The Future of Equipd (1)
Well, what an exciting weekend! We certainly belong to an awesome organisation. The revised NWT is an amazing provision and I can't wait to relearn all my scriptures!
Now that the NWT 2013 Revision has been publicly released on JW.org as a PDF, and the apps on several app stores, I am being flooded with questions asking if Equipd will support the newly revised NWT and is there a future for Equipd.
The bottom line is that I have been struggling with this question myself. I certainly get the feeling that the brothers are just at the start of their plans for the app and that it will replace the need for Equipd on many fronts. I applaud the fact that an official app has been released as I see digital media replacing books for many reasons, and JW.org needs to have a clearly identifiable official presence in this space. The fact that there is obviously a team of brothers and sisters working hard on these projects, and that they can do this full-time, is great, and also slightly overwhelming for me who has been working so hard on Equipd in isolation in between working and other responsibilities.
So when it comes to the future of Equipd - well, I am not 100% sure what the future will hold.
However when I took a step back I focussed on three things:
- The brothers have been happy with Equipd from a Legal and Copyright perspective. The brothers may ask me to stop Equipd for other reasons of course. But in essence I don't think anything has changed with regard to Copyright just because the new official app is out.
- The main inspiration for Equipd came from the personal need I had to be able to read the NWT Bible in multiple languages side-by-side, especially to help in the Chinese ministry. Others have this same need in the foreign language field. The new official app does not yet fill this need. Equipd also provides a number of additional language tools, especially for users learning Chinese, such as integration with Pleco, Pinyin, Zhuyin etc.
- Long-term my goal with Equipd was really to flesh out the toolkit that surrounds the content - the study tools, annotations, scheduling, reading articles in multiple languages side-by-side, adding notes to the Bible etc. Again, from the wording of the comments on the Apple App Store it appears that the brothers may include study features into the official app, but right now they don't really exist.
With these points in mind, and after much deliberation, I feel that there is still a need for Equipd and that the launch of the official app really does not automatically mean that Equipd must cease and desist. There are a lot of users who have come to rely on the still unique features of Equipd and for this reason I will carry on with Equipd in the short-term. Long term? Let's wait and see.
So the next big question is ... will Equipd include the newly revised edition of the NWT?
As you are no doubt aware, Equipd works by caching content directly from WOL.jw.org. It does this to avoid copyright issues, and also to ensure that the content is authentic and trustworthy - coming directly from the official source. So in order to include the NWT 2013 Revision, I first of all need to see this revision added to WOL.
Once the brothers have added the NWT 2013 Revision to WOL, I will then need to look at how it is formatted and laid out on the website and in the underlying HTML code, and then I can consider how to add this NWT to Equipd. The goal will be to enable this new Revision to be viewed side-by-side with the current Reference edition and all the other NWT languages and 3rd party Bible translations available in Equipd.
So let's be patient and wait for the new NWT 2013 Revision to be added to WOL. And then please give me some time to consider how to integrate it into Equipd.
In the background I have also been working hard on a totally new user interface for Equipd - officially supporting iOS 7, but more than that - pulling in the design ideas I had planned for Equipd version 3. And yes it includes the ability to cache the Watchtower and Awake magazines from WOL, full-screen content, and so much more. This version is a large update that is still several weeks away - but below is a teaser screenshot to keep you occupied :D
Thanks so much to everyone for your kind words and support. I hope that Equipd can continue to help you, and to compliment the fantastic toolset provided by our dear brothers.
Agape from New Zealand,
Matthew Delmarter
