Try disabling slide to type. I don't use it, so if it's on, it introduces inaccuracies.
Thank you! I used to think it is only me who is suffering. It seems to have helped but would need to try this for a few days to know for sure.
Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
201–210 of 422 posts
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes I’d type out a correct spelling of a word and it’d correct it to another word that’s totally unrelated to the context of the sentence, like your Quake example. Infuriating when in a rush.
For me it always turns “well” into “we’ll”. I have no idea why. I rarely type in the second person, and grammatically they’re not substitutes. It’s maddening.
Yes! And "in" to "I'm" and vice-versa. It drives me absolutely mental. iOS typing just gets worse and worse over time.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#203When 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…
Sometimes I’d type out a correct spelling of a word and it’d correct it to another word that’s totally unrelated to the context of the sentence, like your Quake example. Infuriating when in a rush.
I believe there is (or very much should be) something like a “principle of least surprise” in product design. Delight is great but this is unexpected, annoying behavior.
I took from all the comments to experiment with turning off auto-complete. So far its going great. You can still manually select words to substitute or complete but the algorithm won’t change any words by itself.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
>At some point I recall Apple announcing that they had switched autocorrect to a full machine learning implementation. >For example it just tried to sub-in “Quaker” for “quality” in the previous sentence. Why?? We need to organize and get a huge number of people to start sending text messages one day, using the autocorrect as it works, and not correcting the autocorrect . Just let it put whatever words it wants in th…
My 2 and 5 year olds do this every night after talking to grandparents. The paragraphs they produce are pure nonsense
Have you submitted them to https://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/?
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#205It indeed seems to worse. The cursor placement sometimes even seems to hang my phone for a few seconds (it gets hotter for sure). Also, I almost never intend to say ‘duck’.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#206When 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…
As happy as I normally would be to laugh at Apple misfortune, everything in this thread including your comment could be about Android, and it would still sound true in my experience :(
Yeah, they're remarkably similar in this frustration, though have their own weird quirks around it in terms of implementation issues. Drives me crazy on every one of my devices.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#207I use SwiftKey. I was skeptical about swipe typing at first, but it has completely won me over. I would struggle going back to regular typing now.
I am often communicating in two different languages at the same time and SwiftKey can handle suggestions without breaking a sweat. Apple has come out with their own swipe keyboard and I gave it a shot, but it is nowhere near good enough.
Specifically, the dual language suggestions are essentially non-existent and as far as I remember, the current language of typing was relatively front and center on the keyboard (there was a dropdown button to switch languages) instead of something the keyboard picks up from context like SwiftKey does. It also felt kind of ugly compared to SwiftKey.
But since Apple came out with their own swipe keyboard and as of recent I've read some articles about them planning to nerf the 3rd party keyboard APIs, I expect SwiftKey will pack up shop at some point. I just hope by that time the Apple swipe keyboard is usable, because I'll get arthritis from the regular keyboard with the amount of retyping one has to do while using it.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tap and hold on the space bar to get something akin to a trackpad to move the caret around.
The thing I can never figure out how to do is move the cursor very far, eg to the other end of a url in the address bar. Spacebar trick only moves the cursor so far. That’s mostly only useful if the text field has word wrap because you can move it up and down.
Oh wow you're right: trying to go to the far right of a URL bar is horrifically bad.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#209I switched from Android to iOS a year ago. My first annoyance was the autocorrect, it was slightly worse, especially switching languages a lot, but what was unbearable was that iOS would often correct my last typed word AFTER I HIT SEND. That is a deadly sin imho. I've since turned autocorrect on again because I guess I'm just not precise enough, I try to always end with a space now. I still gets me every now and the…
I wish my Android devices didn't have similar problems. They might not be quite as egregious, but they make a mess of my typing often enough to annoy me about as much as my iPhone does (which is to say: a lot). These ML-based autocorrects are terrible.
Re: Ask HN: Am I getting older or did typing on the iPhone become unbearable?
#210No post body was provided.