A new iPhone was announced today, the iPhone 4S, and the response to Apple’s press conference was a bit lukewarm. Many were expecting the iPhone 5 and/or iOS5 today. But one of the more exiting developments for us was found on the specification sheet for the phones (tip o’ the cap to Joseph Erb for the heads up): there will be a Hawaiian keyboard and spell-check document included. Yes, we’ve had support for the ‘okina and kahakō in the iPhone and iPad for a while; however, while you can generate them from the soft keyboard by long-holding your finger on a vowel, you could not type it when your device (iPads, mostly) was attached to an external keyboard. With this new development you will be able to do so. As soon as these features show up I’ll discuss them further. I believe all you will need to do to activate the Hawaiian spell-checker is select the Hawaiian keyboard.
Mahalo e ko Apple i ke kāko‘o mau ‘ana i ka ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i!
Tee hee….Good news for your phone but love your ‘A Team’ quotes. 🙂
Shut up, fool. 😉
Mahalo nui for spreading the great news! Do you need the iPhone 4S to have the keyboard or is it part of iOS5?
Aloha e Leina‘ala. I’m not sure that this point. I’m assuming/hoping that any device with iOS 5 on it will be able to type Hawaiian correctly. It probably won’t require the new iPhones. We’ll know for sure when iOS 5 ships, but given the system’s design and past experience, I would be shocked if it didn’t work on any device that ran the new OS. Will post again when I know for sure.