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As many of you know, we have the most popular Jewish prayer book on the iPhone platform, the iPhone Siddur. Every day, I get emails from happy users, thrilled with all the neat and useful features.
But I often get complaints from people on other mobile platforms. Why can't you make the iPhone Siddur for a Blackberry device or a Android device or better yet, a Palm Pre device?
Anyone who emails me about Blackberry, I simply tell them, it won't happen, I am sorry. Why? We cannot make the same user experience on a Blackberry app that we can on an iPhone app. For us to build something for the Blackberry, at this time, would make our product look ten times worse and due injustice to it. It won't lead to a happy customer and happy user. Palm Pre, well, we brought one app to that app market, the Pre Shabbat Shalom and honestly, it wasn't a fun experience. So we are putting that on hold.
We are extremely eager to build apps, specifically our Siddur, for the Android market. However, Android, over two years from when it was launched, still has zero Hebrew support. Yes, you can install Hebrew fonts, but it requires a lot of work and in a sense, requires people to do something they will be afraid to do.
So my question to Google is when will you support Hebrew fonts?
My question is also, should we, RustyBrick, wait? We are strongly considering building the iPhone Siddur for the Android device (aka the Android Siddur), but if Google does not add Hebrew font's we would have to provide a level of tech support that we are not accustomed to. It won't be as easy as installing the app. They will then need to be walked through adding Hebrew fonts, which is a big process for most people. Do we go ahead, build it, charge more and offer that support - or do we wait?
It makes me sad to see Android users lacking a quality Siddur. I don't feel the same for Blackberry users and Palm Pre users - I am sorry. :)
Decisions, decisions, decisions.
Update: Mike, one of the RB developers, wrote a blog post on Can Android Support Hebrew Characters?
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Comments
this is very confusing and I'm going to try to write a blog post about it.
Posted by: Michael Butler | January 7, 2010 11:21 AM
Indeed, it's a great question. The current android siddurim (avivonet ad oktm) are jpeg's of text stitched together. It works but it's not the same as rustybrick's isiddur. It's a mystery to us why it doesn't support hebrew yet
Posted by: Ilan | January 7, 2010 3:53 PM
Humm... Couldn't this be simplified to a 6 step process:
1) Install the Android SDK to a PC (already supported)
2) Install the USB Driver to a PC (already supported)
3) Download the Hebrew fonts to a PC (not hard)
4) Enable USB debugging on your phone (not hard)
5) Execute a simple app (could be a .bat file even) that runs the necessary commands on the PC to send the files to the Android OS. (this is the "scary" part, but its just shell commands that could be put into a simple shell script or .bat file to make it standarized)
6) Restart Android OS phone
Yah, its still messy, but not as scary as reading the gorry details: https://sites.google.com/a/bardavid.com/android-g1/Home/adding-hebrew-fonts
Posted by: David | January 7, 2010 6:54 PM
To david: its not working with locked devices..not possible to install SDK.
Posted by: moshe | January 13, 2010 11:09 AM
Hebrew fonts can be installed easily on Android, but it requires rooting which voids the warranty on the phone. This is why many people do not do it.
Not such an issue for a cheap HTC Tattoo bought off ebay, but I don't want to do on my expensive nexus one
Posted by: harold | February 17, 2010 7:18 AM