Apple looking to put handwriting recognition into the iPhone?

We know Apple's had its Inkwell handwriting recognition software in OS X for years now, so we might have otherwise just totally glossed over this Handwriting Recognition Engineer job listing on Apple's site. Except for the part that reads: "The recognition technology you create may extend beyond Mac OS X to other applications and the iPhone." They always love to throw those little tidbits in there, don't they?

[Via Macrumors]

[yoyodude64 @ Mar 28th 2008 11:55PM]

how does that work with just your finger? using a stylus just seems so...oldschool from here. maybe its just me

[tom @ Mar 29th 2008 2:01AM]

not just you, spend some time and review the iPhone intro, Jobs agree that too.

[Jason @ Mar 30th 2008 8:22AM]

Unless it's handwriting recognition off a sample.

Wasn't there talk about the next iPhone using it's screen as a scanner?

[Paul @ Mar 28th 2008 11:56PM]

Considering the inkwell "technology" in os x is plain crap, i wouldn't be getting all hyped up about this

[wasabi @ Mar 29th 2008 12:07AM]

oh no! you said osx is crap! the fanboys will go after you now. and since they're apple fanboys, i assume they have no technological knowledge and will pretend to hack you.

[The Dude @ Mar 29th 2008 12:16AM]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CCHqMENtKkA

Inkwell sucking ape balls is exactly why they need help.

[Tom @ Mar 29th 2008 12:53AM]

Don't assume mac users have not tested inkwell. It does suck!

[Josh @ Mar 29th 2008 11:09AM]

I completely agree with all of you- it does suck.

This is probably more aimed towards a tablet PC or just to improve the OS itself, i can't really see it working well with the current gen. iphone but eh, the future is always a surprise...

[Jeff @ Mar 29th 2008 1:57PM]

i use a wacom tablet almost exactly the same size as my 23" monitor, and i was really looking forward to using Inkwell... but i dropped it in less than a week because it just wasn't useful.

Maybe they'll hire someone who can MAKE it useful. :)

...also, wasabi, do you really need to be so douchey all the time? shill.

[nonamo @ Mar 28th 2008 11:59PM]

I thought all engineers had terrible handwriting
:P

[wasabi @ Mar 29th 2008 12:05AM]

they do, but purposefully. why? cause you can't tell when they fuck up

[tom @ Mar 29th 2008 2:06AM]

Well, you should see doctor's handwriting. Since I was a kid, I always had problems reading the doctor's note for my school teacher. I can only guess the first three word goes "Tommy is sick..."

Tom~

[alitman @ Mar 29th 2008 12:02AM]

They must have some people left from the Newton project..

[cmonkey @ Mar 29th 2008 12:15AM]

Egg freckles?

[Tom @ Mar 29th 2008 12:54AM]

eat up martha?

[nDee @ Mar 29th 2008 2:14AM]

Bring back Newton and stylist.

[VeganTnT @ Mar 29th 2008 12:06AM]

Maybe the recognition isn't for user input...

What about writing on a piece of paper, taking a photo of it, and having any recognized text be put into the notes app?

Ready for editing or emailing.

[ThePengwin @ Mar 29th 2008 1:37AM]

i think you might be talking about OCR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition

[Shabbis @ Mar 29th 2008 12:13AM]

Uh oh... Not another "Eat up Martha" parody all over again...

[Dyranios @ Mar 29th 2008 12:14AM]

Hey engadget why dont you stop stalking apple!? Every little patent every little thing you just pounce on it just leave them alone they dont need you breathing down their neck all the t ime OKAY!!?

[Nathan @ Mar 29th 2008 1:11AM]

Yeah! And stop writing about gadgets! Gadgets don't need you breathing down their neck all the time! OKAY!?

Cereal Doucheranios, what do you expect them to write about, the amazing quest that you are on to lose your virginity?

Here's an option: don't read the article if you don't care, but realize that in all probability you aren't a journalist, and Engadget isn't your publication, therefore they could care bugger all about your journalistic opinion.

[Jon Doe. @ Mar 29th 2008 3:26AM]

Nathan,


Better alternative.

