Windows OS beating OS X? Japanese language support

Hello everybody,

I bought a new Mac just yesterday (my first time to switch from PC) believing that the East Asian Support in Macs will be equally if not better in OS X than Windows (given that Japan is a huge market for Macs and also that you can even order a Japanese keyboard when purchasing your computer). To my horror, however, I am now realizing that there's a feature where Windows outpeforms OS X, or what OS Xi is totally lacking;

IME Pad - i.e. in Windows when you switch to Japanese language keyboard you have an option to use your mouse to draw a kanji you are not familiar with (don't know its reading). You'll get a lit of options and can find thus a kanji extremely fast - no need for radical or stoke look-up. I've heard that OS X doesn't have this function - at least not 10.5. If that's true this would be a major drawback!

the only solution to this would be to use an internet interface such as this:
Handwritten kanji search at sljfaq.org
But this is way too cumbersome and requires internet access.



I hope someone who knows how to use Japanese on Macs can respond.

 

Okay so I did some research and found out that OS X is taking care of this as well, the new Snow Leopard includes this (exactly what I am talking about):

YouTube - Chinese Trackpad Handwriting

it requires multi-touch pad which I believe comes now with all the new orders, right?
And while this is optimized for Chinese (not Japanese as the Windows OS has it) I think that i can live with it. Hurray!!!

 

Multi touch has been in macbooks since late 2008, If you just bought a Mac you should have Snow Leopard.

 

It's one of the most important reason why iphone and android phones don't get far in japan/china markets, their handwriting recognition is lacking compared to winMo phones. Though they making improvements recently.

 

Yeah I can see how this would be true; comparing the interface in OS X to that one in Windows I have to say that Windows are definitely ahead in this regard. This is quite the problem for me as I work with Japanese everyday.

On top of everything I've realized that the handwritten input in the latest OS X is still optimized for Chinese, not Japanese characters. This is of course a problem because these two have developed now separately for more than 1300 years and many Japanese characters won't be recognized by the Chinese input system.
Anyone of you has an idea whether Apple will at some point introduce a solely Japanese version as well?

 

I'm not sure how much usage you require but you could dual boot with windows 7 and use the Japanese input there?

 

Can't speak for Japan, but the iPhone is wildly popular in China. My Chinese wife absolutely demanded I get her nothing but an iPhone. Many of her friends likewise use the iPhone.

And this was even before iPhone officially went on sale in China. Mainlanders simply went to Hong Kong and picked up unlocked versions.

Of course, you have to be careful about counterfeits.

 

Have you tried this? HowTo : Write in Japanese with Mac OS X (leopard and snow leopard) | www.kanjimi.com

 

Jervis961, yeah I know this is there. Unfortunately this is all common practice for Windows OS. The one thing that is missing is handwritten kanji recognition in Macs (i.e. what you have in Windows as IME Pad). This is an absolutely crucial feature for effective working with Japanese text - kanji. OS X has a similar software but only for Chinese characters which is not the same as Japanese (probably only around 70% of Japanese characters will be recognized).

 

iPhone in China is mostly a vanity thing.

Anyway I never had an issue with typing Japanese as I always just type hiragana and it figures out the kanji automatically. I can see where it can be an issue though. I use a Nintendo DS as a dictionary to convert kanji I don't know into hiragana. That is not really solving the problem but I get to know the hiragana as well and I may just remember it next time I use that kanji.

 

Yeah Lixuelai, as you say that's not the solution. I type in hiragana as many kanji as I know - my vocab is probably something around 1200kanji, that's still not enough and I do need to look up words.