've been doing is rebuilding much of what the class already has, but for computers. Strictly speaking the class has more features than the web site.

---------------------------------

Daxia:
"I think it's great that there will be an app that can make some of the users happy, but don't let it overshadow everything else. I for one will have no use for this app since I don't use an iphone. I wish that more time could be spent on 'the real' skritter. It's like the iphone users gets a lot more bang for their buck if you know what I mean."

Nick:
We've spent over 20,000 hours on the web app so far. The iOS app has 3000 hours into it. Half of our current web users have iOS devices, and most of those will switch for most of their Skrittering, because the app can offer a better experience. We hope that many more users will join from the App Store, too.

Daxia:
"I understand that iphone users are excited over the app, but I hope that they can understand that the rest of us will benefit exactly nothing from it. I wish that the functions added to the app would also have been added to the webpage so they could be enjoyed by everyone."

Scott:
There are no functions added to the app the site doesn't already have. All we've been doing is rebuilding much of what the site already has, but for iOS, and redoing the interface to fit into the tiny resolution. Strictly speaking the site has more features than the iOS app.

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"Those of us without an iphone dont have that choice. We CANT use the iphone app, no matter if we want to or not. "

Ummm... yes, you do have that choice. You can choose to buy an iPhone. Certain auction websites are selling the 3GS (which supports iOS 5.0+) for much less than the new Samsung Galaxy phone (and many other Android based phones, I'm sure). And they're unlocked, too, so you aren't tied to any one provider. Now, if you don't like Apple and won't support them, then your argument isn't really with Skritter at all, is it?

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"You still dont get it. Android phones use the webversion of skritter. There is no specially made android application for skritter, and although they have put down a reasonable amount of time enhancing the experience of skritter using a portable device, its not comparable to having a specially made freestanding application."

And YOU still don't get it. Android phones, currently, have an advantage that the iPhone doesn't have: being able to use Skritter on the phone! There is no specially made version (yet) for the iPhone. Although they have put down a reasonable amount of time making an iPhone app, it's not comparable to being able to go straight to the web page without having to download and (if you had your way) pay for a freestanding application.

(I regret if any of this came off as snarky, but it's been one of those days today).

@chinajustin

That was a big wall of text, but I think I got your point.

Anywho...

First of all, reasoning like you did about that "choice" thing, I might just say that how about you having the choice of buying an android phone?
No app needed, and everyone is happy. Of course, I would not be stupid enough to actually suggest that someone should spend 500$ just to use an 10$ service, but obviously, thats just me.

I am a person that likes to speak my mind, and I do it in a very frank way. Some poeple may take offence by that, but if you look at it from a larger perspective, you would see that the positives outweighs the negatives. This thread has given a lot of people a chance to vent their views and Im sure thats a good thing.
This thread was originally meant to point out that the example sentences still dont work well.
How ever, I also wrote that I believed that fixing this was more important than the iphone app, and thats what ignited this thread.

Anyways, I like arguing with people, although Im not sure exaclty what we are arguing about anymore. It's all good though, Im enjoying myself and thats good enough for me.

Just remember Adobe is discontinuing future versions of flash for mobile devices .

Im sure when the time comes, adequate measures will be taken.

@Daxia http://bit.ly/Ldohth

(ps. Nick, Scott, George + co - you guys are heroes.)