14 ms·

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

• lxndrdagreat 8mo ago
  > You were the "it just works" company. Now you're just a fruit that I used to know. This had me simultaneously chuckling and sad, because it feels very true.
  • causal 8mo ago
    Switching from Android, I was shocked by how much in fact did not just work. I kept a running list of basic features that were clearly broken. Especially around text editing. It seems like they made some fundamental mistakes with their text inputs that they are playing hard defense on. I never know if a given field is going to respond to long-press, double tap, or what context menu I will get if any.
    • JonoBB 8mo ago
      Totally agree. I swapped about 2 years ago (work requirements), and I battle against the Apple keyboard every single day. I prefer the Android keyboard in every single way - it’s more intuitive, works better, more logical, significantly better auto-correct, significantly better text selection, much better prediction, and so on. Everything seems so much more intuitive and just easier in Android. For how good the Apple hardware is compared to the rest (especially MacBooks), the software really lets it down.
• Beestie 8mo ago
  Android: Here's the phone; knock yourself out Apple: Father knows best (but Father is getting old and sometimes forgets things) Windows: If only we understood what the ancestors knew
  • lubujackson 8mo ago
    More like: Apple: Father died a while back, but Step-Father is here now and he doesn't love you.
    • ActorNightly 8mo ago
      If Steve jobs was still around, the iPhone would be considerably worse.
      • bdangubic 8mo ago
        This is a bold statement - care to elaborate?!
        • n8cpdx 8mo ago
          I think they mean worse at generating services revenue. Everyone knows that’s the iPhones primary goal and purpose.
          • bdangubic 8mo ago
            This is a bold statement - care to elaborate?! :)
    • sleight42 8mo ago
      Cook is, ultimately, the enshittifier of things Apple. The buck stops with him. But he does things to keep the stock price up so...
  • dgxyz 8mo ago
    Android is more "here's a pocket panopticon we hope you won't unconfigure" Apple is more "here's this refined product which we designated as refined after a heavy session snooting cocaine off a toilet seat"
    • singpolyma3 8mo ago
      To be fair my iPhone spys on me in much more actively creepy ways than my android ever did. Showing ads for nearby pizza places at lunchtime on the homescreen. Telling me at about the time of my son's soccer that I may be interested in going to the place where his soccer is about now (despite me never using navigation on my phone) etc
      • dgxyz 8mo ago
        Not sure how you managed to get it to do that. Mine doesn't!
      • MarioMan 8mo ago
        Not sure where ads for pizza places are coming from, but the suggested maps trips are part of the “Significant Locations” feature. That data is end-to-end encrypted across your devices and is unreadable by Apple. It can be disabled if you don’t want it tracked.
        • bigyabai 8mo ago
          > That data is end-to-end encrypted across your devices and is unreadable by Apple. Sure, Jan. Next you'll tell me that Google isn't evil and Apple truly does care about human rights.
          • MarioMan 8mo ago
            If you have evidence to the contrary, it would make for a great lawsuit. Apple is very explicit that they cannot read it. This data is end-to-end encrypted, much like the data collected by the Health app. They never have the keys to it. In comparison, Apple also has plenty of your data “encrypted at rest”, where they have the keys (unless you use advanced data protection). That data is only superficially secured. That’s not what this feature uses.
  • russdill 8mo ago
    Just to play both sides here, on pixel there is a news feed if you swipe the home screen right. It is now infused with ai summaries rather than the first few lines of the story with no way to go back. Course, I can switch to a different launcher, but it makes it much less of a "batteries included" sort of product.
    • DangitBobby 8mo ago
      There is a setting to disable this. Long press on your home screen background > Home Settings > Toggle "Swipe to access Google app"
      • russdill 8mo ago
        Right, but I appreciated easy access to a news feed.
    • deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
• nixosbestos 8mo ago
  > I caved to the blue bubble pressure Had me until then. Zero respect for this, frankly.
  • ctxc 8mo ago
    Can you elaborate? Is this a glassmorphism reference?
