iPhone

[mikelove]

Apple announced their long-awaited cellphone product today, the iPhone:

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

Ignoring the Pleco-related implications of this for a moment, just in general this has the potential to be a great new option for people who aren't native speakers of Chinese but want to occasionally work with it on their phone; it runs what appears to be a scaled-back version of Mac OS X, which boasts significantly better multilingual/Unicode support than Pocket PC or Palm OS, so those of you who've gotten fed up with fiddling around with the likes of CJKOS/CE-Star et al to get some measure of Chinese language support on your English-language phone may finally have an alternative. (Apple seems almost guaranteed to launch this in China at some point, it's too big a market for them to ignore)

From our perspective at Pleco, assuming the iPhone sells well and is as easy to develop for as regular Mac OS X it's pretty likely we'd release a version of our software for it at some point, probably along with a regular Mac OS X version.

[novemberfog]

That's great news, I hope that you will be able to develop a Mac OS X version. While I love PlecoDict on the palm, I would really welcome a good tool for Chinese study on the Mac. ATOK makes a great tool for Japanese language that has a "pen" input system (mouse-drawn character input), but I have not found a good tool for Chinese in this area.

[pandaxiongmao]

Apple hasn't released any information about the version of Mac OS X running on the phone yet, so it is all speculative so far. It would be really cool if Wenlin could run on the phone, despite the limitations of iPhone's 320x480 resolution. Apple's website says they aren't planning to sell the iPhone in Asia until 2008, so there may be a new model before it arrives in China.

[mikelove]

If they're getting 5 hours battery life in that form factor then there's no way they're running an x86 chip in there (unless someone's come up with an embedded x86 chip that's vastly more power-efficient than anything I've seen), and even if they did it certainly wouldn't be powerful enough to run PowerPC apps at any kind of a reasonable speed, so it seems highly unlikely that the current verisons of Wenlin / Clavis / etc would work.

I assume Wenlin 4.0 will be a Universal Binary (no inside info on this, but it stands to reason) so if they do in fact use an x86 processor in the iPhone then I suppose that might work, but my guess would be that programs would have to be specifically written to work on this - UMPCs (which can run desktop Windows programs without modification) run something pretty close to a full version of Windows, but the iPhone has no visible menu bar, a very unusual pointer system, and a screen that's way too small / low-res to run "the real" OS X, so while they'll likely use the same development tools and have nearly-identical programming interfaces there'll probably be at least a little customization required. (without a menu bar about half of Wenlin's interface is inaccessible)

Some have pointed out that Apple hasn't even yet said whether it'll be possible to write third-party apps for this at all, but they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they didn't - what's the point of owning a cool new phone with a high-res color screen if you can't play games on it?

Update: no sooner did I post that than this appears:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/the-iphone-is-not-a-smartphone/

So it looks like if there's going to be a Pleco for iPhone it'll have to run through a web browser, at least initially, unless Apple changes their mind about user-installable apps.

[roddy]

Mike, I note that the iPhone doesn't use a stylus - how do you see Chinese input being handled? Is the digitizer going to be up to recognizing (Chinese or any) handwriting input. I would imagine so, but then why no stylus?

I'm particularly interested in how the iPhone is going to handle text input - I haven't yet found any really efficient way of doing this on a Palm PDA - handwriting recognition works ok, but where is predictive text? I swear I can type quicker on my phone than I can on my PDA.

Roddy

[geraldc]

The iPhone looks good in its shiny presentation state, but I wonder how it will look a few months in, after it's been dropped a few times and has few scratches on it.

The phone does appear concentrate more on the ipod side, rather than any traditional smartphone/pda functions. I really don't see how they envisage people entering data using a touch screen and no stylus, I expect they'll be hammering the joys of syncing the phone with iSync or .mac and just entering all your info on a computer.

Apple have made very little inroads into China with the iPod, so I wouldn't be so sure that they'll be going for the Chinese market with the iPhone.

[mikelove]

Even if Apple doesn't include a stylus with the iPhone, it should be quite possible for a third party to offer one. In all likelihood they're using a regular old mechanical touchscreen (just like on a PDA), so that any PDA stylus would work, but even if they're using a more far-out technology it's quite possible to produce a stylus that will generate the equivalent capacitance of a human finger and hence fool almost any touchscreen into thinking it's being touched by a person.

