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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?

#231

Post by weinzierl »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #216
weinzierl wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does the iPhone not have an easy way to switch between keyboards? I just swipe left/right on the space bar to switch between Norwegian and English keyboards - but my phone isn't an iphone.

I has, but the issue is that the layout if the common keys (like letters a to z) is ever so slightly different that it wrecks my typing when I switch.

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

#233

Post by oriolid »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #216
weinzierl wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does the iPhone not have an easy way to switch between keyboards? I just swipe left/right on the space bar to switch between Norwegian and English keyboards - but my phone isn't an iphone.

If you have several languages configured, there's a globe icon that lets you switch between keyboards. It's still a step down from Android that seems to just detect the language even if you switch mid-sentence.

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

#235

Post by 3np »

girvo wrote: post #208
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I find far left of an already typed URL even worse.

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

#237

Post by saurik »

Jack_rando_fang wrote: post #229

Mobile typing experience IS terrible for anything other than routine work IMO. The fact that your keyboard takes up half of your already small screen space and that you'll have to look at your keyboard to type is a massive inhibitant for productivity. Not to mention the constant autocorrecting if you are doing any industry-specific work.

> The fact ... that you'll have to look at your keyboard to type is a massive inhibitant for productivity.

I don't look at the keyboard when I type on my phone... why would you do that?! That's like assuming you have to look at the keyboard on your laptop... sure, you can, but it is much better to just practice for a bit and then stop.

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

#238

Post by pja »

Y_Y wrote: post #223
travisgriggs wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gem in that tweet screed is this comment: > This gets back to the idea of preventing frustration. I determined that it would be more frustrating to have autocorrection “guess wrong” and erroneously fix broken typing. I work on automation a lot, and this is so hard to communicate to the endless stream of non-tech types that just want to “tweak” the algorithms to be a little bit smarter. Trust is an asymmetric prop…

I agree and see Thumper's Law as a combination of the Principle of Least Surprise and the concept of Loss Aversion in the sense that a pleasant surprise, like a correctly guessing what you were going to type, is greatly outweighed by the pain of an unpleasant surprise, like when the phone changes "it's" to "it's" even though I typed and wanted the former.

I think the key insight here is that corrections you can trust are great - you can just let the autocorrect do its thing & stay in flow state. Corrections that you have to check every time because they’re not reliable enough are worse than useless because they force you to check every single correction, completely breaking flow.

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

#239

Post by fergie »

After 10 years of typing perfectly on various iPhones, I suddenly started mistyping frequently a year or so(?) ago. I feel like its actually the phone and not me that has changed. Are there any Apple people here who can give a definitive answer?

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

#240

Post by AndyMcConachie »

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.

I have yet to encounter a predictive text system that handles more than one language well. I type a mix of Dutch and English on my phone, because that's how I talk. But there is no reliable way to say "use both". It's one or the other.

The is one problem with letting Americans design things. They don't understand that the rest of the world regularly speaks more than one language, and that in different environments they're mixed up in different ways.

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