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Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?

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Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?

#181

Post by shaoonb »

lumenwrites wrote: post #178

Wow, thank you for posting this, I was just thinking this! Most people here focus on autocorrect, which isn't such a big problem for me since I'm used to having it off. But what the hell is wrong with the cursor placement? It is so incredibly broken, it has a mind of its own, and never goes to where I mean to put it. Simply tapping on text puts it in the wrong places, but holding and dragging cursor or holding and dr…

Tap and hold on the space bar to get something akin to a trackpad to move the caret around.

Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?

#182

Post by pshirshov »

soveran wrote: post #169

I've always used MessagEase (both on Android and iPhone). It is a keyboard layout that was originally designed for the Palm Pilot, and it is optimised for typing with one finger. I don't use any sort of autocompletion, yet I'm usually the fastest typist in the room. More info: http://www.exideas.com/ME/index.php

Yeah. It's a shame that the project is abandoned, bugs aren't being fixed and the source code isn't open.

Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?

#183

Post by ris58h »

shaoonb wrote: post #181
lumenwrites wrote: post #178

Wow, thank you for posting this, I was just thinking this! Most people here focus on autocorrect, which isn't such a big problem for me since I'm used to having it off. But what the hell is wrong with the cursor placement? It is so incredibly broken, it has a mind of its own, and never goes to where I mean to put it. Simply tapping on text puts it in the wrong places, but holding and dragging cursor or holding and dr…

Tap and hold on the space bar to get something akin to a trackpad to move the caret around.

They already have mentioned it.

> holding and dragging on the spacebar to move it also works terribly

Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?

#185

Post by hackmiester »

jibe wrote: post #71
hackmiester wrote: post #57

Try disabling slide to type. I don't use it, so if it's on, it introduces inaccuracies.

This helped my typing. Does slide to type change the target area of the keys? With it on it seems like I am hitting keys on the line below I am targeting. With it off, many fewer typos.

I’m not sure. I suspect that it does cause the phone to take more liberties regarding which key you “meant” to hit.

Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?

#186

Post by hackmiester »

jesterson wrote: post #148
hackmiester wrote: post #57

Try disabling slide to type. I don't use it, so if it's on, it introduces inaccuracies.

You are a godsend. Will see how it goes, but it does seem to be better now. This crap should be disabled by default and iphone needs to request signing 20 agreements before it gets enabled

I got a notice about it when the feature was released, but I seem to recall it was a notice rather than a prompt. I immediately noticed a decrease in accuracy and disabled it. This thread is the first time I thought about that decision in years.

Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?

#189

Post by Scorpiion »

_blz2 wrote: post #154

The Swiftkey app that made typing tolerable on the iPhone is now going to be killed for iOS starting next month. So there really isn't any alternative for now.

I'm not an iPhone user myself, but recently run into the fact that SwiftKey has been deprecated on iPhone when helping a friend.

Does anyone here know the details of why SwiftKey was depreciated? Did iOS change their APIs or permissions somehow or what was the reason?

Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?

#190

Post by weinzierl »

deepGem wrote: post #122
snowwrestler wrote: post #39

When the iPhone launched, Apple talked a lot about how the typing system worked. What I remember is that it sounded like pretty simple lookups. As you typed, the software compared your word to, essentially, a weighted dictionary to guess what you were going to type next. If you typed “b” it was flummoxed. But if you typed “behav” it knew the next letter was almost certainly going to be “e” or “i” (for behavior). It m…

This gets exacerbated if you are using a different language, like we Indians do. Type Hindi/Kannada/Tamil in English. Your autocorrect/predict word steers in the direction of most frequently used language and screws up all your pure english comms. Can still live with autocorrect but absolutely hate this ML based predictive nonsense, and I have completely disabled it.

In my experience suggestions also depend on the selected keyboard. When I type German on the English keyboad, autocorrect is terrible. I tried switching keyboards for a while but that did not work for me. The reason is that the placement of common letters (a to z) is subtly different between layouts and that skyrockets the error rate of my typing.
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