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.
