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iPad drops support for Traditional Chinese!

Full of Win

Full of Win

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 22, 2007
2,615
1
Ask Apple
From the iPad page: Language support for English, French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Russian

My iPhone does traditional, my iPod touch does it, my MacBook Pro and iMac as well. However, Apple has dropped Traditional Chinese support with this product. The irony here is that the OEM that makes the iPad is likely based out of Taiwan, where people use traditional.

Sad, I was getting one of these for someone from Taiwan, so we would have matching iPads. Guess not now.
 
Did it drop support in that it previously had support for it? I know to an extent that's semantics but I'm wondering if that was something removed instead of just expected.
 
Full of Win said:
From the iPad page: Language support for English, French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Russian

My iPhone does traditional, my iPod touch does it, my MacBook Pro and iMac as well. However, Apple has dropped Traditional Chinese support with this product.
Click to expand...

It's just not Traditional Chinese. According to Apple's iphone tech specs page, the iPhone supports:

English (U.S), English (UK), French (France), German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Arabic, Thai, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malay, Romanian, Slovak, and Croatian
Click to expand...

So there's a considerable number of languages missing from the iPad. I've been wondering why that is myself. It's like we are back in the days of iPhone OS 1!
 
Let's just hope they don't drop Old English too!

"Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in geār-dagum, þeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad, fewshiped weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah, oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra ofer hronrade hyran scolde, gomban gyldan. Þæt wæs god cyning!"
 
Any non-romanized language needs a whole different input screen created for it. I remember it took Apple a while to support all languages on the iPhone, and on the iPad they're having to redo the interface for each language; I'm sure they'll add those missing languages over the next few months.
 
EssentialParado said:
Any non-romanized language needs a whole different input screen created for it. I remember it took Apple a while to support all languages on the iPhone, and on the iPad they're having to redo the interface for each language; I'm sure they'll add those missing languages over the next few months.
Click to expand...

Normally that would make sense. However, they have support for simplified and they have a base to work off of with the iPhone OS, that supports both display, keyboard and writing support for traditional.

The places where this would make a difference are Taiwan and Hong Kong, both very wealthy markets.
 
Full of Win said:
From the iPad page: Language support for English, French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Russian

My iPhone does traditional, my iPod touch does it, my MacBook Pro and iMac as well. However, Apple has dropped Traditional Chinese support with this product. The irony here is that the OEM that makes the iPad is likely based out of Taiwan, where people use traditional.

Sad, I was getting one of these for someone from Taiwan, so we would have matching iPads. Guess not now.
Click to expand...

You do realize iPhone OS 3.2 is still in beta stages and they can't just put something on their site that's not a fact? They'll continue to update the site as we get closer to the iPad launch. They probably just need to update the keyboards to fit the iPad's screen and once they finish, they'll add on the languages. It should have the same support as iPhone OS 3.1.
 
jessica. said:
In a paid update. ;)


I'm not sure why I have trouble buying that but ok.
Click to expand...

Don't know how I can prove my intentions. I guess you will have to take my word for it.

I did post this offer to bring back an Apple keyboard (w/ traditional writing) back from Taiwan when I visited there a year ago. Apple keyboard with Chinese are somewhat hard to come by in the US.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/614452/
 
bobob said:
Let's just hope they don't drop Old English too!

"Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in geār-dagum, þeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad, fewshiped weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah, oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra ofer hronrade hyran scolde, gomban gyldan. Þæt wæs god cyning!"
Click to expand...

Yeah, but I hope that you do! I don't understand a single word, you must be pretty old, my English friend! :)
 
But if they dropped traditional Chinese, then what's stopping traditional Chinese to make cheap Chinese mock-ups?
 
i need traditional chinese for occasional use. i dont know why they decide to exclude it. im wondering how they are gonna sell them in places like taiwan and Hong kong as these are two major places that uses traditional chinese.
 
Got my iPad today and very disappointed

I hope Apple understand there is a big market in Taiwan and Hong Kong using traditional Chinese and not stupid enough not to supporting it. The common business sense is base on the number of people buying Mac products, not the population. This is purely not technical issues and hope the engineer and product people inside Apple not design their product based on the political sense but business sense.
 
Well, they removed support for (among other) Swedish keyboard. My original iPod Touch 1G bought at launch in 2007 did not support Swedish UI but still supported Swedish keyboard and Swedish date format. Swedish UI was added in the paid OS upgrade.
 
You still can display traditional chinese fine (I tried some websites and some of my songs), just that there is no handwriting nor pinyin support for traditional. Thank goodness I use simplified :D
 
bobob said:
Let's just hope they don't drop Old English too!

"Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in geār-dagum, þeod-cyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad, fewshiped weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah, oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra ofer hronrade hyran scolde, gomban gyldan. Þæt wæs god cyning!"
Click to expand...

(I found this thread as I Googled 'iPad Traditional Chinese'.)

Well, I am a Hong Konger, let me try to explain (or clarify) what the difference between tradition Chinese and simplified Chinese is.
(Somehow it involves political affairs but I won't go deep here)

Traditional Chinese means it is the original Chinese.
As the strokes of a Chinese character can sometimes be very complicated,
the simplified Chinese appeared.

The translation of 'traditional Chinese' in English somehow is wrong.
As the word 'traditional' may give people a thought that it is 'old', but that is not the case.

Traditional Chinese is called 正體字 in Chinese，which literally means 'formal style word'.
An other name for traditional Chinese is 繁體字，which literally means 'complicated style word'.
The term 「繁體字」is commonly used in mainland China and Hong Kong (geographically near China), but not in Taiwan as
the mainland China Government (which makes simplified Chinese official) wants 「繁體字」to seem really complicated.
On the other hand, the translation of 'simplified Chinese' is correct, as it is 簡化字 (literally 'simple transform word') or 簡體字 (literally 'simple style word')
(Hong Kong (British colony before July 1997), Taiwan use 'traditional Chinese', while mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia use 'simplified Chinese'.)

Let me give you some examples:
(Traditional Chinese) 廣東 (Guangdong) -> (Simplified Chinese) 广东
(Traditional Chinese) 工廠 (factory) -> (Simplified Chinese) 工厂
(Traditional Chinese) 愛 (love) -> (Simplified Chinese) 爱 (notice the word 'love' in trad. Chinese has a heart「心」while the simp. Chinese has a friend「友」)

Just for your information.

Hope Apple will release a software update which has traditional Chinese user interface, keyboard support for traditional Chinese, and dictionary support soon.
 
traditional Chinese in 3G iPad?

I wonder if Apple has added support for traditional Chinese in this new (3g) iteration of the iPad? Probably too much to expect so soon.
 
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