Mountain Lion: Special Chinese Features

Today Apple posted info regarding the features of the next version of OS X, Mountain Lion, which includes the following:

"All-new features for China

It’s a new Mac experience in China. OS X Mountain Lion brings all-new support for many popular Chinese services. And they’re easy to set up. Mail, Contacts, and Calendar work with QQ, 163, and 126. Baidu, the leading Chinese search provider, is a built-in option in Safari. The video-sharing websites Youku and Tudou are included in the new Share Sheets, so users in China can easily post videos to the web. They can also blog with Sina weibo, the popular microblogging service. And with improved text input, typing in Chinese is easier, faster, and more accurate."

Engadget adds some more detail in its description: "including better word and phrase suggestions, autocorrect, enhanced handwriting recognition and the ability to type in English without changing keyboard settings. "

iBookstore Language Support

The latest version of the iBookstore Publisher User Guide, dated 1/19/12, has the same language exclusions as the one from 2010:

"What languages does the iBookstore NOT support?

At this time, the iBookstore does not support the following languages: Persian, Old (ca.600- 400 B.C.), Persian, Samaritan Aramaic, Amharic, Arabic, Official Aramaic (700-300 BCE), Imperial Aramaic (700-300 BCE), Burmese, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, Judeo-Persian, Judeo- Arabic,Central Khmer, Lao, and Mon-Khmer languages."

I wonder if this is really accurate. If readers find books in the store in Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, or Hebrew, I would welcome hearing about it.

PS I have personally found a lot of Chinese books in the store, so clearly that language is in fact supported.

For updated info, see here.

OS X 10.7.3 Adds 8 New Localizations

Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian

Wow, that raises the total from 22 to 30.