“A Chinese third-party developer claims that Apple has bought his software for recognizing handwritten input on the iPhone. Screenshots of an iPhone OS 2.0 build incorporating handwriting technolgy as a method for entering Chinese characters surfaced a few weeks ago, but it now appears that Apple may have acquired this function rather than developed it in-house,” iPhone Atlas reports.
“Dubbed ‘HWPen,’ the third-party handwriting recognition application was developed by Hanwang.com.cn to allow Chinese character input on the iPhone, but the program works equally well with English input. Apple has reportedly stripped English character input from the tool, sieving for only Chinese character recognition for iPhone OS 2.0,” iPhone Atlas reports.
Full article here.
本当に
Why not dust off the Newton OS and update it to work with OSX?!
Newton OS recognized CHINESE Characters? That’s news to me, show me a link iPhone User.
Sorry, I mean for the English portion. It’s just a lot easier to manipulate text in the Newton vs. iPhone OS. Deleting a large block of text was a breeze. Not to mention copy n paste.
As for Chinese, it would’ve been a matter of time had Steve not killed off the Newton.
Μοιάζει με τα ελληνικά σε με
Bogus. That would imply the inclusion of a stylus for the iPhone. I doubt I’ll be able to write with my finger tip on the small iPhone display – not to mention the unnaturalness of writing with my finger tip as opposed to ‘touching’ and ‘tapping.’
@iPhone User
I agree about looking to the Newton OS for handwriting technology. I’ve said it several times before myself. The later iterations worked well. I have a MP120 with only the 1.XX OS on it. I found the recognition to do rather well, especially within 3rd party apps. And as you said, copy, paste and delete were a breeze !
MDN. ” sieving for only Chinese’. Would you interpret that please?
In Chinese.
The Newton was KEWL, and the handwriting was pretty darn amazing, but I don’t want to write, draw…maybe…write…na.
I missed the Newton until I got an iPhone and now there is no turning back. The iPhone is the coolest piece of tech I have picked up in ten years. Beg, borrow or steal but get an iPhone you won’t regret it.
@MacBogus
Clearly you have not seen the demos. It looks easy to me.
@bon
Link to “demos” please…
Inkwell in the current OS X is the Newton handwriting recognition to the best of my knowledge.
iPhone User, Apple added Newton’s handwriting technology in Mac OS X 10.2
It’s been there ever since known as Inkwell. You can use it with some 3rd party hardware.
@GranitW
That’s what I thought too, but I can no longer find it in Leopard. Nor does a search of Inkwell or Ink return any information on Apple’s web site. Anyone know the skinny on what happened to Inkwell? Is it tucked away somewhere that I can’t find?
Yes indeed handwriting recognition is alive and well in OS X if under a different name. How much it has been developed I am not sure.
Hmm, seems like I read about this months ago but it excluded the 2.0 reference but was either purchased or Apple was interested at the time. Still cool but it could lend a hand to the “Mac Tablet” rumors. Or what I’d like to think of it as a 22nd-24th centuries technology today like the Star Trek-ish PADD device. Although I do believe that the Apple version would be superior with the iPhone technology incorporated, less physical buttons & much larger screen.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/PADD
To Spark:
Plug in a tablet (e.g., Wacom) and Ink will appear between Energy Saver and Keyboard & Mouse in System Preferences. Unplug the tablet and Ink preferences goes away.
Thanks Ampar. That makes sense.
I really loved my Newton, and the handwriting recognition really did learn one’s handwriting over time. By the time I had lost mine on an airline trip it was very accurate and I used daily to great utility. I miss it and would enjoy having the option to “stylus” write on my iPhone. I figure I could get pretty good with my fingernail if Apple gave me half a chance.
You’re quite welcome. Ink in Leopard works quite well (if you have a tablet plugged in, of course) with several customizing functions.
“I figure I could get pretty good with my fingernail if Apple gave me half a chance.”
And more than a few posters here have heads that are pointy enough.
