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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?

#381

Post by anikom15 »

hotpotamus wrote: post #33

I'll add my old man rant that physical keyboards are terrible now, and I somewhat blame Apple. Everyone seems to want as flat a keyboard as possible which does look pretty stylish I'll admit, but is not as ergonomic as the old Dell cheapo membrane keyboards. It makes sense on a laptop, but not on a dedicated keyboard. I fully acknowledge that it might just be the era of keyboards I grew up with and prefer, and luckil…

It’s cost. The flat keyboards use less plastic. The membrane mechanism doesn’t require much precision either. Flat keyboards with scissor switches are more expensive and feel a little better (and last longer). Full-size keyboards are superior and are still sold, but usually as a ‘premium’ option.

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

#382

Post by tornato7 »

cassianoleal wrote: post #265
stouset wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 this is infuriating. This was the reason that made me finally ditch autocorrection altogether on my iPhone. I still make mistakes but at least now they're mostly my own mistakes, and when I correct them they stay corrected.

I would recommend switching to GBoard, which doesn't have this infuriating behavior

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

#383

Post by logicalmonster »

Besides software changes, I'd look at the hardware.

The newer iPhones are all too big for many peoples' hands. I thought that the iPhone 4S size was just about perfection: it felt like I could easily reach every single spot on the screen while holding the device with one hand and not straining. Everything since then has felt much harder to comfortably type and control while using.

And unfortunately, I think it might be very easy for the market to misread the sales data and think that many customers continuously want bigger and bigger screens. If the only size options available are all too big, then it makes some sense to just optimize for a better gaming/movie experience if the typing experience is going to suck no matter what so many people might just end up buying the biggest phones even though they want a much smaller one.

Give me an iPhone 4S sized iPhone with a modern camera, processor, and screen, and I'd be perfectly happy with that experience.

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

#385

Post by adamparsons »

fullmoon wrote: post #225
mikro2nd wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And evidently I'm not allowed to swear. "Fuck" gets unfailingly "corrected" to "duck" -- even if I spell it out.

Adding a text replacement from “fuck” to “fuck” (General - Keyboards - Text Replacement) allows you to swear again.

Thank you so much. This alone is a quality of life improvement on an ios keyboard. I'll live with s/well/we'll/ if it stops trying to police my tone when I'm annoyed

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

#386

Post by adamparsons »

lancesells wrote: post #311
novok wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of how much worse siri is getting every year, where it bit flips what I say to the opposite. Makes me think they're using ML models for everything which never gets anything right with %99.9 accuracy. "Hey siri turn off the bedroom lights", "Ok, turning on the bedroom". Recently tried alexa again with an old echo dot and it worked way better with basic things like I remembered it. Super sad.

My Siri experience seems to degrade over time. Months ago all my lights used to respond individually. "Turn on the floor lamp in the living room" would turn on the lamp. Now that command turns on all lights in the living room. Last week my HomePod started responding with "uh-huh" within .5 seconds of it hearing "Hey Siri" well before it's given me a chance to actually say anything. And then there's so much trouble wi…

I was super disappointed to find out that after they crammed a whole iPhone SOC package into the speakers that they don't do offline processing for siri like the phone does. Seems like such a wasted opportunity

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

#387

Post by Diapason »

devilbunny wrote: post #23
markus_zhang wrote: post #11

Vent: I'm on Android and still haven't seen a well done cursor scroll. It usually requires me to select the position accurately which is PITA. I wish there was a simple way to do that.

Been a while since I've used Android, and it's no longer available (you'll have to find an old .apk, maybe it would still work), but Swype was hands-down the best phone keyboard I've ever used. It had an editing keyboard layout that allowed single-character movement of the cursor, easily selected by Swyping from the Swype key to something else (space bar, maybe?). Swype-X, Swype-C, Swype-V for cut, copy, and paste, a…

Came here to say this exact same thing.

I still remember - November 2013, I was interviewing for some jobs in Boulder CO, and was invited to dinner by a tech entrepreneur. I showed him how good Swype was. Back then I had a tiny-weenie Xperia (S, or SL or U??). I remember clearly how blown away he was. And I remember clearly how enjoyable it was to actually be able to swype one handed. I did not even ever had a case protector for this phone, and managed to never break it because I would not drop it!

I can't remember which of the phones I had after that with which I was so sad when i realized Swype had disappeared when I could not reinstall it :(I had tried Swift key, the Stock google, and I think another one, but none never came close to Swype learning algorithm :(

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

#388

Post by Diapason »

tails4e wrote: post #12
markus_zhang wrote: post #11

Vent: I'm on Android and still haven't seen a well done cursor scroll. It usually requires me to select the position accurately which is PITA. I wish there was a simple way to do that.

Hold spacebar on android and drag lefg/right lets you cursor scroll really easily.

Pixel5 and bilingual user -> space bar is hacked by a language change option on long press (can;t deactivate this feature:( ), although there is ALSO a dedicated (optional) key for that that I have activated :(

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

#390

Post by comprambler »

kiririn wrote: post #251
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I can never figure out how to do is move the cursor very far, eg to the other end of a url in the address bar. Spacebar trick only moves the cursor so far. That’s mostly only useful if the text field has word wrap because you can move it up and down.

For this, first hold the spacebar to get a single cursor (address bar defaults to select all), then drag the cursor itself (not the spacebar). It accelerates to the end

Srsly do the "iPhones for idiots" books have this kind of information? I would read them if so.
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