5 ms·

I was really surprised when I first got an iPhone. After all the hype about it being so intuitive and polished, it was just different. Some things better, some

I was really surprised when I first got an iPhone. After all the hype about it being so intuitive and polished, it was just different. Some things better, some things worse. But Apple devices take a bit longer to go obsolete, and seem just a tiny bit less invasive as they don't rely on an advertising model for revenue.

dotancohen 1y ago
For the few months that I had to use an iPhone in addition to my regular Android phone, I also tried to convince myself that some things were better and some things were worse. But the iOS keyboard was completely unusable for me as a power user, and it cannot be replaced. I was missing so many features of Gboard. I absolutely could not consider an iPhone or any other replacement phone for that matter, if it does not support Gboard.
- sanswork 1y ago
  You can install gboard on iPhones, I've been using it for several years on one.
  - jahnu 1y ago
    Interesting that it hasn’t been updated in three years.
    - sanswork 1y ago
      It's pretty terrible but it's still the best of what I've tried. Given the progress in LLMs the autocomplete/autocorrect choices and word suggestions are laughably bad. Swype and the MS one though still managed to be worse
  - whycome 1y ago
    It's crippled though. You can't do something simple like have the comma on main view.
    - sanswork 1y ago
      Is that an iPhone restriction or is that Google not maintaining a product?
      - whycome 1y ago
        Pretty sure it's limited due to iOS. Because it does allow period to be added.
        sanswork 1y ago
        Just checked with the iOS keyboard development guide and app store review and see no rules against it. Why are you pretty sure it is limited due to the OS?
        whycome 1y ago
        Because the exact same feature is available on the Android version. No other ios keyboard has it. And the default ios keyboard doesn't have it. I'm not sure of another reason.
- whycome 1y ago
  iOS must have changed some things related to keyboards. On an iPhone many years ago it was definitely a better experience. I’m not sure if some sort of predictive text gets in the way or what. Or maybe something with the spacing. Or it also seems like some sort of thread priority issue because there are times where I can distinctly tell that there’s some sort of input lag that’s messing with it. Gboard is crippled on iOS — why can’t we just have a damn comma on the main screen?! And why can't I just get my keyboard to be at the very bottom of my screen. It's 2025 and we have gone so far backward.
  - dingnuts 1y ago
    today I was texting and Google Messages began to lag. Why DOES everything seem to get worse? I can hear the Doctorow fans coming out of the woodwork to tell me it's "enshittification" but that's a cute conspiracy theory that doesn't explain at all why Google would allow Messages to have a memory leak after working fine for years. There's no profit motive to making a core application shittier. We have to dig deeper, because this kind of thing is everywhere and hand waving at capitalism like Doctorow does is a cop out and an unsatisfying explanation IMHO
    - 2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
      Why do you need to dig deeper? If you were the PM would you prioritise the fixing of the bug instead of other work that’s more important? How many customers will you actually lose?
    - murderfs 1y ago
      Because random performance bugs are a giant pain to even detect, let alone root cause.
    - moi2388 1y ago
      Because of agile and ci/cd practices. Meaning you ship features to production with at best a/b testing. Never mind writing tests. Of course written by some cheap devs from India or Bangladesh. If the code was even still written by a human at this point.
  - 1y ago
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- JustExAWS 1y ago
  You’ve been able to replace the iOS keyboard for almost a decade - including with Google’s https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gboard-the-google-keyboard/id1091700242 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gboard-the-google-keyboard/id1...
- LexiMax 1y ago
  > But the iOS keyboard was completely unusable for me as a power user, and it cannot be replaced. If you're still on Android, try FUTO keyboard. I found the voice-to-text feature to actually be on par with Google's, but without the delay of a phone-home.
yepitwas 1y ago
It’s gotten worse. 6 and earlier, it was uniquely friendly and approachable.
- ruszki 1y ago
  In my experience, this was true also with Google’s version. The first few iterations were great, then went shit. I need only one thing: add diacritics, and fix basic misspellings. Now all of them try to be “smart” even when they should just add a diacritic to an “a”, they suggest me something completely different even when the word which I need is in their dictionary. Maybe most people need more, but it annoys me greatly that it tries to be more than simple misspell fixer.
incone123 1y ago
I went from OnePlus to Nothing recently. Differences in Android skin felt like rough edges at first. Google is collecting data but I do not see adverts in the OS.
dijit 1y ago
in the very beginning, there was a lot of animation stutters on android. The UI was much less consistent, and the design language of different programs varied pretty wildly. This gave me at the time, a feeling of a distinct lack of polish.. I would say, though that in the year of our Lord 2025, largely hardware is good enough that the animations never stutter on android anymore, an android applications have largely converged on similar UI paradigms. So I think the issue with criticism is that people hold in the heads for a very long time, I mean a clear example is how people think Linux is extremely user hostile, despite most metrics of what makes something user hostile being significantly superior on most widely available in the next distributions except of course the power user focused ones. Whereas Windows 11 and macOS clearly do not give a shit about breaking muscle memory or having UI inconsistency. Criticisms live longer in our minds than they do in reality.

