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Microsoft deleted the public support forums for SwiftKey

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Re: Microsoft deleted the public support forums for SwiftKey

#281
post #29

Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly does swiftkey offer over the usual keyboard? A quick google seems to bring up "better predictive text" and "better multi-language support" - is that it?

> "better predictive text" and "better multi-language support" - is that it?

For me this is half of it, it's also performance. It is MUCH faster at bringing up word suggestions. As in faster than I can even reach my thumb up to type the next word there are already excellent suggestions available, and I often can type entire sentences only touching keys on the keyboard a few times.

Just the performance difference makes the iOS builtin keyboard predictions almost unusable for me (in addition to the fact that the predictions are simply much better on swiftkey).

Re: Microsoft deleted the public support forums for SwiftKey

#283

> This one hurts, it really hurts. I think this hurts worse than Musk buying/poisoning/killing Twitter. I've mentioned this before but a keyboard feels like an extension of your body People need to take a break. Being terminally online and complaining about everything is not a healthy way of life.

[flagged]

> it's been quite remarkable how Twitter has had relatively little issues

I didn't expect there to be technical issues.

Re: Microsoft deleted the public support forums for SwiftKey

#284
post #7

The author later speculates on why: > I actually was thinking along the lines of "interesting coincidence" but now I actually believe it is not a coincidence and they really did do this just to prevent people discussing welding Bing and "AI" into the FUCKING KEYBOARD

This might not be far off from the truth.

SwiftKey, Edge, and several other Microsoft properties are actually under the auspices of Bing Ads now. A while ago, Microsoft made the wild move to shuffle a bunch of branches under the leadership of former Yandex CTO Mikhail Parakhin. Gradually, Mikhail began to make moves that caused a fair number of the original Edge team -- those who had come from IE, brought up Spartan, then brought up Edge-on-Chromium -- to leave in fits of rage over the anticonsumer path the browser team was being forced down. The engineers revolted and left when they couldn't fight anymore.

LinkedIn tells a lot about people moving from Edge to other places and even other companies afterwards. Some of the longest time zealots of the platform have turned their back on the tools they helped make because of it.

Fast forward about a year and we get The Fucking Bing Button. A top Bing search query for several weeks was "Remove the fucking bing button in edge" (or some variant thereof). Top results are all how to get rid of the Bing discover button: https://imgur.com/qZQ1NLn

I would not be surprised if there was backlash against it in the forums that Mikhail did not like. SwiftKey is a much smaller product space that does not have a high revenue, which means that he has every incentive to make it bleed every penny it can.

Re: Microsoft deleted the public support forums for SwiftKey

#285

> This one hurts, it really hurts. I think this hurts worse than Musk buying/poisoning/killing Twitter. I've mentioned this before but a keyboard feels like an extension of your body People need to take a break. Being terminally online and complaining about everything is not a healthy way of life.

[flagged]

The fact that you refer to twitter's issues in the past tense suggests that you don't use it very much. The site's bot problem is worse than ever, and I can barely view a handful of tweets on mobile before some javascript exception forces a full reload and trashes my entire state.

Re: Microsoft deleted the public support forums for SwiftKey

#286
post #276
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end of 2022 is when the tools gained enough mass exposure, and more critically ease of use, that anyone anywhere could set up an account, and start creating 'humans' for future use. Before then, it was a specialist task, so much less common I think. From now on (Day G1?), we're going to be awash with AI written stuff. Literally drowned in it. The first AI drafted marketing emails have already started hitting my i…

Time for a new certificate based web of trust?

Definitely something like that. Before it's too late?

Re: Microsoft deleted the public support forums for SwiftKey

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a keyboard app feels like an extension of your body, it means you write a lot. It doesn't mean that you are "terminally online", and even if you were online all the time, that's a personal choice and not being online all the time doesn't even solve the problem shared here. I'd even say, perhaps it's best not to tell people that their problems aren't problems to begin with. I'm not saying one should care, it'd be e…

I would say comparing it to Musk buying Twitter is about being terminally online. Like someone bought Twitter and basically made improvements. There are a whole bunch of things he did which don't really affect how many people use or interact with the app which people hate but it's really just internet drama.

Amplifying right wing extremists is an improvement?

Re: Microsoft deleted the public support forums for SwiftKey

#289
post #29

Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly does swiftkey offer over the usual keyboard? A quick google seems to bring up "better predictive text" and "better multi-language support" - is that it?

I don't know whether it's standard feature on other keyboard, I love to use the clipboard and the ability to pin past clipboard and smiley shortcuts allow me to search. Those two are probably small unimportant that make it feels home.

Re: Microsoft deleted the public support forums for SwiftKey

#290

In case you wonder why we need FOSS.

FOSS communities won't delete their forums?

FOSS community would fork a good product in case the original author/maintainer selling it to Big Corp, which would decide to mess it up to stuff their new tech down users' throats.
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