    • nixosbestos 8mo ago
      [dead]
    • wlesieutre 8mo ago
      Wanting to have iMessage so your messages show up blue instead of green when you text iPhone people
    • CodeMage 8mo ago
      I just learned about this, too. It turns out that in the US, being an iPhone user is cool and being an Android user is lame, and you can tell who's who in group chats, because the messages that go over iMessage are represented with blue speech bubbles and the rest are in green bubbles.
      • Zak 8mo ago
        That's not quite how it works. You can't have a group chat that's mixed iMessage and SMS/MMS. If an iMessage user creates a group chat where not everyone is using iMessage, then it's MMS. I suppose now it could be RCS if everyone's using a device and carrier that supports RCS, but I haven't kept up with that. MMS has a bunch of limitations relative to any modern internet messaging app, so people don't want to use that. Some people are also very reluctant to install third-party messaging apps.
        • CodeMage 8mo ago
          Thanks. I don't actually have an iPhone, so my freshly acquired "knowledge" of this was based on reading about it on the Internet and I misunderstood what I read.
• carlosjobim 8mo ago
  Impotent rage if I ever saw it. Where is the capacity of feeling shame or embarrassment?
  • tryauuum 8mo ago
    such is the reality of the modern world. Either you whine on the internet impotently. Or you suicide bomb the HQ. These are the only two options to affect a corporation nowadays GitHub ignores my requests to delete my account. What are my options? I will whine online because I'm not ready to break the law. This, or maybe I will bully the github employees in real life. What are my other options? I tried to find a lawyer in the european country where the github has an office, but got refused help.
• postflopclarity 8mo ago
  it's so infuriating how bad I am at typing now.
• Liftyee 8mo ago
  As a lifelong Android user (in the EU, where Apple hegemony is not as strong) I always saw Apple as the "pay more for more polished ecosystem UX" option. So it always surprises me when things that are trivial on Android/Linux are sticking points on iOS/macOS. Worse, it seems that proprietary means you can't do anything to fix them yourself.
  • metabagel 8mo ago
    Apple’s implementation of desktops/workspaces is maddening.
  • wilkystyle 8mo ago
    Long-time iOS user here. My motivation for iPhone has always been "you pay more for fewer features and customization, but the UX is more polished." For the past 5-ish years, the UX has consistently gotten considerably worse. Not just the usual things like the horrible keyboard and atrocious Siri capabilities, it's all the stuff that used to just work. Nothing deal-breaking by itself, but all together feels like death by a thousand cuts. I'm at the point where I'm seriously considering Android.
    • fodkodrasz 8mo ago
      Also add Liquid Glass, it strains the eyes. Even siri got worse, when I say call <nickname of my gitfriend> now it does some location based search, and calls sonebody, when near home it is a doctor, when on the other side of the river it is a flower shop, at othe rplaces other random non-contacts, with a contact having the sting it used for search, as her nickname is always part of the called person… It used to work flawlessly as expected… I would be fine with Siri actually if if could handle simple fixed phrase based task, no AI, as it could a few years ago.
      • wilkystyle 8mo ago
        The most frustrating aspect of Siri's quality decline is that super-basic things inexplicably stop working. For years I have been able to say "call <wife's name>" and Siri called my wife. A couple weeks ago she started dialing another contact I haven't talked to in 15 years with a similarly-pronounced name (but different spelling). I had to delete the old contact to stop that behavior from happening.
• HaloZero 8mo ago
  I’d love to see (it won’t ever happen) what the bug fix for this is. I tried doing what the video said and just typing thumbs up over and over again and I didn’t actually have any trouble.
  • garciasn 8mo ago
    I just typed "thumbs up" ~50x and was not able to reproduce the bug. But, as was pointed out in another thread somewhere, since I don't have 'Predictive Text' enabled maybe that has something to do w/it. So; I enabled 'Predictive Text' and there's the bug. It's consistently misspelling 'thumbs' with any number of different variations. Disabling 'Predictive Text' seems to correct the bug; however, there must be something in the algorithm that's causing this that Apple does need to fix.
    • yreg 8mo ago
      I never have predictive text, autocorrect et al. turned on. I somehow never figured it could work well. To be honest I did not give it a chance, but I'm happy to just always get exactly what I type. Don't remember running into any issues like author of the op article.
