macnn
05/28/2008, 9:30am, EDT
Wednesday, May 28th
iPhone 2.0 handwriting bought from third-party dev?
The handwriting code said to be in the iPhone 2.0 firmware was bought from a third-party company, reports claim. A developer of HWPen, a Chinese application still available for jailbroken iPhones, says the software was originally produced for Hanwang to allow entering Chinese characters, but has since been acquired by Apple for the same purposes; Apple has allegedly even stripped out English support, which the unofficial app included tangentially.
The developer says he is otherwise unwilling to go into extra details, as he has signed a non-disclosure agreement. Requests are said to have been sent to forums posting pictures of HWPen, although images can still be found online in a number of locations. It is also unclear why Apple would need Chinese-language support at this stage, as it has yet to sign iPhone deals in Chinese-speaking countries. Attempts at negotiating with carriers such as China Mobile have not made any progress.
Filed under: iPhone, software, Apple
Other story tags: China, iPhone 2.0
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It's unclear?
Just because Apple has yet to sign any Chinese contracts doesn't mean they aren't going to be developing the solution already. It's going to take time to get the software in place so that when they do sign a contract they are ready to go. Not a big surprise there.
odd
You'd think Apple could have used the Inkwell software they touted so much back in 10.2 (or 10.3) and then promptly ignored.
And, um, maybe they need Chinese language support because they plan on selling the phone in China. One usually doesn't wait until AFTER you make your product available in a country before you decide to add support for that country.
Oh
And while Apple hasn't signed any deal with a chinese company, bear in mind they haven't publicly announced signing a deal with anyone outside the few countries done at the beginning of the year that actually sell iPhones (what is it now, the US, England, France, and Germany?).
Classic...
"It is also unclear why Apple would need Chinese-language support at this stage, as it has yet to sign iPhone deals in Chinese-speaking countries."
Typical MacNN clueless reporting -- a) they acquired a best of breed software to prevent it being acquired by a competitor, since eventually they will be selling Chinese language territories, b) Maybe they already signed deals, with Taiwan, for example
Re: classic
What competitor would want/need the software, since its written for the iPhone?
Launguage
Hong Kong and Singapore are Chinese speaking and signed.
Check your facts before writing stupid articles.
Language
The chinese speaking populations of countries such as the USA are sgnificant, For Apple to ignore the most widely spoken language in the world would be some pretty stupid planning.