In case anyone wants to know who invented this technology…
The predictive texting or what is now commonly known as T9 technology was originally termed “character pattern recognition and communications apparatus” (Patent No. 4,674,112) and is a patent covering software invented in 1987 by Dr. George Kondraske, professor of electrical and biomedical engineering at UT Arlington. The Board of Regents of The University of Texas System holds the intellectual property rights to the technology.
Four settlements have been received by the board since litigation was filed in March 2005 in U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas, for infringement from companies including Research in Motion, maker of the popular RIM Blackberry , Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. and Philips Electronics North America Corp., and VK Corporation and VK Mobile USA, Inc. VK, a Korea-based company.

chris p: While I don’t have specific articles for you, I too have read many that imply (usually in passing) the iPhone packs more innovation than has even Steve Jobs has claimed, predictive text among them. As with many things Apple, sensationalism and misstatements on both sides of the aisle is commonplace, and the iPhone is certainly no exception.

I admit to contributing to the problem recently, wondering if the iPhone will be the first phone to properly display my blog. However, I did pose my wonderment as a question and Cheryl was kind enough to answer with a blog post showing that the S60 browser (based on Apple’s WebCore) in Nokia phones can already do the job.

Can anyone tell me if there’s a version of this predictive text software that can be used on a tablet pc running Vista (Business)? Either in a third party on-screen keyboard app or, ideally, bolted on to the MS Tablet Input Panel? Thanks for any ideas.

Guy

James, please don’t be defensive or reactionary. I am not bashing or accusing you of anything. I am looking for the articles that you have read, that’s all.

Wow, I’ve had this since my first cell phone a long time ago. In fact, I’m sure many in the target demographic have been using predictive text entry for quite some time. Nothing to see here.

Also, don’t forget about iTAP.

>>>The T9 text entry system has also had predictive text entry for some time and it works really well,

WTF?!!? It’s NEVER worked well for me. It’s the first thing I disabled on my phone. And when I fondle phones, I dig around to see if it can be disabled on them too. Rubbish!

Yeah, I don’t think the text entry on the iPhone that they’re touting (they may use predictive text in addition; I don’t know) is predictive text. It’s more like where someone mistakenly types “mrmber” and the software will present “member” as a correction you can choose. I forgot where I saw a picture of this, but that was the specific example I’ve seen.

Kind of like when Google, iTunes, or Amazon can’t find results for the search term you typed, so they’ll ask, did you mean this search term instead? Or like when apps like Outlook will automatically correct “teh” to be “the”, rather than providing a list of words that it thinks you’re going to type based on what you’ve already typed.

I thought actually that the “New” here was that when you are typing on a visual keyboard, it’s able to predict what you are typing and correct the likely typos that will occur by mashing your fingers on the touchscreen.

I thought the predictive text entry on the iPhone took into account that the user might have hit an adjacent key by accident and corrects for those when possible? (At least Wikipedia claims that it does this, for whatever that’s worth.) No, the idea of predictive text entry isn’t new, but Apple might have come up with a different way of doing it.

Of course, you never stated that all Apple did was stick T9 or the WM predictive text entry system on the iPhone. Just as you never stated Apple claimed to invent predictive text entry. Just as all those other journalists never stated Apple invented predictive text entry. But you did state that Apple isn’t introducing anything new with this. I think it’s possible that Apple may be introducing a new algorithm for predicting text, one which corrects errors while predicting the word.

However, I don’t have anything which runs Windows Mobile. For all I know, WM already does this with its virtual keyboard. I haven’t read anything which makes me think this though.

BlackBerry has had this forever. It’s funny, a significant number of people get annoyed with suretype, and they’re hitting physical buttons…I what’s in store for Apple.

The first time I used predictive text entry was on the Apple Newton back in 1992.

Doesn’t make any difference I just don’t want readers to think that this is brand new technology, it is rather old.

What difference does it make on who invented it?

I did not state that Apple is claiming to be the inventor of predictive text entry. I didn’t say that the articles I’ve seen (latest one on the NYT, just search for them) stated that Apple invented this. The impressions given by these articles that discusses Apple’s hot new text entry technology is definitely that Apple has created this field and this is what I am saying. If you mention Apple’s “new” technology in an article and don’t go on to say that a similar technology has been around for years then the reader can understandably assume that Apple created something new. Disputing that mistaken assumption is the purpose behind this article.

Who said it was? Certainly not Apple. It’s been on my last three mobile phones. It’s a toss up whether it’s more annoying than helpful.