Last night we did another episode of our live iPhone talkcast and we had a great guest on with us – Justin Williams. Justin is the lead developer of PogoPlank, the first real springboard replacement app for the iPhone and my current BFF as it lets me run around 160 apps on just one home screen.
Justin was good fun to talk to and gave us some great answers to all our questions about PogoPlank. He also shared the very exciting plans for what is coming in the upcoming 2.0 version of the app. Hit the jump for all the juicy details …
Here are some of the highlights of what Justin shared with us last night:
PogoPlank Itself
How do the developers – Justin and Kyle – describe the app? As a springboard replacement, just as we have always thought of it.
Where did the name come from? It came out of thinking about springboard and synonyms for it. Pogo for spring and plank for board.
I found it interesting that Justin and Kyle seem to have been just as surprised as I am that it took this long for us to have a real, complete springboard alternative on the iPhone. We’ve seen thing like Dock (way back in the 1.x days) and Stacks and various other impressive utilities and add-ons, but nothing before (or since) PogoPlank that offers such a complete UI changeover.
Justin’s Background
Justin is just 20 years old and has been coding since he was 9 – starting on Visual Basic 6 and soon switching to Linux and C++, and onwards from there.
He’s also currently working with the Chronic Dev Team, who are working on a new and quite different sort of jailbreak solution. GreenPoison will be a sort of ‘framework’ for jailbreaking, a la the well-known security and penetration testing tool, Metasploit.
PogoPlank 2.0
This is the section I was very pumped up to hear about. Here’s some of what we learned about the upcoming – and major – 2.0 update:
Search integration will definitely be in 2.0 – but in a different way than expected by most people. It will be there via search widgets.
Speaking of widgets – the PogoPlank devs are big fans of the Android interface and KDE 4 for Linux – the premise of which Justin describes as ‘lets make everything a widget’.
That’s really what we’re going to do with PogoPlank 2.0. We’re not calling them widgets, we’re calling them ‘plankets".
Though the devs still like the wheel interface, the goal is to provide more freedom and ways to organize things.
Everything including the wheel, the dock – all of that will be completely done as a planket. So things will be able to be drag and dropped – like you’ll be able to not have to go into PPSettings to sort your apps – if you want to sort them you open the category that they’re in, drag ‘em into a different category, and there they are.
And plankets will be open for other developers to work with …
Plankets will be open to other developers – they can get a hold of the Planket API, build out their own planket and then put it in the Planket Store where they can sell them or give it away for free.
Justin stressed that a large part of reason for the $1.99 price on PogoPlank is that they wanted other developers to be able to charge for extensions for it – as in they did not want PogoPlank itself to be so highly priced as to reduce the chances of paid extensions catching on as well.
A lot of the new features of 2.0 will be mainly based round widgets. A Search widget is being developed right now. The Search ‘planket’ can be placed wherever you want it – on the wheel if you like, or a separate page if you prefer. Should work exactly like Spotlight, match its capabilities.
Justin plans to talk to the developer of Orbit – hoping to share some headers / code with him to help Orbit integrate into PogoPlank 2.0.
2.0 may well lead to multiple pages worth of widgets – and Orbit could show you those all at once.
Widgets / plankets are not going to be near as small as icons.
Justin very much wants PogoPlank 2.0 to work with Orbit and Overboard, and to play nice with as many other add-on and similar sort of apps as possible.
2.0 will maintain the one tap toggle On/Off of PogoPlank.
2.0 will add the ability to delete an app from directly within PogoPlank.
In 2.0 plankets will be installed from in PogoPlank itself, in its own little store – and will let you click and drag directly onto the PogoPlank interface to install – that simple.
Timeframe for the PogoPlank 2.0 Release
Justin’s rough estimate – which he stressed should not be taken as any sort of firm commitment or date fixed in stone – is the end of the year. That is what they’re shooting for anyway – and that’s not far away at all of course.
Huge thanks to Justin for being our guest, and for sharing so much good information with us. I can’t wait to see PogoPlank 2.0 and try out how it further extends the possibilities for springboard replacement.
If you’d like to hear the full talkcast and all the conversation with Justin just go to our show’s page here:
http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=18509&cmd=tc
And click on the Last Recording item (Episode 13) to stream it or download it. You can also subscribe via iTunes and all that sort of jazz.
And you can grab PogoPlank in the Cydia store now – for $1.99.
*** PogoPlank was independently purchased by the post author in the Cydia store. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the "About" page.
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PogoPlank was one reason I sought to jailbreak! I was unable to listen last night so I'm eager to listen to the podcast (I also claim to share the concept and then app with Patrick)! whoohoo!
Thanks for the great job you all do! You're on my daily read!
Oh, good call – true you did! And that was a great call
Thanks for the kind words and always glad to hear we're a regular read!
im looking forward to this update since pogoplank the way it is currently is very imcomplete.
Hopefully not too long to wait either.
Pogoplank is great and I cant wait for the next update. I was hoping if you guys get a chance to talk with the creator again, if you could ask about maybe an option to have something other then a circle like a line down the left side or any other variation.
Patrick, I am looking into trying pogo plank…..currently I am using the illumine theme with winterboard…. do I just deselect the theme to go back to the stock icons before using pogo plank….. also I'm using the 5 icon dock and 5 icon springboard, so I will have to uninstall them also. Can lockscreen info still be used with pogo plank activated?
I never turn my theme off when using PogoPlank – don't think you need to, it's more a choice / style thing. I'm not sure about how well 5 icon dock or Lockscreen Info work with it, as I haven't used those.
Thanks Patrick…just installed PogoPlank and I left my themes alone like you said and its works great. It plays well with Lockscreen Info as well…..
Great stuff – glad to hear it.
have you guys noticed after you delete an app it leaves a blank line in the pogoplank folders.
You can get rid of that when you edit your categories from within PPSettings.
So I have Pogoplank running with the default theme. I went to Cydia and downloaded a few Themes for pogoplank, however when I change the themes in PPSettings, pogoplank crashes after the respring. It only lets me use the default themes.
Ouch – I've used, and continue to use, several 3rd party PogoPlank themes – and I've never had any crashing issues. I'm not sure what to suggest apart from perhaps a reboot of the phone and trying again.
Patrick, you say that they want PogoPlank to work with Orbit and Overboard — why? Wouldn't you stop using those two if you're not using Springboard?
Because they envisage users having quite a few plankets (widgets) – and this leading to more than one page worth of objects.
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