Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 422 posts

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

#361

Post by DavideNL »

tomashubelbauer wrote: post #207

I 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 sug…

Using SwiftKey also, it's the best solution (i found) at the moment. A shame Microsoft removed it from the AppStore this month. Whenever people need to reinstall their iPhones, they can no longer download and install it, and future iOS updates might kill it too.

Hopefully some other app will fill the gap soon :'(

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

#362

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

cassianoleal wrote: post #265
stouset wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse is its insistence on continuing to autocorrect words I’ve just gone back to fix. If I type some letters, it autocorrects, I explicitly backspace to delete the autocorrection, and then type the exact same thing again , for the love of god stop “helpfully” correcting it for me again to the exact same thing I just undid. This seems like such low-hanging fruit it's baffling that it's still an issue and I say this a…

I agree this is infuriating. This was the reason that made me finally ditch autocorrection altogether on my iPhone. I still make mistakes but at least now they're mostly my own mistakes, and when I correct them they stay corrected.

One solution is to disable autocorrect, then tap-type when you want no correction and swipe-type when you do (since swiping necessarily uses autocorrect)

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

#364

Post by altairprime »

stouset wrote: post #263
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…

Worse is its insistence on continuing to autocorrect words I’ve just gone back to fix. If I type some letters, it autocorrects, I explicitly backspace to delete the autocorrection, and then type the exact same thing again , for the love of god stop “helpfully” correcting it for me again to the exact same thing I just undid. This seems like such low-hanging fruit it's baffling that it's still an issue and I say this a…

The process for teaching it a word depends critically on not hitting the space bar or return key or any other punctuation.

If you pause at the end of the word, either the first time or after correcting it, and don’t hit any key, it’ll throw up the “suggestion X” popup. Tapping X on that popup teaches it the word.

I, and a lot of others, will backspace to correct a word, then hit space, and then it immediately undoes the correction, because hitting the space bar is indicating “you can go ahead and autocorrect this as you would in everyday typing”.

This training method isn’t documented anywhere that I know of, has worked for years (perhaps for all time?), and is the opposite of well-known. I am really upset with Apple for that last one especially.

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

#365

Post by warrenm »

Autocorrect has always been problematic - there are loads of websites devoted to such fails [0]

You've got three basic options:

- disable autocorrect and see just how bad a typist you really are (related: setup your own autocorrect shortcuts)

- use a different keyboard (Grammarly is one popular choice (though I don't use it anymore on mobile...I too often use my phone where LTE is spotty))

- type slower to not plow past the autocorrect options

-----------

[0] https://www.qwant.com/?q=autocorrect+fail

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

#366

Post by PilotJeff »

Something absolutely has changed in the last couple of iOS major releases. I have noticed it as well around iOS 14 or so. I also feel like Siri (voice recognition for dictation of messages, etc) has deteriorated as well. It is getting to the point where I am considering moving to Android just based on my experience with that.

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

#367

Post by _rs »

chadlavi wrote: post #333
deeblering4 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! Seems like a strange default, I wonder how many users actually slide to type?

I do, but as far as I understood slide to type was not the default, I recall having to go find a switch to turn it on when the first beta that included it came out

I believe for new installs it defaults to on

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

#368

Post by Arrath »

stouset wrote: post #263
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…

Worse is its insistence on continuing to autocorrect words I’ve just gone back to fix. If I type some letters, it autocorrects, I explicitly backspace to delete the autocorrection, and then type the exact same thing again , for the love of god stop “helpfully” correcting it for me again to the exact same thing I just undid. This seems like such low-hanging fruit it's baffling that it's still an issue and I say this a…

This may be the most confoundingly and consistently irritating thing about using an iPhone, to me.

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

#369

Post by bilboa »

It's the opposite for me. Typing seems to have gotten easier. Especially now that Apple added their own swype-like functionality, I've found I'm more willing to type longer pieces of text on the phone, where I previously would have waited until I could type it on a computer.

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

#370

Post by Gertig »

I have completely been feeling the same thing, but for me it's been more pronounced on iOS 16.

Also, iOS 16's change in dictation UX is quite frustrating given I was trained that it would stop listening after long pauses and it no longer does that.

Post reply on HN