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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?

#371

Post by masukomi »

tomcam wrote: post #332
adastra22 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also when I dictate using Siri, maybe becomes “may be”. Wtf

I've discovered that Siri (US-English) is, IMNSHO ridiculously heavily weighted towards southern drawl. Like, where "lion" and "line" are essentially indistinguishable sounds. It KEEPs transcribing my words as if i had a southern accent, but i very much speak with a generic northern accent with fairly clear enunciation and diction and pronunciations that tend to match the dictionary.

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

#372

Post by panda888888 »

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…

I agree with this. Having the device "correct" something that you've just gone back to fix is extremely frustrating.

That said, there are times when retroactive correction is useful. If I type "new york," it's appropriate for the phone to automatically correct it to "New York" and not "new York"

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

#373

Post by hot_gril »

dont__panic wrote: post #342
hot_gril wrote: post #55

So it's not just me. I went from a 5 to a 6 to a 12 mini. My typing is horrible on the 6 or the 12. IDK if it's the screen size or what. It's not about getting used to it; it's been years for me. When I occasionally pick up the old 5, it's instantly easy for me to type again. So it's definitely the phone's fault, not mine. I'm 26 years old. However, the cursor was always impossible to control, no change there. Also,…

Still using my SE 2016 here for these reasons (it has the same body as the 5 and 5S). After using this phone for 5+ years, I've gotten so good at texting on it that I don't even use autocorrect! And it has a headphone jack. Something has gone horribly rotten in the space of smartphones in the last 5 years.

The iPhone vs Android war has cooled because after years of maturing hard/software, establishing UX, and also lock-in, most people just stick with what they know. It's not so much about the tech anymore. Apple doesn't have a visionary CEO anymore, and Android was a copy of the iPhone to begin with. Seems like both sides are less interested in giving users what they want now, or giving what they don't yet realize they want. Sometimes it's about milking the userbase, like when every big phone-maker almost simultaneously removed the jack to sell new accessories. I even feel like the push for big screens was about changing the customers' habits. But this typing issue has to just be sloppiness.

The only reason I didn't get an SE 2016 is cause I had no choice. My 6 broke right before a big trip, and I needed a new phone; 12 mini is what they had.

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

#374

Post by BWStearns »

If you have two or more language keyboards it gets even worse. If you have the French keyboard installed you basically can't use English words that start with Q. Ffs, I get it if I type "Q" for the first letter of a text field and it suggests "Qu'est-ce". But, if I'm using the English keyboard and I say "Where in Q[ueens]?" and it jumps to French on the Q that's just ridiculous.

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

#375

Post by _blz2 »

Scorpiion wrote: post #189
_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?

Microsoft bought it years ago and essentially hasnt updated it for years. Now they're blaming iOS for canning it for good (next month).

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/09/29/microsoft-kills-off-swi...

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

#376

Post by __exit__ »

Having the same issue now after coming back to an iPhone after several years. Last time I used an iPhone there was Swiftkey, which was amazing.

Now, that seems to be gone from the App Store (not available in my country at least) and I am stuck with the default which is quite crappy, honestly.

Also, keys are too small for my fingers, so frustration keeps adding up.

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

#377

Post by fragmede »

pja wrote: post #238
Y_Y wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The right amount of flow state is hard to achieve. I'll type two words wrong but the autocorrect actually gets it right, but by the time I've realized that, I've already hit delete several times or are on the third word, have lost the autocorrect, and lost my focus and flow. My brain's just not timed the right way for the auto correct's default settings

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

#380

Post by K0balt »

What baffles me is the text selection/cursor placement is either absolutely garbage or cryptic to use. Also, why are the android based solutions so much vastly superior? Often a simple one letter misspelling completely flummoxes the iPhone keyboard. I never encountered that on my android keyboard.

This is the number one item that pushes me back towards android. I type a lot on my phone.

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