On August 24, 2002, Apple Computer released Macintosh OS X 10.2. Among the many improvements included in that now-ancient release was the first official support for ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i (the Hawaiian language) by any major computer platform.
The story, originally published by the Honolulu Advertiser, was syndicated by Associated Press and was picked up by over a hundred news outlets (here it is on MacWorld). Here is the original press release sent out by Hale Kuamo‘o on that date. I later posted a story about how a serendipitous meeting at Apple’s headquarters led to this development. I couldn’t share the backstory at the time because Brian was still employed at Apple and remained with them for years. Time sure flies. Mahalo to everyone who helped to make this possible. All of us continue to reap the benefits of this achievement in normalizing ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i in the technological realm.
This post…mahalo!! I discovered your work via https://historichawaii.org/2018/12/21/hawaiian-diacritical-marks/ where you’re mentioned in pioneering the Hawaiian keyboard option in tech. This is HUGE. Discovering this, your hard work, was like a bright ray of serendipitous sunshine. I’m a novelist looking to make sure my ʻokina’s are properly represented in my body of work. Thanks to your efforts I can represent our language in a vast medium that may or may not understand the importance between an apostrophe and an ʻokina, but I know, and my grandmother would have. And for that, mahalo nui loa!! I’m off to find/replace all the ‘ with ʻ in my manuscript!! :0)
Aloha,
a Hāʻiku, Maui girl
PS – as you can tell, I’m loving these shortcut keys on the Hawaiian keyboard option on my WIN 10 software!