It should also be possible to design a finger-friendly Chinese handwriting recognizer, though it might be tricky on such a small screen - you'd almost want to use some kind of an intelligent zooming feature, where once you finished drawing a particular radical it would recognize that, shrink/distort it to take up a smaller chunk of the screen and leave you with more space to draw the next part. Apple had a pretty good Chinese handwriting recognizer a decade or so ago, but that was before Kai-Fu Lee left for Microsoft (and designed their wonderful Pinyin input system) so I don't know if they'd have the ability to modernize it now without bringing on a bunch of new researchers. The digitizer certainly looks accurate enough for handwriting recognition from the demo videos, though.

The onscreen keyboard on the iPhone looks downright dreadful, I can't imagine typing more than a 1- or 2-sentence e-mail with it, so they'll definitely need to come up with something else. For Chinese it would probably resemble the systems they use on numeric-keypad phones, since most mobile phone users in China already have lots of experience with those.

I have to think this will do better in China than the iPod; MP3 players seem to be viewed as something of a commodity in China, since DRM compatibility isn't a factor and there are hundreds of different locally-developed models available, so it's tough to turn those into a status symbol the way the iPod is in the US. But mobile phones are a whole different story, and there are tons of Chinese urban dwellers who'd gladly shell out $600+ for a flashy new model. Of course there'd be knockoff designs available within weeks of the iPhone's release (if not several months before; even as I write this someone's probably working on CAD drawings for the first iPhone clone), but the touchscreen software would be tough to duplicate, it would probably take them a year or more to develop a reasonable approximation and that gives Apple plenty of time to establish a foothold.

[badr]

I'm with Mike on this one. This phone will be immensely popular and the specs are just right.

I have been holding off on a new phone/palm/ipod for over 3 months now and would gladly put the money down to get this baby today. I can sync it with my mac, replace my lifedrive and make phone calls.. oh, and it has a camera as well!!!

I think they might move the release date up a bit and get it to Asia earlier than expected. Remember that Japan is in Asia and they love to get their hands on the latest and greatest much more than anyone else.

[novemberfog]

In China, what is the mobile phone market like? In the US it looks like this phone is designed with Cingular. Which mobile service provider will be chosen in China I wonder?

The only reason that the iPod is doing well in Japan is because it is compatible with windows and it is fashionable and not as ugly as other music players. The problem for the iPhone is going to be getting a contract with the two service companies here that have a monopoly on the mobile market (NTT DoCoMo and KDDI au). Both companies have already developed their own DRM formats and Sony Music backs the DRM. Sony Music does not support Apple's DRM (which is why iTunes and the music store are not popular in Japan). The iPhone may be accepted, though. I just recently saw ads for a new Motorola phone with NTT DoCoMo which really shocked me as DoCoMo traditionaly only supports Japanese manufacturers.

[gougou]

Remember that Japan is in Asia and they love to get their hands on the latest and greatest much more than anyone else.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Letting Asia wait for more than a year will only work if they are going to release a brand new model then.

[msittig]

In the US it looks like this phone is designed with Cingular. Which mobile service provider will be chosen in China I wonder?

I think I don't understand this, maybe somebody can explain this to me. The new Apple phone is tied to Cingular. Cingular uses the GSM system. So the phone should be a GSM phone. If the phone is locked and I can pay someone to unlock it, or if it's not locked to begin with, then I can just pop in my China Mobile SIM card and use it. Is that all correct?

I'm not at all familiar with the US carriers and their business practices, by choice. As far as I understand it here in China, GSM phones are "tied" to a carrier by having some software that makes it easier to check your balance, browse their WAP sites, etc... If you replace the SIM card with another carrier's, those software bits will be useless but your phone will still be able to make and receive calls. On the other hand, CDMA phones are installed with custom chips that make it *impossible* to use with other carriers.

Right? Wrong?

