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Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android

ios-countdown.win

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Re: Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android

#441

Post by alwa »

DamnInteresting wrote: post #217
LollipopYakuza wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your point, but for an issue that's been addressed so many times, it doesn't sound necessary to get into details. The issue doesn't seem to be that Apple doesn't know but that they don't care. However, if I, as the author cared to justify that "it's not only me", I would have listed more posts and feedback. I feel like I have read at least 4 times about the broken keyboard, it should not be hard to find…

Well, presumably the page's intended audience is software developers at Apple. As a software developer myself, I am all too familiar with the unnecessary churn caused by vague bug reports. It saves time when people include details like error messages (when applicable), steps to replicate, expected result vs. actual result, etc. Besides, users and developers don't always use software the same way, have the same settin…

Then again, sometimes a big feature is so comprehensively broken that it’s hard, from the outside, to break it down into specific flaws. Even if you can reproduce the complex circumstances where they manifest.

In the case of the iOS keyboard, I remember one bug that made the rounds (in the popular press!) after somebody recorded their typing in slow motion to validate it [0]. Once they documented it, everybody recognized the feeling and felt vindicated; but it took actual work to substantiate.

That’s the work it seems that Apple engineers should be doing. They have the telemetry, the source access, the design documents, the labs, and the time in their day to make a comprehensive study of it. Just as I can say “my car is handling funny around turns” and let it be the mechanic’s job to diagnose what’s wrong in mechanical terms.

There was a time when this humane aspect was Apple’s particular magic: engineering beyond technical requirements to the point of simplicity, ergonomics, “it just works”…

[0] https://www.macworld.com/article/2952872/heres-proof-that-th...

Re: Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android

#442

Post by ggregoire »

What infuriates me the most is iOS being absolutely unable to detect which language I'm currently writing in and automatically replacing words in one language to another. I write in 3 languages on a daily basis and it's making iOS totally lose its mind. For instance I'm 5 words deep into a message in French with a person I'm only speaking French with, and somehow iOS still thinks I'm making typos every other word and automatically replaces them with English or Spanish words.

And it wouldn't be so bad if moving the cursor at the end of a word or selecting a few letters in a word or even selecting an entire word wasn't nearly impossible on iOS (and I have relatively small fingers… I have no idea how people with big hands can do that stuff). Writing a 10 words messages can take me like 2 minutes sometimes because of all the errors made by iOS that I need to manually fix, and having to retry like 5 times to position the cursor successfully at the end of every word I need to rewrite in the correct language…

Re: Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android

#443

Post by wonnage »

OkGoDoIt wrote: post #393
hbn wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In editable text fields you can tap a word a few times and it'll select the whole paragraph, if that's any help. What drives me insane though, is double tapping a word is supposed to select that word. But I think starting in iOS 18 it started selecting the word and a random amount of surrounding words, but only about half the time. I couldn't tell you what it could possibly be trying to do but it's maddening.

It’s using AI to try and determine if it’s a proper noun or other scenario where multiple words are really one semantic term. Except it’s really really bad at it and it’s almost never the behavior I want, but there’s no way to turn it off. (I vaguely remember there was a WWDC talk sometime a couple years ago where they went into how this works)

Word segmentation has been a longstanding problem in CJK languages too. Coupled with the terrible text selection in iOS it makes it really hard to select substrings.

Re: Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android

#444

Post by chmod775 »

pseudalopex wrote: post #379
chmod775 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YT video they linked is excessively clear about what the issue is. There's no point in explaining it again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo

> Sure, the video you link to is more descriptive, but it's a lot to ask of a visitor to click through and watch a separate video.

No, it’s not a lot to ask.

That is assuming the user doesn’t first have to offer incense and whisper a fervent prayer to the Omniscient Deity of USB Devices to seize control of the mouse and click the link in divine intervention.

However for most of us that is uncessary and clicking a link to a video requires no effort at all.

Re: Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android

#445

Post by bornfreddy »

eddieroger wrote: post #419
Someone1234 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! The fact that this has 300+ votes and is on HN's front page (and is just CONSTANTLY brought up on Reddit), should really tell you how fed up people are with the iOS keyboard experience. I legit feel like Apple should actually make a public statement like "we hear you, we're working on it!" because it is actually bad PR at this point.

Its presence on Hacker News and Reddit tells you that the folks who use Hacker News and Reddit are fed up with the keyboard. Most people don't care. Tech nerds do, and that's not nothing, but it's not necessarily a majority either. No one I know outside of tech brings up the keyboard to me, ever.

Once you lose tech nerds, the battle is lost. Other users always follow them.

Re: Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android

#446

Post by nozzlegear »

dylan604 wrote: post #273
nozzlegear wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an example I use a lot, congress critters use a formula to get the pulse of the constituents. If they receive a hand written letter (yes, I learned about the formula when people did that), they'd multiply that by some factor knowing that if one person felt strongly enough to send in a letter that others also felt that way. Phone calls were the same, but with a smaller multiplier as it was easier to make a call t…

> This is an extremely popular bit of apocrypha that's repeated ad nauseam across reddit. This is so tiring of a lame excuse. I don't use reddit, so I don't know what that has to do with anything. As a high school kid, I volunteered with my congressman in his office and heard this directly from people working in the office. You can try to snipe anonymously from the internet, but it doesn't make me wrong.

I'm not sniping you, nor am I using it as an excuse — I'm just saying that what you've related is such common knowledge that it's become a political truism, apocryphal folklore you can find posted 15 times per day on Reddit and other social media. I didn't mean it as an attack on your reasoning or your personal experience, but it's too late to edit my comment to change it. I apologize.

Re: Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android

#447

Post by longfacehorrace »

itopaloglu83 wrote: post #392
longfacehorrace wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the keyboard. My iPhone 15 is often so unresponsive I am tapping twice as much. Example but the issue not limited to web browsing; Safari will do nothing, I tap again, it does the thing, then it does the thing again due to the second tap. I have to tap back to get to where I really wanted to go.

Sounds like the liquid glass animations are so heavy that if the system is busy with anything else for a second then everything simply breaks. I remember seeing the videos about cpu usage spiking over 40% just to show the control center. And similarly, even on a Mac I find myself clicking on links and button multiple times, just for things to work. It has a dedicated keyboard, how is it that they messed it up so much…

Shortcuts run but often do not trigger all the stages in a pipeline. No issues with same shortcuts prior to installing iOS26. These Shortcuts do not trigger UI transitions. They send data over network.

Sounds like Apple management enabled a quality assurance failure that is fostering so many distractions for users it's turning people against Apple.

Tim Cook handing his replacement a dumpster fire.

Re: Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android

#448

Post by netsharc »

soco wrote: post #406
hypercube33 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just apple - windows and android autocorrect are more auto incorrect these days.

I can't tell about windows - never used autocorrect there - but GBoard became laughable. I don't think I was able to use its suggestions since a few years. For instance, it will NEVER but really never put a uppercase I when I'm talking about myself. Never. I could select it from suggestions if I feel like, but I kinda gave up (this is written in Windows, that's why you see capital Is). Or my name, used quite often ri…

I have the same email @yahoo.com and @gmail.com (one is mostly for online shops etc), and the amount of time GBoard thinks it needs to recommend @gmail.com, it's obnoxious...

But the correction offers are still okay for me, I can mash keys around my email username and one of the corrections offered will be my username...

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