“When Yinon Yamin bought his iPod last summer, he was as infatuated with the small music player as the next user — but with one significant difference. The Israeli university student soon discovered, to his great frustration, that the high-tech player had a major deficiency: Download a Hebrew-language pop song with its information written in Hebrew, and the corresponding song title on the iPod would come up blank. The problem made finding certain songs difficult. ‘Nothing would come up. Only the English captions were displayed,’ he recounts,” Carolynne Wheeler reports for The Globe and Mail. “So it seemed only natural for this computer science student to help his player learn to read his mother tongue.”
“Mr. Yamin’s version is a simple program that takes less than 15 minutes to download and install. It was quickly embraced and got a few thousand hits within days. A first part to the program adds Hebrew fonts to the iPod; a second part allows text to be typed and read from right to left, instead of the left-to-right used in English. It was also closest to what Apple’s Israeli designers were already working on, and a deal was struck within two weeks of the program’s posting on Mr. Yamin’s website. After some debugging and upgrading, the Hebrew-language patch was made available through Apple’s Hebrew-language site last fall. It has been widely received since. ‘I didn’t want to make money off this program, so I spread it free, and when I gave it to them I told them to spread the software for free, that was one of my conditions,’ said Mr. Yamin, who added that he wasn’t paid extravagantly for the program,” Wheeler reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Michael K.” for the heads up.]
Advertisements:
• Get the new iMac with Intel Core Duo for as low as $31 A MONTH with Free shipping!
• Get the MacBook Pro with Intel Core Duo for as low as $47 A MONTH with Free Shipping!
• Apple’s new Mac mini. Intel Core, up to 4 times faster. Starting at just $599. Free shipping.
• Apple’s brand new iPod Hi-Fi speaker system. Home stereo. Reinvented. Available now for $349 with free shipping.
• iPod. 15,000 songs. 25,000 photos. 150 hours of video. The new iPod. 30GB and 60GB models start at just $299. Free shipping.
• Connect iPod to your television set with the iPod AV Cable. Just $19.
• iPod Radio Remote. Listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything with a convenient wired remote. Just $49.
And not asking for money? Wow!
As someone who doesn’t read a word of Hebrew but would be very annoyed to borrow a friend’s iPod and see blank song titles… thanks.
Stop killing Palestinians and maybe iPod will respect you.
I’m pretty sure music players have nothing to do with foreign policy…nevertheless human rights…
‘Stop killing Palestinians and maybe iPod will respect you.’
So you sympasize with Hamas!
Israel is dealing with Nazi’s again, only this time their fighting back, don’t falsely accuse them.
May YHWH bless you and your family as you choose to bless others.
Those who gives will receive blessings in return.
Matt24
GET A LIFE U LOSER, ISRAEL ARE FUKEN KILLING HUNDREDS EVERYDAY.
TULLP IM WITH 100%
Must articles that are posted here that have anything to do with any country that is involved in ANYTHING political, always turn into a political debate?
This has nothing to do with Israel’s fights with Palestine. This doesn’t even really have to do with Israel itself. It has to do with a guy who speaks Hebrew who had an iPod that didn’t read Hebrew song titles so he wrote a piece of software that allowed him to do so and kept it free and then gave it to Apple and got paid moderately and made Apple distribute it free. That is all. It would be much better to talk about the efficiency of the software, or how it was important, or at least something about the software and not about what you think about Israelis. Grow up and actually learn to use the comment box properly, thanks.
On the topic of the actual article, this is a problem for Apple if they want to be able to expand the iPod into other countries and new markets, but I’m glad this guy had the initiative to do something about it himself instead of just waiting for Apple to do it. An honorable feat.
Figures a couple of idiots turn this great story into something stupid.
Since you two are too dumb to know any better let’s take a quick look at the facts. Extremist Muslims (most Arabs are wonderful people) attack Israeli citizens, Israel counter attacks to try and protect their country and Israel is the bad guy. Next I suppose you’re going to say that the Holocaust never happened like that wacko in Iran is saying?
