Apple is rolling out a range of new features and improvements that are aimed at users in India, China and other international markets with its yearly updates to iOS, iPadOS, and macOS operating systems.
iOS 14, which will roll out to users later this year, introduces new bilingual dictionaries to support French and German; Indonesia and English; Japanese and Simplified Chinese; and Polish and English. For its users in China, one of Apple’s biggest overseas markets, the company said the new operating system will introduce support for Wubi keyboard.
For users in India, Apple is adding 20 new document fonts and upgrading 18 existing fonts with “more weights and italics” to give people greater choices. For those living in the world’s second largest internet market, Mail app now supports email addresses in Indian script.
Apple said it will also deliver a range of additional features for India, building on the big momentum it kickstarted last year.
Messages now feature corresponding full-screen effects when users send greetings such as “Happy Holi” in one of the 23 Indian local languages.
More interestingly, iOS 14 will include smart downloads, which will allow users in India to download Indian Siri voices and software updates as well as download and stream Apple TV+ shows over cellular networks — a feature that is not available elsewhere in the world.
The feature further addresses the patchy networks that are prevalent in India — despite major improvements in recent years. Last year, Apple enabled improved video downloading option for users in India, allowing them to set an optimized time of the day in video streaming apps such as Hotstar and Netflix for downloading videos.
New improvements further shows Apple’s growing focus on India, the world’s second largest smartphone market. Apple chief executive Tim Cook said earlier this year that the company would launch its online store in the country later this year, and open its first physical store next year.
iOS 14 will also allow users in Ireland and Norway to utillize the autocorrection feature as the new update supports Irish Gaelic and Norwegian Nynorsk. And there’s also a redesigned Kana keyboard for Japan, which will enable users to type numbers with repeated digits more easily on the redesigned Numbers and Symbols plane.
All the aforementioned features — except Mail getting support for email addresses in Indian script and smart downloads for India — will also ship with iPadOS 14. And the aforementioned new bilingual dictionaries, new fonts for India, and localized messages are coming to macOS Big Sur. Additionally, Apple says on the desktop operating system it has also enhanced predictive input for Chinese and Japanese results in more accurate and contextual predictions.