      • kccqzy 8mo ago
        I turn off predictive text for a deeper reason: it interrupts your train of thought. I have a sentence mostly formed in my head, but when predictive text predicts a word that’s different, there’s so much extra mental overhead to consider whether I should change the sentence or ignore it. I begrudgingly accept autocorrect on iOS however. On a real computer, I turn that off too. I have learned since a long time ago that writing and editing should be two separate activities.
    • HaloZero 8mo ago
      Oh interesting, I have Predictive Text on. But I imagine that means a local model might be doing something on your phone which might be getting messed up.
  • 8mo ago
• sbdaman 8mo ago
  Keep autocorrect on and turn off predictive text. Makes the experience way better.
  • wlesieutre 8mo ago
    Is predictive text the one that reaches back and changes correct words that I had already finished typing?
    • malfist 8mo ago
      Man, gboard does that on android so much that I wound up installing and using heliboard. It kinda sucks but at least it doesn't "fix" your message after you type everything
    • washadjeffmad 8mo ago
      Whatever it is, it's bad on GBoard, too, if you possess better than a 6th grade vocabulary.
    • sbdaman 8mo ago
      It predicts what you are going to type as you type. It has a tendency to add words to the end of a message when you hit send.
  • lynndotpy 8mo ago
    One thing you can't fix is that every iPhone and iPad invisibly resizes the keyboard keys as you type. :(
    • wilkystyle 8mo ago
      This is actually a necessary feature for a touchscreen keyboard to feel usable, and it's been in iOS since day one. The problem is that it has gotten not only much worse over time at predicting which tap zones to enlarge, but it also feels more aggressive. For example, tapping the shift button on the iOS keyboard enlarges the Enter/Return key's touch area so much that I am unable to immediately tap the microphone icon to turn off dictation. If I've tapped shift, I need to then wait a second for the predictively-enlarged tap zone to shrink before I can turn off dictation.
• piskov 8mo ago
  The keyboard stuff is really embarrassing. I’ve definitely been making more mistakes in the last few years.
  • RankingMember 8mo ago
    I thought I was just getting more fumbly and it was making me question whether something neurological was going on. (Only "symptoms" were weird issues typing on my phone when I never had these issues on the android devices I'd used prior).
• pxtail 8mo ago
  I like it, bookmarked, let's see how this extortion fares
• lloydatkinson 8mo ago
  This explains why my typing has basically turned to shit on my iPhone meanwhile on PC it's been fine. Frustrating!
• speak_plainly 8mo ago
  Terrorizing Apple with a countdown threat is probably not going to accomplish much. You could try installing Gboard (https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/gboard-the-google-keyboard/id1091700242 https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/gboard-the-google-keyboard/id1...), or SwiftKey (https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/microsoft-swiftkey-ai-keyboard/id9118136480 https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/microsoft-swiftkey-ai-keyboard...)...and there are probably other options. It may be even more obvious, but there are settings in general/keyboard that you can toggle. I noticed a bit of a shift in the stock typing experience, but I adapted and it's fine.
  • avazhi 8mo ago
    Telling anybody to install third party shit to fix first party shit should have been a hint to you that what you're saying is laughable. Throwing random nonsense about 'general/keyboard' settings (that don't exist, btw) because you yourself can't think of anything specific should have been another. The keyboard, specifically the Autocorrect, is fucked and has progressively worsened over the past 5 years. It's atrocious today. This is a first party problem that shouldn't need 3rd party solutions, end of story.
  • eptcyka 8mo ago
    Of course, the first party keyboard doesn't work, you should use the ones that definitely do not phone home to either Google or Microsoft. Of course regular window management doesn't just work out of the box, you should install one of the many different window managers on macOS. I was under the impression that to get a product that just works, I can buy Apple hardware, right?
    • Kovah 8mo ago
      The sad part is, that Apple used to make somewhat stable, functional software. I started with the iPhone 3 and a bit later with Mac OS Snow Leopard. It all started when Mr Cook decided to serve the shareholders, instead of focusing on Apple's core values. The software went downhill in such a speed in just a few years. And moving out of the ecosystem is a painful, if not unbearable, task that barely anyone loves to do. At least I can't even think about moving back to Android.
