Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#71

Post by a1o » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 7:21 AM UTC

chongli wrote: post #63

post-it wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest multilingual gripe on iOS is that highlighting text in, say, Czech and pressing Translate on the popup just tells you to fuck off. Like, sure, don't support the language, but at least give me a Google Translate link then.

Did you enable the Czech-English dictionary under Settings -> General -> Dictionary? You can also add Czech as a language under Settings -> General -> Language & Region -> Add Language. This will let you switch your keyboard to Czech when typing and enable the language on websites and stuff. You can also switch the whole phone to Czech if you like, just by moving Czech to the top of the list of preferred languages.

For comparison, by simply using Gboard in iPhone you don’t need that and can type English and Czech in the same keyboard.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#72

Post by Roark66 » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 7:26 AM UTC

blindriver wrote: post #17

I don't want better predictive text. I need better autocorrect. Something happened about 6 years ago where the quality of the autocorrect fell off the roof, and it's been absolutely terrible since then. I spend too much of my time fighting with either mispelling, flipping to the wrong word even though I spelled the word properly, etc. It has made typing on my iPhone an unpleasant experience and I need it to change. T…

For me stock autocorrect was always pretty much unusable, but I have no real complaints about the app I use. I'm bilingual and I type in both languages a lot. I remember when I got my first smartphone I bought SwiftKey app (later bought by Microsoft) that made language switching very easy by just swiping the space. Later the app got so good I just left it on default setting and it would still recommend the right words. Since I bought the app it has been always one if first things I installed on a new android phone (I think I had it on an iPhone 3g back in the day too, but I can't remember for sure).

I recently realised how much of a difference it makes when you type quickly as I got an extra work phone with stock android I have to use occasionally.

There is also a feature of this app I use only occasionally, but when I do its great. It let's you type by moving your finger between letters in one continously motion. When one describes it seems rather weird, but it's really one of the best features of the app. You can write really fast this way, the only difficulty it has is with very uncommon words.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#73

Post by happymellon » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 7:28 AM UTC

blindriver wrote: post #17

I don't want better predictive text. I need better autocorrect. Something happened about 6 years ago where the quality of the autocorrect fell off the roof, and it's been absolutely terrible since then. I spend too much of my time fighting with either mispelling, flipping to the wrong word even though I spelled the word properly, etc. It has made typing on my iPhone an unpleasant experience and I need it to change. T…

Pretty sure my typing on T9 was faster and more accurate that the current state of keyboards.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#74

Post by danjc » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 7:29 AM UTC

Inline predictive text is an anti-feature that disrupts your flow of thought. I've tried but cannot understand how anyone could actually want this.

Edit: I was referring to writing prose where you're making creative decisions rather than code which is closer to a technical document.

In code things are different. Traditional intellisense is usually just filtering a small set of possibilities. For example, auto completion of a reference to a variable.

This is different to code prediction where for example, a variable name will be suggested.

I can see value in code prediciton ala Copilot but personally don't use it.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#75

Post by dchest » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 7:32 AM UTC

dkga wrote: post #53

Beyond fixing iPhone’s autocorrect as widely mentioned below, I wonder if in future versions Apple will end up switching to phi-1.5 or other models that are much smaller but trained on higher quality data. Would also be cool if they trained their own copilot for Xcode, given their obviously enturmes code base in Swift and Obj-C.

I'd guess they already trained it on high quality (and highly censored) data. It's GPT-2-like architecture, but not GPT-2 weights.

phi-1.5 is 1.3 BILLION, this one is a lot smaller at 34 million.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#76

Post by audunw » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 7:35 AM UTC

Roark66 wrote: post #72

blindriver wrote: post #17

I don't want better predictive text. I need better autocorrect. Something happened about 6 years ago where the quality of the autocorrect fell off the roof, and it's been absolutely terrible since then. I spend too much of my time fighting with either mispelling, flipping to the wrong word even though I spelled the word properly, etc. It has made typing on my iPhone an unpleasant experience and I need it to change. T…

For me stock autocorrect was always pretty much unusable, but I have no real complaints about the app I use. I'm bilingual and I type in both languages a lot. I remember when I got my first smartphone I bought SwiftKey app (later bought by Microsoft) that made language switching very easy by just swiping the space. Later the app got so good I just left it on default setting and it would still recommend the right word…

> It let's you type by moving your finger between letters in one continously motion.

FYI, this has been included in stock iOS keyboard for a while now.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#77

Post by IndySun » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 7:35 AM UTC

Apple's current autocorrect is skewed towards verbal, not typo, errors. Apple wants your voice. Implementing this deliberately worse change also gave Apple a path to 'improve autocorrect'. Comments are correct, T9 was based on the keyboard and common mistyped keys, simple, and effective.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#78

Post by recursion » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 7:39 AM UTC

audunw wrote: post #76

Roark66 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me stock autocorrect was always pretty much unusable, but I have no real complaints about the app I use. I'm bilingual and I type in both languages a lot. I remember when I got my first smartphone I bought SwiftKey app (later bought by Microsoft) that made language switching very easy by just swiping the space. Later the app got so good I just left it on default setting and it would still recommend the right word…

> It let's you type by moving your finger between letters in one continously motion. FYI, this has been included in stock iOS keyboard for a while now.

And also stock Android.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#79

Post by dchest » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 7:40 AM UTC

danjc wrote: post #74

Inline predictive text is an anti-feature that disrupts your flow of thought. I've tried but cannot understand how anyone could actually want this. Edit: I was referring to writing prose where you're making creative decisions rather than code which is closer to a technical document. In code things are different. Traditional intellisense is usually just filtering a small set of possibilities. For example, auto complet…

I loved it in OpenOffice Writer in early 2000s: type a couple of letters and press Enter to complete. Same with autocomplete when programming.

Re: Apple’s new Transformer-powered predictive text model

#80

Post by tpowell » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 7:40 AM UTC

blindriver wrote: post #17

I don't want better predictive text. I need better autocorrect. Something happened about 6 years ago where the quality of the autocorrect fell off the roof, and it's been absolutely terrible since then. I spend too much of my time fighting with either mispelling, flipping to the wrong word even though I spelled the word properly, etc. It has made typing on my iPhone an unpleasant experience and I need it to change. T…

This made me realize I was conflating these in my head, and I wholeheartedly agree. I had a 12 Pro Max 256GB until last year, and autocorrect was great/fine/never noticed issues. Fed up with heavy phones, I purchased a 14 Plus 512GB (very similar physical size) and set it up from scratch while migrating whatever is included in iCloud (Photos, iMessage etc). Autocorrect has been bad from the start on the 14 Plus, and has improved little in nearly a year. Typing feels tedious now, where it felt like a strength previously. The phone as been a joy to use otherwise.