There’s been a bit of talk regarding iOS 14 lately, with leaks and even a multitasking concept for the iPhone inspired by iPadOS. Now there seems to be novelty on the iPadOS front. Apple is expected to also release a new iPadOS come this fall, which may include a new handwriting to text feature.
A new report claims that improved Apple Pencil support is being prepped and that it’ll turn handwritten text into normal text on screen. MacRumors claims that the update will allow text to be written into any text field, even without using an on screen keyboard. This would make the Apple Pencil all the more useful. There’s a PencilKit feature going around, that appears to work with any text input field available in iOS, meaning it’s compatible with Messages, Notes, Reminders, Calendar, Mail and more.
There will also be a floating pop up interface that appears whenever a text field is tapped with the Apple Pencil, triggering written input. It’s also very likely that third party applications will take advantage of the feature, since it’ll be built into PencilKit. There’s PDF editors, email clients and more in the mix. Some people even mentioned the good old Apple Newton, which did a similar thing back in the 1990s, even though it was canned pretty fast by Apple and considered a flop.
Apple should have announced iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 at WWDC 2020, but the event is very likely to be canceled because of the Coronavirus, or at least moved online. Since handwriting recognition and OCR has been on the Galaxy Note for a while now, let’s finally see it on the iPad as well.