• SamuelAdams 8mo ago
  This seem like an odd take. Android has bugs too, you just haven’t used it long enough to notice.
• hyperhello 8mo ago
  I did a lot of classic Mac programming in its day. I knew how to react to the events, and how to use a Color QuickDraw window’s RefCon, and how to mark parts of a window for redraw. I don’t understand how it works internally anymore. I mean I can program it, but none of the way linear logic used to apply. I’m concerned that it’s internally very overcomplicated, because that’s how software is supposed to be designed now, but the “simplicity” is like a second system effect. A whole layer that makes clicking a button appear to work, when really there is no code flow that resembles the process.
• AyyEye 8mo ago
  > I caved to peer pressure. If you don't fix this thing within four months I will switch to your competitor for one maybe even two product cycles. He sure showed them. The people I know using super old iphones are doing more than their public commitment to buy more apple products as often as they can -- after a brief tolerance break, of course.
  • digiown 8mo ago
    Reminds me of these Reddit API protests for.. one day. Of course it didn't work.
• avazhi 8mo ago
  Actively hostile is a good way of putting in. Absolute dogshit is another no less accurate description. But I doubt Apple gives a fuck. They're too busy making promos about how much cardboard they're saving per year shipping their dogshit products, or sending their C suite guys to do WSJ interviews about how much they care about privacy and are a premium brand while at the same time working overtime to implement 3rd party ads into their own ecosystem. They just simply aren't at all aligned with the company that existed when Jobs was still around.
• dwa3592 8mo ago
  Apple's keyboard sucks on my iphone too. Everytime the autocorrect fucks up, I swear at tim cook in my head.
• pzmarzly 8mo ago
  I was once blown away by iPhone 8 editing capabilities. The keyboard seemed to work OK (minus swipe-to-type, but that wasn't great on Android either), and using 3D Touch to move cursor and select text was the most pleasant text editing experience, even better than on the desktop (arrow keys and vim hjkl). And then it was all removed in a software update.
  • 8ytecoder 8mo ago
    3D Touch was a useless gimmick for most users because it wasn’t discoverable. The move cursor feature didn’t disappear btw. It’s now in the space bar.
    • stephenitis 8mo ago
      wow, i didn’t know this existed until now. thanks!
  • SwiftyBug 8mo ago
    I never understood why Apple discontinued 3D Touch. I agree that it was a very nice typing experience.
• esskay 8mo ago
  Funny thing is theres probably some Apple employees reading this right now kidding themselves into thinking this is an end user problem. It's not - your keyboard is bloody awful now, you made it worse.
  • joe_mamba 8mo ago
    > theres probably some Apple employees reading this right now [...] you made it worse. Apple employees reading this right now: "IDGAF about the keyboard, I made 500k in TC last year."
• PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
  >i'm weak >I caved to the blue bubble pressure This is basically how I view iphone users. They buy an inferior product because Apple exploited their lack of status. From moms, to teens, to low-middle income people... Heck, its even infected some perpetually single techies who are so insecure they buy the inferior Apple product. These companies that exploit such psychology is disgusting. From Apple to Nintendo to Disney, there is something that feels immoral about how they market to their customers. And you bet they have contracted out some marketing team to patrol every social media to downvote/upvote/comment as 'reputation management'...But hey they contracted them, plausible deniability.
  • metabagel 8mo ago
    I switched to iPhone for battery life. Additionally, Apple isn’t an advertising company like Google. However, I agree that Apple should cooperate with Google on messaging. Signal is so much better, but it’s hard to get people to switch.
    • PlatoIsADisease 8mo ago
      If you don't have concerns over security, don't care about AI, don't need niche apps, don't need tech/nerd apps, don't worry about vendor lock-in, I can totally see caring about battery life. So how many days does your battery last? No that isnt a good question, How often do you run out of battery? No that isnt a good question, android users aren't running out of battery. How did Apple convince you this mattered?