[roddy]

I think I don't understand this, maybe somebody can explain this to me. The new Apple phone is tied to Cingular. Cingular uses the GSM system. So the phone should be a GSM phone. If the phone is locked and I can pay someone to unlock it, or if it's not locked to begin with, then I can just pop in my China Mobile SIM card and use it. Is that all correct?

Yes

As far as I understand it here in China, GSM phones are "tied" to a carrier by having some software that makes it easier to check your balance, browse their WAP sites, etc... If you replace the SIM card with another carrier's, those software bits will be useless but your phone will still be able to make and receive calls. On the other hand, CDMA phones are installed with custom chips that make it *impossible* to use with other carriers.

You can switch unlocked phones between networks easily, although yes, some preloaded software (WAP settings, SMS message centers?) might not work until you change it. In China the only CDMA provider is Unicom, so you couldn't run your phone on any other network - there isn't one. Unicom also has a GSM network, so I presume you could switch phones between Mobile and Unicom GSM networks by swapping the SIM card.

That's all 'as I understand it'. I fully expect to be corrected shortly . . .

[pandaxiongmao]

While you may be able to use the iPhone to make/receive calls, SMS may be a problem. It is some variant of Mac OS X (which does have very good multi-lingual abilities), so I expect looking at the text of messages will be no problem. However, how will you reply to SMS messages? I haven't seen anything so far that talks about text-input language on the phone.

Apple's iPhone page mentions predictive QWERTY input from a soft keyboard, but doesn't mention what languages that input is capable of. I would assume English, and probably Spanish, but Asian language input isn't necessary for the vast majority of people using the phone in the USA.

[tallynole]

The phone is a GSM unit and thus can theoretically be used with other carriers. However, and this is a big one:

Apple worked with cingular to develop a new system of checking voicemails whereby you can see what voicemails you have on your screen and select which one you want to hear. That is pretty new and I assume they will wait for other companies to implement a similar feature before getting the phone out or just keep that one feature a cingular exclusive.

As far as input goes, it is a soft keyboard (touch screen) so I assume people will be able to enter pinyin and get the equivalent hanzi without any problems. Running OSX means true mutilingual capabilities for the phone and no more strange characters in your SMS.

Now here is the killer... literally: rumor has it that third parties will not be allowed to develop applications for the iPhone but it doesn't make sense. If Apple follows the iPod model, it should allow for third party extensions/functionality.

[venture160]

I did read (I think on wired?) that apple plans a Asia release of the iphone. Apple is big in Japan, so I think if they had a Japanese model a Chinese model would follow suit.

[gougou]

Yes, they are planning to release it, as mentioned above, in 2008.

[sui.generis]

Some have pointed out that Apple hasn't even yet said whether it'll be possible to write third-party apps for this at all, but they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if they didn't

That kills it for me. But that's Apple for you. They don't trust users and they don't trust developers. There is a market that will appreciate that, but it doesn't include me. Hopefully all the other lessons of the iPhone are heeded by other manufacturers, and everybody brings their game up. Having the Mac OS enter the fray might be nice, but I don't really want an OS that I'm not allowed to use as I see fit.

[pandaxiongmao]

Though it is a GSM phone, it appears to be locked down pretty tightly. Some references:

http://www.mobileburn.com/news.jsp?Id=3036&source=MOSTREAD

"The device will be locked, and Cingular's Lurie joked that Apple's engineers would be looking at ways to prevent unlocking once the device is released, something that would not be all that surprising."

http://telephonyonline.com/wireless/marketing/iphone_apple_cingular_011006/

"Cingular is allowed to take steps to make sure no rogue iPhones make their way to the market. It will lock the phones and take steps to prevent the phones from being hacked."

So it might be possible to get one and use it worldwide after it is released in Europe. I suspect the delay for Asia has to do with the fact the Japanese market is mostly 3G. I don't think it is so trendy to buy a 60000 yen phone that doesn't even work with networks that have been available in Japan for 7 years.

Also, an

iPhone FAQ

[testtestte]

I found http://cedict.phor.net for the Chinese-English dictionary for my iPhone. Are there any other sites like this?

Thanks,

Philip

[md1101]

so does the new iphone 3g support chinese handwriting input?

.. im wondering whether to get one or not..