March 11 – Apple has announced release of iOS 7.1 for iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads which 
contains significant updates on iOS 7 which was released in September last year. The release of iOS 7.1 also brings with it some improvements to the usage of Tamil in Apple’s devices.
When iOS 7.0 was introduced last year, the Tamil user community rejoiced hearing that two Tamil keyboards have been introduced as part of the system. For the first time, users were able to type in Tamil directly into any of the apps in their iPhones and iPads.
Previously, they had to download an app like ‘Sellinam’ in order to compose the message and to cut-and-paste the text into other apps. With iOS 7’s Tamil keyboard, users were no longer needed to cut-and-paste.
However, there were some minor issues with the ‘Anjal’ Tamil keyboard. Specifically, the auto-correction did not work when auto-capitalisation is turned on. For example, when users typed ‘vanakkam’, the first letter ‘v’ was autocapitalised and users saw the following in their screens:
This issue is now fixed in iOS 7.1 and the word ‘vannakkam’ can now be correctly translated to ‘வணக்கம்’. Likewise other auto-correction features now work very well in iOS 7.1.Besides the keyboard, iOS 7.0 had some minor issues when presenting Tamil text on the screen.
Particularly with long names that are truncated. For example, when there wasn’t enough space to display “முத்து நெடுமாறன்”, the name got shortened as “முத்து நடுமா….” instead of “முத்து நெடுமா…” or “முத்து நெடு….”. This issue is no longer seen in iOS 7.1 which is a welcome change
With these two issues fixed, using Tamil on iOS 7.1 brings about improved user experience.
Still some issues remain unresolved…
However, there is still one issue that still remains unresolved. When users type Tamil into iWorks apps like Keynote, Pages and Numbers using the Anjal keyboard, they are not able to compose anything at all. Although this issue is not seen with the Tamil99 keyboard, users find it difficult to switch between two Tamil keyboards just for one app.
While we hope Apple will fix this in their next update, users could also call Apple Care to report such issues and make Apple aware of the importance and urgency of the matter.
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