    • bigyabai 8mo ago
      > Additionally, Apple isn’t an advertising company like Google. What does "advertising company" mean? Apple does in-fact sell advertisements[0], and relies very heavily on marketing to convey their value proposition. [0] https://ads.apple.com/app-store/help/ad-placements/0082-search-results https://ads.apple.com/app-store/help/ad-placements/0082-sear...
      • disgruntledphd2 8mo ago
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• TheAtomic 8mo ago
  "We want to surprise and delight our customers" turned into fuck with and frustrate.
• splittydev 8mo ago
  I'm one of the developers of Mister Keyboard. If you want, you can give it a try! Everything essential is completely free, maybe it works out for you.
  • somebehemoth 8mo ago
    For something that is as personal as a keyboard, it would be good to know what "Usage data" you are collecting and how it is used. I am eager to switch away from ios keyboard, but I do not trust most developers to have access to what I type. I understand it is "not linked to me", but this is an area where heavy skepticism is warranted.
    • ssgodderidge 8mo ago
      This is exactly the reason why I haven't looked into other keyboards. Gboard seems like a google-sponsored key logger? Anyone know of some good privacy-focused ones?
      • splittydev 8mo ago
        Please see my other comment here :) We do not collect any private data, and we never will. We only collect very generic and fully anonymized usage data, but that does not include typed characters, words, clipboard history, snippets, or anything else that could be considered private.
    • splittydev 8mo ago
      Hey, we're super transparent about the data we collect. We collect zero data about your typed words, personal dictionary data, stored contacts, clipboard history and basically anything else that's privacy-sensitive. What we do collect is very generic and fully anonymized metrics such as: Do you use a theme, did you modify the keyboard, did you add an emoji key to your keyboard, etc. We are not interested in typed words or any private data. We just want to know how people use the keyboard in general (which features in particular), and that's all we collect. You can opt out at any time, and all collected data is automatically deleted every 30 days because we only keep a 30-day rolling window. If you want to be extremely safe, you can also skip enabling full access for the keyboard, which makes it impossible for us to send data from the keyboard itself to the app. But as said, we don't actually collect any privacy-sensitive data (and never will), and disabling full access comes with a few other caveats because Apple put many basic features such as vibration etc behind the full access setting as well, for whatever reason.
• bix6 8mo ago
  I really wish someone could start a legitimate competitor to Apple. They are so bloated and just squeezing service revenue out of us. The M chips are great but the software is so buggy.
  • BenjaminBarwo 8mo ago
    Yeah, but it's not really their software that's the moat they rely on. It's a lot more to that. They have incredible branding, Devices may be MID, but at least they make good commercials guys..... Plus, everyone's like sheep. If everyone's getting the latest iPhone, they're going to continue to get the latest iPhone because everyone else is getting the latest iPhone. *Sending dis off of a MacBook with my iPhone 16 in my left pocket btw*
    • stackghost 8mo ago
      I don't think the devices themselves are mid. My M-series MacBook pro is fantastic. The battery life, suspend resume, the track pad, the audio quality, it's all really good hardware. Name a better laptop; I'll wait.
      • realusername 8mo ago
        Hardware wise I'd agree, on the software side though...
        • stackghost 8mo ago
          Yep some of the software is pretty bad, but don't forget that a lot of the track pad/suspend resume/battery quality comes from good drivers and energy management in the kernel. I used to have an old Thinkpad and after I switched from windows to Linux the battery and track pad experience was noticeably worse, even with tlp and all the power management options enabled. It's just one of those rare aspects of OS development that large companies can do that's superior to open source. Fuck Finder, though.
    • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
• yabones 8mo ago
  IOS 26 has been a massive dissapointment. I was strong-armed into updating this week with the vulnerability they refused to patch in 18.x, and it's what I would describe as "Gen Z's Vista"
• nathancahill 8mo ago
  It's so bad. I think it has to do with touch targets because the slide to type is great in my opinion.
• ChrisArchitect 8mo ago
  Ah yes, previously, the much-submitted, but took 2 months to get any traction, video: iPhone Typos? It's Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232528
• fragmede 8mo ago
  Google keyboard, anyone?