Would be great if Apple invested more time and money regarding type/text/fonts support for the arabic region. I know lots of people in Dubai, AbuDhabi,Qatar, Kuwait who’d love Macs – but apparently the support for arabic type (esp. in M$ Word) is pretty shitty. Someone told me M$ dumped support for arabic languages in Word/OSX a coupla years back ie. it used to work.
thanks for the IDF proaganda… faux fact boy
the ever mystical mw: army
Greg M,
didn’t you leave out some crucial facts there? I know you said ” a quick look…” but your version really makes you look semi-retarded. Or do you want me to believe that those extremists run around with bombs because they’re bored?
afaik arabic type has never worked in Word on the mac. I might be wrong though.
The fact that the “anti-Israel” posters introduced this stupid political topic when the article was about the Hebrew language demonstrates that they are really anti-Jewish. Sad, perhaps, but not surprising. This is the very reason Israel was created as a Jewish homeland, and why all decent people will continue to help it to defend itself.
BTW, I’m not Jewish, just informed, and not bigoted.
The fact that the “anti-Israel” posters introduced this stupid political topic when the article was about the Hebrew language on iPod demonstrates that they are really anti-Jewish. Sad, perhaps, but not surprising. This is the very reason Israel was created as a Jewish homeland, and why all decent people will continue to help it to defend itself.
BTW, I’m not Jewish, just informed, and not bigoted.
Sorry re double-post. The truth bears repeating, though!
Kate,
Thanks for the myopia.
Thanks for the myopia.
Next thing you’ll hear is the defense that the head choppers in Iraq are fighting occupation.
How sad it is that there is sympathy for evil-doers. Ones that kill innocents in Pizza parlors by blowing themselves up. But that is the reality of this world.
For all those sympathizers, think for a moment, if you can.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you comit atrocities” Voltaire
Hitler
Hamas
Saddam
Al Queda
Bin Laden
etc.
…and what is it that they make you believe?
Jews are bad.
Christians, Americans are bad.
…hence, they must be killed.
How nice.
Resisting the urge to comment on some of the absurd and thoughtless comments posted by ignorant anti-Israel bigots…
I am glad to see that Apple is willing to cooperate with developers who have found a way to improve the experience customers have with their products. Rather than insist they build it themselves, thereby delaying the availability of the software, perhaps not having the same functionality and spending resources on redundant products/features, they saw that someone else did it better and cooperated with him to make it more available to people. Everyone wins in this! This is great! I hope they do more of this with other developers who have great ideas and software.
Of course its great to have developers who are willing to make these things available for free as well. Yinon Yamin is to be commended even more for giving of his time and talent!
George Bush is GOD!
Judeo/Christians RULE! (well really, white Christians RULE – but Isrealies own the media, so we put up with them).
Now where’d my Thorazine get to…
This evil is preached every day in the Middle East and it is in their so-called Holy book. Last I checked, when I went to a religious service, I don’t recall the preacher saying we had to kill those that don’t believe.
So, you sympathizers, re-examine the ideas and thoughts put into your head.
Some nice person decided to Hijack my nic and posted the Bush is God comment.
Sad and hate filled.
anti-bush = terrorist
anti-war = freedom hater
anti-israel = bigot
So MDN posts a story about some unselfish college kid who devoted his time to produce something he likes and asked that it be used to help others. Then a bunch of lunatics start raving about Jews and Arabs and killing etc…
What a sad world we live in (and I am not talking about the middle east). People, grow the hell up. Read the story for what it is…an act of generosity. Don’t blacken it with your dark and miserable outlook on life!
MW blue as in….reading these ignorant ravings makes me blue.
As I noted above, this article wasn’t even about Israel, but about Hebrew. So the bigotry some posters was in plain view for all to see.
Kate
P.S. At least you believe in truth in advertising (nice name).