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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?

#121

Post by dummdeedumdum »

dev_0 wrote: post #2

You are old

I distinctly recall my txt experience on the 2007 iphone being one where I could just type and not need to worry about predictive text not doing it's job. At the time I was working for a company who's product was a federated text client. And the results were good. I could type sentences without looking and when I looked down, most of the time what I expected was there--no correction needed. Perhaps this is where predicting sentence structure or personal idioms does not work as well when applied to too wide a scale.

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

#122

Post by deepGem »

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…

This gets exacerbated if you are using a different language, like we Indians do. Type Hindi/Kannada/Tamil in English. Your autocorrect/predict word steers in the direction of most frequently used language and screws up all your pure english comms. Can still live with autocorrect but absolutely hate this ML based predictive nonsense, and I have completely disabled it.

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

#123

Post by atkailash »

robbiep wrote: post #115
vachina wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I’d type out a correct spelling of a word and it’d correct it to another word that’s totally unrelated to the context of the sentence, like your Quake example. Infuriating when in a rush.

Mine throws in random French words that look like the medical words I was aiming for. Also for a 3 month period it was auto-correcting ’thé’ to ‘teh’ - i had to train it out of it by spending around half an hour just entering and cancelling the auto correct in notepad on both my computer and phone (because they’re linked) Edit… oh dear, it may have discovered another association I don’t want it to have

Ugh this happens to me all the time. Earlier I typed pre-sale and it put pré-salé for some reason, and it’s in English keyboard. Why have separate ones if you’re just gonna mush the auto together anyway?

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

#125

Post by sixstringtheory »

jorgesborges wrote: post #99
midoridensha wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At some point I recall Apple announcing that they had switched autocorrect to a full machine learning implementation. >For example it just tried to sub-in “Quaker” for “quality” in the previous sentence. Why?? We need to organize and get a huge number of people to start sending text messages one day, using the autocorrect as it works, and not correcting the autocorrect . Just let it put whatever words it wants in th…

> Sorry for the inconvenience caused to your order. Our customer is aware of the situation in the area and will be able to help resolve it. Starting with only the word sorry. interesting that it went down a customer service path. It started suggesting corporate speak. > Nature is a religion that has been around since ancient times but it is now being used to promote a culture of diversity in society that has not yet…

Are you talking about autocorrect or predictive text?

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

#126

Post by _s »

hsshah wrote: post #111
hackmiester wrote: post #57

Try disabling slide to type. I don't use it, so if it's on, it introduces inaccuracies.

One more vote. This seems to help. Thank you for the suggestion. Now I am wondering if I should also turn off "Predictive" in the settings.

Yup - I've turned off slide and predictive and it seems to be exactly how it used to be - infinitely easier to get the words in to the point where you don't even need to look at the keyboard!

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

#127

Post by 8ytecoder »

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…

I’ll just leave this here: https://twitter.com/kocienda/status/1565341723860971520

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

#128

Post by jesprenj »

Commas and periods are a great part of my native language (of course they are essential in many languages), yet I couldn't find a way to set up comma and period to show on my dad's new work iPhone the way they appear on Android -- on the first page of the keyboard.

Pagination is required to access not only periods and commas, but also numbers and to some extent accents (čšž via press-and-hold). The mentioned cursor-to-text snapping annoys me so much that I can't use that phone to write more than a couple words, yet this entire text was written on a touch-screen phone.

There exist apps to customize the keyboard, for example [0], that was recommended on reddit, but I did not test it yet. Like a lot of iPhone apps, those aren't usually free.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/bb/app/unicode-pad-pro-with-keyboards...

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

#129

Post by dereg »

_s wrote: post #126
hsshah wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more vote. This seems to help. Thank you for the suggestion. Now I am wondering if I should also turn off "Predictive" in the settings.

Yup - I've turned off slide and predictive and it seems to be exactly how it used to be - infinitely easier to get the words in to the point where you don't even need to look at the keyboard!

I’m praying this works. I have the same experience as everyone else here.

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

#130

Post by jdnier »

bartread wrote: post #114

It's not you: it's got worse. My work phone was recently upgraded to an iPhone 12 and it's way worse for typing than the 6S it replaced. Lots of typos, and if you hold the phone slightly wrong you end up with it not responding because the edge of one of your fingers will be in contact with the touch sensitive area so it registers as a multitouch. I have big hands with long fingers so this is hard to avoid whilst main…

Same phone transition for me. I keep saying "typing on my phone is the most disappointing part about living in the future." (Ok, so no flying cars yet, I can handle that, but texting on my phone is embarrassingly awful, considering phones in general are so far beyond what anyone imagined they'd be like in the 70s.)
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