With Apple being declared an “aspiration brand” in China and iPhone 4 rioting the in Beijing flagship store, you’d think that Apple would be pretty serious about Chinese input. But no. OSX chinese handwriting recognition is still in its’ infancy.

Well, since Snow Leopard, users have been able to input Chinese on Macbooks & Macbook Pros via trackpad. But have a shot at this and you can verify for yourself that this finger-painting business is about as slow and as ergonomic as a seatless unicycle.

This is particularly annoying for people whose command of Chinese, like mine, sucks balls. Dealing with the mysterious language / omnipresent inconvenience is a constant struggle between not knowing how to pronounce a character I’m looking at, and not knowing how to write a character I can say.

Users like me are reliant on both handwriting input (to google characters) and pinyin (to make a sentence without knowing how to write the characters).

Additional complication? As a loyal Wacom fan, I will rather Comic Sans my headstone than purchase those overpriced handwriting recognition softwares that come bundled with rickety digital pens of the ass variety.

哎呀, so how?

OSX Chinese Input Comparison

Solution	Wacom Friendly?	Price	Misc Shitbit
	No		Upgrade from Leopard begins at $29 (single user license). If you’re not on a MacBook or MacBook Pro, you’ll need to purchase a magic trackpad for this to work. iMac users, cue collective sigh.
	No		Badass name kinda redeems it… But I don’t want to finger my 汉语not even from my iPhone / iPod / iPad. Deserves special mention as the cheapest solution!
	No		This is imho the most despicable option. I’d know because my dad is a Penpower fiend. Generations of these plasticky, low-res pesudo tablets clutter my home. They may work, but let me just sound the Rip-Off Alarm. Also, I find the UI a bit of a victim of feature-creep. But don’t take my word for it, screenshots here.
	Yes		QuickScript & MyScript are, as far as I can tell, totally identical, except for the pricetag. I believe these are folks from whom Apple acquired their chinese handwriting recognition technology from in the first place. Users can input writing from any stylus, even mouse. And having road-tested both these programs, I can say that they decifer even the worst handwriting. Best part? It’s multi-lingual. Just install the dictionary you need. So chinese, russian, hindi, japanese, you name it, this little power house will take care of it.
	Yes

For me, the winning solution was definitely Axiotron QuickScript paired with my Bamboo or Intuos. It’s been working like a charm on every one of my macs and I don’t have to finger paint. Well worth the buck. QuickScript is pretty reliable and recognizes even the most mangled penmanship.

Cheap Wacoms

Hope this will be of help to anyone else who is trying to input Chinese via a stylus. Again, QuickScript comes in plenty of other languages, and you will have to install the right “Lingo Packs”. (Download Lingo Pack at the bottom of this page.)