As you might have found out already, the new iPhone 2.0 software update and the iPhone 3G came out last Friday. I was looking forward to the update for iPod touch, and the features I was really looking forward to were the new scientific calendar and the improved calendar. Perhaps the biggest thing about the new software is the support for applications. I have already purchased two games for the iPod touch (which I expect to also work when I get an iPhone down the road).One of the most interesting features to me is the support for East Asian languages now. See below for Chinese (Traditional). There are two ways to do it: (1) writing (more like drawing) the word with your finger, which I found a bit easier to use for simple words, but difficult at the same time because of my lefthandedness*; (2) using pinyin to spell out the sound of the word, which I prefer because I am better at speaking than I am at writing the Chinese (usually**). The nice thing is, there is the option to type whichever way in between sentences or word phrases with the simple touch of a button. It's nice when I see a word but don't know since I am able to still writing it onto the iPod. Very nice . . .
* I tend to write the wrong way, drawing lines right-to-left rather than the proper left-to-right. The iPod seems to take into account the direction in which a line is drawn, so I saw I kept receiving words that did not look anything like the one I had "drawn".
** My Chinese is overall still pretty bad, unfortunately.