Dear Hanwang:
Here’s your code back.
Steve
I hope it includes traditional chinese not just simplified
@Spark
If you search Inkwell on Apple’s site, you’ll find that Inkwell is listed in Leopard’s Technical Specs under Key Technologies.
Checking out the screenshots of this software.
What the hell is going on in this picture? Or better yet, what’s about to happen in this picture?
I read all your interesting comments and found that some of you are clueless about Chinese Handwriting. My wife’s iPhone has HWPen on it. She wrote in Chinese and said it’s the most accurate Chinese writing software she’s used. She’s been using many Windows chinese writing software for the last 10 years that come with a little writing tablet and a pen. But the HWPen is the most accurate. She writes fast, and HWPen copes with it well easily. Some mistakes if she just misses a stroke and the word takes on another meaning. But overall, 98% accurate.
Oh yeah, Bogus knows nothing about chinese characters. All you need is a finger to write. You don’t need a pen, Bogus!
Thanks, rondonski.
The only problem with Newton handwriting recognition is that it required you to “train” the device over time. The handwriting recognition got better and better the more you used it and corrected it’s mistakes.
The problem was that it would take a few weeks to work everything out. Thus, when you first sat down with it, you felt like you were dealing with a dunderhead. “I wrote ‘it’–how’d you come up with ‘cat’?!?!” That’s part of what inspired the stories about how bad Newton handwriting recognition was. People would use it a few times and get annoyed.
(As an aside, I remember the little kiosks that Apple put in stores with a Newton superglued to the kiosk. I always pictured this poor Newton going crazy as it tried to deal with 20 people a day with different handwriting…)
I haven’t used Ink in Mac OS X, so I don’t know how good it is…
“I haven’t used Ink in Mac OS X, so I don’t know how good it is…”
You should. It works well.
@@Scott
It is Japanese.
“hontoni”
It basically means, “Really?”
Почему не на русском языке?
or Arabic or Hebrew or (fill in the blank on any other non-roman character based language).
Why?
Because the Chinese market is bigger than all the others combined – kinda sorta maybe… (I waffle because I am not sure kinda sorta maybe)
I thought steve j said that he didn’t like stylii? Handwriting recognition would denote the use of a stylus. Are we going backwards?
rickw,
Steve probably had the normal input for smartphones in mind.
I’ve used it in HK. They’re on almost every iphone there. Works great, for English too.
iPhone in China is starting to look happening to me. It’s the largest volume market and should be top priority next to Japan. Chinese symbols are not an easy thing to fingerpaint…maybe Windows 7 can do it…eh Bill??
How do you write, “Eat up Martha,” in Chinese?
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
“How do you write, “Eat up Martha,” in Chinese?”
I think you just poke her with a chopstick repeatedly.
(j/k)
“Bogus. That would imply the inclusion of a stylus for the iPhone.”
Using it with a stylus designed for the phone would be optional. Apple might not even need to include it, leave it up to third parties, or include just a very rudimentary (cheap) stylus. Idea being you can still operate the iPhone with your finger, but now you can draw or write with it as well.
I’d assume the Newton handwriting recognition or ‘Inkwell’ is out of date by now and would require rewriting to port it to the iPhone. That would be why they bought the software, along of course with the Chinese capabilities.
Interesting that they took the English recognition out of the thing. Obviously this is for Chinese phones only, but for all we know they’re a test market. Apple will remember the Newton-bashing that took place re handwriting recognition. Maybe they want to be sure this software REALLY works before bringing it to the States. After all, the iPhone is not a sideline for Apple, as Newton was, it’s a Big Deal.
@MizuInOz:
Russian, Arabic and Hebrew are not “character based languages” like Chinese. They use alphabets like English does, just different ones (Russian: 33 letters, Arabic: 29 primary letters, Hebrew: 22 letters). No reason they can’t be typed using an onscreen keyboard.
Handwriting recognition might be cool, but would be significantly slower for selecting individual letters from an alphabet than simply hitting a key.