Forget about not reading it because I'm sorry when I'm scrolling down the page I'm going to see this pointless shit.

Forget about having specialized RSS feeds for an Engadget Apple free page because I'm not always at a computer where such a setting is cached or whatnot.

Instead why doesn't Weblogs Inc create an Apple site like an Unofficial Apple weblog....oh right they already have.... So the question remains. WFT is with needing to have even the smallest tremor in the Apple force show up on Engadget instead of http://www.tuaw.com ? Pointless and annoying. IMHO and it is an opinion the only shit from Apple that should be showing up here is official new hardware\software announcements. Everything else should stay the fuck on TUAW

[Nathan @ Mar 29th 2008 4:36AM]

Well Jon Douche (I'm going with the feminine hygiene theme today),

Engadget doesn't cater to the vocal minority, which would be you and the guy with the bathtub toy for an avatar up top there. Most of the reasonable, ordinary, prudent people who frequent this site just glance over articles that we don't find interesting. Oh but not you! Not all important John Doe!

You NEED these erroneous posts that you find to be a waste of time so that you can get up on your "I know more about publishing than you, you need to listen to me!" soapbox and rant, rave, bitch and moan, until your positive that all your e-peen flexing has paid off.

Your reason to visit this site is to have something to complain about, be it something you don't find useful or something someone else says, so if I were you I wouldn't press the editors to stop giving you cause to show up.

Engadget is free to do what they damn well please with any news they get, whether grumpy curmudgeons like you like it or not, and if it displeases you then exercise your right not to come to the site at all.

[Nathan @ Mar 29th 2008 5:05AM]

Also, John Doe, just out of curiosity do you ever go into the public library and start yelling and yelling and yelling, and telling the library administrators to get rid of all these stupid, useless books that you don't want to read?

Do you let them know how terrible of an inconvenience it is to someone as important as yourself to have to sift through all this free information just to find that latest fiction release in the young adults section?

I find this analogy to be adequate to what you are suggesting, that information be sequestered from your view at the expense of everyone else who is interested, just so your day can be made a little easier.

Get over yourself.

[Dyranios @ Mar 29th 2008 11:36AM]

Y'all just got trolled!

[Steffen Jobbs @ Mar 29th 2008 10:28AM]

That's a very impressive demo for Vista. Can't Apple's Inkwell be trained over a period of time to improve it's lousy performance? One thing I noticed was that the area you write in Vista was much more confined, which must be a good thing. Whatever, Vista's recognition wins by the huge margin. I hope Inkwell or another technology can be improved upon for Apple to compete in character recognition.

[SimonRichards @ Mar 29th 2008 12:22AM]

iPhone Newton, anyone?

Besides... no stylus + handwriting recognition = fail

[Aryk @ Mar 29th 2008 12:25AM]

Tablets.

[Darren @ Mar 29th 2008 12:51AM]

Exactly. Handwriting recognition for the iPhone would be stupid.

[JAmerican @ Mar 29th 2008 1:44AM]

Plus if it was for the iPhone, you'd have to use those finger styli or a regular stylus.

JA

[someguy7234 @ Mar 29th 2008 12:29PM]

Tablets- Definately. This is one increasingly popular market that apple is not at all into that Microsoft is the only player in. The use of LED backlights as well as new thinner wacom screens makes it very possible for tablets to start fitting into the Apple ideology of thin and simple. Despite being a HUGE apple hater- An apple tablet might be just the thing to change my opinion.

[Mark @ Mar 29th 2008 12:36AM]

Reminds me of that Simpsons episode. Where the thugs write 'Beat up Martin' on the Apple Newton and the Newton translates it as 'Eat up Martha'

[Robert Linderman @ Mar 29th 2008 12:41AM]

Big fat deal...My HP iPaq has fantastic handwriting recognition, better than anything I have used. In fact, I have been using great handwriting recognition with all of the old MS Windows Mobile and Pocket PC technologies for at least ten years. All of the sudden we hear from Apple introducing it on the iPhone...heck, I thought the iPhone always had it. Are you trying to tell me that for $500 they could not put handwriting recognition on the technology. What the heck do you receive for $500 that I cannot live without anyway? Perhaps they should start with a removable battery.

