This is great little piece. Over a billion legos made each year!
January, 2010:
Hebrew on the iPhone and iPad
iPad UPDATE:
I now have my iPad and as suspected there is no Hebrew support. I can’t imagine that this would be omitted for long, given that it is already in the iPhone OS, but it is odd. Perhaps the larger keyboard layout of some of these languages was a problem? Or more likely, as someone else suggested, right-to-left support is already weak in Pages, perhaps they did not want to highlight that fact.
And Steve Jobs did not reply to my email on the subject.
UPDATE:
In checking to see what sort of PDF support the iPad would have (I want to be able to annotate as I can in Preview and Adobe Acrobat) I came across an obvious bit of data at Apple’s Tech Spec page for the iPad. This is not good news and curious, given the Hebrew support already present in the iPhone OS. I wonder if this is just an omission in the notes.
Languages
- Language support for English, French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Russian
- Keyboard support for English (U.S.) English (UK), French (France, Canada), German, Japanese (QWERTY), Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, Italian, Simplified Chinese (Handwriting and Pinyin), Russian
- Dictionary support for English (U.S.), English (UK), French, French (Canadian), French (Swiss), German, Japanese, Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, Italian, Simplified Chinese (Handwriting and Pinyin), Russian
In my previous post about the iPad I said that one of only two things I can see lacking (for my use) in the iPad was the ability to input Hebrew. I said at the time that I thought it must be possible since there are programs on the iPhone that allow it, but I had not explored it deeply. Sure enough! It is there and Steve Caruso of The Aramaic Blog was kind enough to enlighten me.
There already exists a Hebrew keyboard for the iPhone, you just need to activate it in the System panel.
Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> International Keyboards
And Hebrew’s about half way down the list. To swap between keyboards, you’ll notice a new key appear to the left of the space bar that looks like a little globe. Give that a tap and you’ll cycle through the ones you have active.
It’s been especially handy to use, and I’ve re-written parts of my translation delivery system to take full advantage of it.
Now if they could only get Syriac on it.
Peace,
-Steve
And a couple of screen shots to show the way (I just realized that I used a slightly different path than Steve describes, but I am too lazy to do the screen grabs again, but you get the idea):
More on “myth” by Hobbins
John Hobbins has an excellent post problematizing myth, “There are (no) myths in the Bible.” It would be useless to try and summarize it here, please go and read it in full, but I think the nubbins are here:
Mythological narrative narrowly defined is relatively hard to come by in the Bible. Where it crops us, the protagonist is singular on the God side of the equation and multiple on the forces-of-chaos side of the equation. The genre is deployed in the service of conveying truth of the highest order. The genre occurs rarely.
More often in biblical literature, God or the gods intervene in human affairs. This is a typical feature of another literary genre: epic. In this genre, God or gods chiefly appear from the outside. The main arena of events is where humans are. What happens to human beings across a chain of events is the focus.
As expected the post is generating a good discussion so head on over and take a look.
Why I AM going to get the iPad
A week ago I wrote about my concerns about the new Apple tablet and why I might not buy it. Well, today Apple announced the iPad and while I still have questions, I will place my order as soon as they open up the doors. So a few initial thoughts (I was on the road all day, so this is mostly second hand and from Apple’s site rather than from watching a shaking video of the actual announcement). Let’s start with the positive.
What it does.
Everything the iPhone/iPod Touch does (aside from calls) with a bigger screen. That means reading PDFs, books (including the new “iBooks” software similar to the Amazon Kindle), and all my current iPhone software such as BibleReader from OliveTree and of course music and movies on a 9.7″ screen (that’s bigger than the original Mac’s screen).
And more. There is a “near full size” onscreen keyboard that will allow you to type with two hands and, one of my concerns, a keyboard dock allowing you to type with a real keyboard. This would be good, but incomplete with the current set of apps available…but Apple also announced newly programmed versions of the iWork apps for the iPad (at $9.99 a piece, I believe). This moves the iPad from a neat media device into a productive tool. Still no Hebrew (so far as I know) but given the ability to also project from the iPad, well that is nice! In other words, with an additional cable you can project your Keynote presentations (and presumably movies, etc.) from the iPad itself.
So why am I so enthusiastic about getting one?
It is not just that I am open about being an unapologetic Apple fan. I do not buy everything Apple makes and I don’t believe that they are always right or even headed in the right direction. As I said several weeks ago I was beginning to consider getting an Amazon Kindle DX
The Apple iPad is now here and is the same size screen as the Kindle DX, is the same price, and yet does…oh, about 100 times more than the Kindle.1 So not only can I browse the web in a real web browser (not an “experimental” one), but it is in full color, plays movies, email, twitter, AIM, banking, maps, iPhoto, games, you get the idea.
So for the price of the Kindle DX2 I get a machine that will replace my MacBook Pro for 98% of my travels and out-of-office use.
A few negatives or unanswered questions.
In fact, there are only two things I do regularly that it appears the iPad will not allow me to do: Accordance Bible software (far more than what BibleReader offers, but word is they too are working on an iPhone app) and writing in Hebrew/Aramaic, usually using NisusWriter Pro. That is not too shabby for a device that many were expecting to simply be a “media delivery device.”
UPDATE: Steve Caruso pointed out below that Hebrew input already exists on the iPhone! I just tried it out so assuming Pages will allow Hebrew input the iPad will do 99% of what my MBP can do.
The biggest open question in my mind is file management. The iPhone OS is locked down so when I create my document in Pages, where is my document stored? How do I move those files around, backup, etc.?
That closed OS brings me to one of the first “why the iPad will fail” posts that I have seen, thanks to a referral from my brother. Tim presents “a case against the iPad” which consists primarily of the fact that the iPad uses the iPhone OS and the iTunes store model, all closed. This, he argues, is a backwards model and is bound to fail, not to mention, goes against the Zeitgeist of openness. It seems that while this may be a case against his buying the iPad, I don’t think it is a serious case against its success. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Case closed. But if that closed system meets your budget, does everything (or enough) you want it to do, then what is the problem? There are any number of other Windows or, more open, Linux based net-books and slates, so let the market decide.3
Will the iPad transform the market? Yes, I think it will. Not by taking over the market, Apple will probably never sell more than 15% or so of the market, but their presence in the market will force other manufacturers to make better devices to keep up. And to meet the demand from people like Tim, who prefer open to well-integrated.
As for me? Well, look for my unboxing video in 60-90 days.
- You can even get the iPad with 3G, but it is $130 more. I will not be getting that. [↩]
- Admittedly, I will be paying more because I will get a higher end model, but the base price is still comparable. [↩]
- He adds an addendum pointing out a “glaring flaw” which is the omission of standard ports. This, he says, is “totally unacceptable for a device that aims to largely displace my laptop.” Except that is explicitly not what Apple intends it to be. Yes, it will likely replace many MacBooks out there, but by not including ports and basing it on the iPhone OS and not the Mac OS is part of Apple’s strategy to create a new niche, between the iPhone and MacBook. Time will tell if it is successful. [↩]
LEGO City & Crime Doesn’t Pay
I have been more than a little under the weather this weekend, but decided to break out of the funk by helping Da Mackster set up more of his LEGOs for a photo shoot. These are from the LEGO City