dotancohen 1y ago

For the few months that I had to use an iPhone in addition to my regular Android phone, I also tried to convince myself that some things were better and some things were worse. But the iOS keyboard was completely unusable for me as a power user, and it cannot be replaced. I was missing so many features of Gboard. I absolutely could not consider an iPhone or any other replacement phone for that matter, if it does not support Gboard.

sanswork 1y ago
You can install gboard on iPhones, I've been using it for several years on one.
- jahnu 1y ago
  Interesting that it hasn’t been updated in three years.
  - sanswork 1y ago
    It's pretty terrible but it's still the best of what I've tried. Given the progress in LLMs the autocomplete/autocorrect choices and word suggestions are laughably bad. Swype and the MS one though still managed to be worse
- whycome 1y ago
  It's crippled though. You can't do something simple like have the comma on main view.
  - sanswork 1y ago
    Is that an iPhone restriction or is that Google not maintaining a product?
    - whycome 1y ago
      Pretty sure it's limited due to iOS. Because it does allow period to be added.
      - sanswork 1y ago
        Just checked with the iOS keyboard development guide and app store review and see no rules against it. Why are you pretty sure it is limited due to the OS?
        whycome 1y ago
        Because the exact same feature is available on the Android version. No other ios keyboard has it. And the default ios keyboard doesn't have it. I'm not sure of another reason.
whycome 1y ago
iOS must have changed some things related to keyboards. On an iPhone many years ago it was definitely a better experience. I’m not sure if some sort of predictive text gets in the way or what. Or maybe something with the spacing. Or it also seems like some sort of thread priority issue because there are times where I can distinctly tell that there’s some sort of input lag that’s messing with it. Gboard is crippled on iOS — why can’t we just have a damn comma on the main screen?! And why can't I just get my keyboard to be at the very bottom of my screen. It's 2025 and we have gone so far backward.
- dingnuts 1y ago
  today I was texting and Google Messages began to lag. Why DOES everything seem to get worse? I can hear the Doctorow fans coming out of the woodwork to tell me it's "enshittification" but that's a cute conspiracy theory that doesn't explain at all why Google would allow Messages to have a memory leak after working fine for years. There's no profit motive to making a core application shittier. We have to dig deeper, because this kind of thing is everywhere and hand waving at capitalism like Doctorow does is a cop out and an unsatisfying explanation IMHO
  - 2muchcoffeeman 1y ago
    Why do you need to dig deeper? If you were the PM would you prioritise the fixing of the bug instead of other work that’s more important? How many customers will you actually lose?
  - murderfs 1y ago
    Because random performance bugs are a giant pain to even detect, let alone root cause.
  - moi2388 1y ago
    Because of agile and ci/cd practices. Meaning you ship features to production with at best a/b testing. Never mind writing tests. Of course written by some cheap devs from India or Bangladesh. If the code was even still written by a human at this point.
- 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
JustExAWS 1y ago
You’ve been able to replace the iOS keyboard for almost a decade - including with Google’s https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gboard-the-google-keyboard/id1091700242 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gboard-the-google-keyboard/id1...
LexiMax 1y ago
> But the iOS keyboard was completely unusable for me as a power user, and it cannot be replaced. If you're still on Android, try FUTO keyboard. I found the voice-to-text feature to actually be on par with Google's, but without the delay of a phone-home.

yepitwas 1y ago

It’s gotten worse. 6 and earlier, it was uniquely friendly and approachable.

ruszki 1y ago
In my experience, this was true also with Google’s version. The first few iterations were great, then went shit. I need only one thing: add diacritics, and fix basic misspellings. Now all of them try to be “smart” even when they should just add a diacritic to an “a”, they suggest me something completely different even when the word which I need is in their dictionary. Maybe most people need more, but it annoys me greatly that it tries to be more than simple misspell fixer.

incone123 1y ago

I went from OnePlus to Nothing recently. Differences in Android skin felt like rough edges at first. Google is collecting data but I do not see adverts in the OS.

dijit 1y ago

in the very beginning, there was a lot of animation stutters on android. The UI was much less consistent, and the design language of different programs varied pretty wildly. This gave me at the time, a feeling of a distinct lack of polish.. I would say, though that in the year of our Lord 2025, largely hardware is good enough that the animations never stutter on android anymore, an android applications have largely converged on similar UI paradigms. So I think the issue with criticism is that people hold in the heads for a very long time, I mean a clear example is how people think Linux is extremely user hostile, despite most metrics of what makes something user hostile being significantly superior on most widely available in the next distributions except of course the power user focused ones. Whereas Windows 11 and macOS clearly do not give a shit about breaking muscle memory or having UI inconsistency. Criticisms live longer in our minds than they do in reality.