This is as bad as telling me that Al Gore invented the Internet.

[Darren @ Mar 29th 2008 12:53AM]

There's no such thing as an HP iMac.

[ThePengwin @ Mar 29th 2008 1:42AM]

Yes it is funny that Windows Mobile has had 4 input methods for many years, which all work very well, yet the brand new iPhone has just one....

but apart from my apple bashing i think iPhones would be killer with a handwriting recognition engine.

[mushrooshi @ Mar 29th 2008 2:10AM]

He means the iPaq, and its something else.

Oddly enough, I recall there was an HP iPod! ^.^

[Abuzar @ Mar 29th 2008 2:35AM]

He said IPAQ, those are PDAs originally made by Compaq and now HP. They run Windows Mobile and actually, you know, get stuff done.

[Darren @ Mar 29th 2008 5:53AM]

Seriously? HP makes something called an iPaq? What a ridiculous name.

[root.alt @ Mar 29th 2008 1:00AM]

I was thinking more like tablets...handwriting for iphone would suck heh...but yeah like 90% of mac users..know nothing...sad but true. I am a mac user....cept I am a PRO.

[yoyodude64 @ Mar 29th 2008 1:03AM]

no stylus buddy

[yoyodude64 @ Mar 29th 2008 1:03AM]

that was meant as a reply to robert. idk what happened with that

[Shogmaster @ Mar 29th 2008 1:35AM]

Forget the iPhone. Apple has tons of work ahead of them to catch up with Microsoft in handwriting recognition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCHqMENtKkA

[Shogmaster @ Mar 29th 2008 1:36AM]

Holy crap, someone already linked my video in this thread. Nevermind. :D

[John @ Mar 29th 2008 2:01AM]

Wow. The fact that Apple is "considering" adding functionality to the iPhone somehow makes news. You couldn't pay for this kind of publicity. Or did they?

[Tron @ Mar 29th 2008 2:09AM]

firmware updates!

[Jon Doe. @ Mar 29th 2008 3:11AM]

New iPhone socks tomorrow! OMGOMG!!!

[Jon Doe. @ Mar 29th 2008 3:10AM]

Apple better be doing some serious R&D on their handwriting tech in OS X because inkwell sucks harder then a black hole. Hell Apple should just license the handwriting recog in Vista\XP Tablet PC because frankly I could be drunk, writing upside down, and using my feet and the damn thing could read my writing.

[pscs @ Mar 29th 2008 6:22AM]

probably for the tablet they're planning on making. iPhone? Possibly. They should (and must) put Chinese hand writing recognition (and possibly even for other eastern languages that doesn't use the latin alphabet. For some it's quicker to write than type.

[Gubatron @ Mar 29th 2008 9:01AM]

Given he (Steve Jobs) bashed so badly the use of a stylus on the phone, this only makes you think they're finally coming out with a decent "TabletBook" or "MacTablet".

One that finally recognizes any handwriting with no problems whatsoever.

[markcih @ Mar 29th 2008 9:45AM]

I'd have to agree that Inkwell on the Mac sort of sucks, insofar as writing on a graphic tablet on your lap while looking at the a screen in front of you does not work. However anyone who says Inkwell technology "sucks" never used it on the Newton OS 2 or 2.1 (the last and best of the breed).

Inkwell is NOT from Paragraph (Newt OS1x handwriting was) and it is gesture, shape, acceleration and velocity based so it is light-years ahead of simple shape recognition. It also had a learning algorithm so that even though most humans cannot decipher my non-Catholic-school left-handed chickenscratch, I could write something like "Give remediation details to Tom Dellenbach when finished." (yes a real name) and it would read it - and this was WITHOUT the name being in my custom dictionary.

So any Inkwell nay-sayers, until you have seen it in person on the screen you are writing on - especially after training it - be not so quick to judge. Also as QT, Safari, and iTunes are on Windows, who is to say Apple wouldn't port Inkwell to Windows for a fee.

And keep in mind - the keyboard still beats voice recognition and handwriting recognition. Always will. I could never get Dragon or IBM's product to reliably "wreck a nice beach"!