Vent: I'm on Android and still haven't seen a well done cursor scroll. It usually requires me to select the position accurately which is PITA. I wish there was a simple way to do that.
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Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
21–30 of 422 posts
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#22when ios launched it was competing with blackberry, a 55wpm mobile keyboard that I could use without looking.
now it's competing with droid, and most droid devices are lower-end so whatever the experience on flagship devices, it's going to be much worse on average
not what you asked but:
I recently booted an android 10 pixel 1, 5ish years old, 3 OS versions behind current, and keyboard input was starkly better than my normal droid 12 device (both tap keyboard + swipe keyboard)
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#23Vent: I'm on Android and still haven't seen a well done cursor scroll. It usually requires me to select the position accurately which is PITA. I wish there was a simple way to do that.
Been a while since I've used Android, and it's no longer available (you'll have to find an old .apk, maybe it would still work), but Swype was hands-down the best phone keyboard I've ever used. It had an editing keyboard layout that allowed single-character movement of the cursor, easily selected by Swyping from the Swype key to something else (space bar, maybe?). Swype-X, Swype-C, Swype-V for cut, copy, and paste, and they actually worked well.
Apple's knockoff is nowhere near as good, and routinely "forgets" custom words including curses. My text language is often not PG-rated, let alone G-rated.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#24I wish there was an autocorrect for obvious errors, not changing context of a word like hell -> he'll, well -> we'll, nickel -> Nicole (this is a weird one), and many more. Better yet, it should just underline the word and let me manually correct it like software used to before everyone tried to do ai nonsense. Apparently that red underline is part of the OS but I don't recall actually seeing it.
+1 -- better manual editing UX is necessary for every kind of statistical input, especially voice
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#25I feel like something changed with autocorrect and the default correction is often wrong. And then sometimes I see myself getting a word auto corrected 3 times before I type it in a way that’s corrected properly, or I need to select the right suggestion manually. It feels like autocorrect stopped looking at the whole sentence for context and often just corrects to something that doesn’t make any sense. It didn’t use to be like that I think, but it’s all subjective feelings.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#26[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#27> cursor scrolling using either the spacebar trick or a hard press on screen is a complete mess
This sounds a lot like Android, so welcome to the party.
On the other hand, swipe typing has been the bomb for over a decade. Since it's now available on iOS, give it a chance. Maybe you'll find it makes up for the iPhone's recent declines.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#28Totally agree about cursor scrolling. Half the time, it has no idea where my finger is. Since I discovered Apple’s slide-to-type[0], I rarely have to key the letters, since the algo guesses more accurately than when I actually use individual keystrokes. Also, with stt, the delete erases the whole word, so corrections are faster, too. [0] https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/how-to-use-the-iphones-new-...
+1 for cursor scrolling.
the URL/address bar on mobile is a perfect case in point. or any single-line text box for that matter. as it is, this is a useless widget because of scrolling and text selection. we need a shift of paradigm here.
the text box is not working on mobile.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#29Not to mention, auto accidents have risen sharply with these non-clickable on-screen keyboards.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#30Thank you for asking. It’s definitely worse. I keep wishing there was a way to roll back or trial new keyboard behavior engines. This experience is powered by a lot of data, none of which we can see or edit. If I could go in and unlearn some things it’s learned, that’d be nice. Safelist. Blocklist. So many things to tinker with, out of reach. It’s really sad because it’s the essence of accessibility.