• orthodonticjake 8mo ago
  Didn’t you mean “Apple, fix my keyboard before the timer ends or I’m leaving g iPhone”
• imglorp 8mo ago
  > orange iPhone was pretty and the Pixel 10 was boring I guess this is really important to people. One time I broke an Android, which happened to be white, and spoke to the insurer for a replacement. The agent insisted she find me another white phone, not another Android, and though an iPhone was suitable. She couldn't grok how the OS and phone specs were more important than the color.
  • hu3 8mo ago
    Right? Most people encase it in an opaque phone case anyway.
• varispeed 8mo ago
  You would think someone had undergone a lobotomy or is having a stroke until you realise they have an iPhone. The autocorrect is so funny.
  • rootusrootus 8mo ago
    That moment when you hit send only to notice right after it's too late that it auto "corrected" a few words of what you said into what it thinks you wanted to say.
• metabagel 8mo ago
  What’s really disappointing is that Apple is making money hand over fist, and yet they seemingly make so little effort. Please Apple, for the love of all that is holy, fix cmd-tab, Ctrl-tab, and desktops on the Mac.
  • bigyabai 8mo ago
    Apple's money comes from iPhone hardware and App Store revenue. That's it. Anything that's not directly related to bolstering those profit centers is chopped liver to Apple's business model. If you're holding out hope for the Mac to be a first-class citizen, you might want to identify how it's making Apple money first.
• prof-dr-ir 8mo ago
  I agree that this behavior is insane and should be fixed. Do however note that it is possible to install another keyboard on iOS, which may alleviate your suffering before you switch to Android in about 120 days. Personally I rely on Gboard [0] every day for the simple reason that it auto-detects several (more than two) languages, and of course it has the added benefit of not having this crazy bug. Gboard is google software however, so it does come with huge privacy issues, and others will hopefully point out better alternatives. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gboard
  • RankingMember 8mo ago
    I have Gboard and have weird issues with it crashing randomly. Not sure if it's because it's hamstrung by the limitations of Apple's support for alternative keyboards or what.
  • pants2 8mo ago
    Gboard is a lot better than the native keyboard. Strange that OP is going to such lengths to complain when iOS supports other keyboards. The main benefit I've found with Gboard is a larger vocabulary, and perhaps a less aggressive autocorrect that doesn't constantly try to correct technical terms into similar common words.
    • LollipopYakuza 8mo ago
      I’m not suggesting this is the author’s reason, but avoiding a Google product that keep a trail of everything you type seems like a strong argument.
      • pants2 8mo ago
        Via iOS permissions you can restrict internet access to the keyboard and it still works well.
      • WrongAssumption 8mo ago
        I can guarantee that's 100% not his reason given that his stated alternative is switching to Android.
• dubeye 8mo ago
  don't panic, he's bluffing
• singpolyma3 8mo ago
  You can use gboard on iOS and it's a bit better. But still not as good as Android.
• knowitnone3 8mo ago
  [dead]
• BinStorm 8mo ago
  I love the fervor with which this is written, but the threat is so weak I literally chuckled. Imagine your an exec or manager on the team for keyboard development. You read this, get to the end to discover the user is gonna switch devices for... 2 whole calander years? What's that amount to? Maybe 2 device upgrades on If your a die hard gotta have the newest latest model phone each year. Then what? you'll be back? The threat doesnt even carry the weight losing a user for a 2 year blip, registers more as a dropped ping request then a drop in revenue. If meant to be whimsical sure nailed it. To be fair I mean any boycot with a large scale mfg carries about the same weight. just thought it fell flat as much as anything.
  • _diyar 8mo ago
    Your comment makes no sense to me. What in your opinion would be a strong threat? 'Tim Cook, open the suspicion package I sent you in the mail!'?
    • latexr 8mo ago
      I mean, this random person added a countdown timer, and after that revealed that when it reaches the end, if Apple hasn’t met some arbitrary demand they’ll leave the platform but probably be back (just in time to spend more money on another device) and that the colour of a phone is enough to get them back. This is one of the emptiest threats I’ve ever seen. This is about as effective as having a madman inside your house destroying your property with a baseball bat and saying “if you don’t stop smashing my stuff in the next 72 hours, I’ll consider writing mean things about you in my diary”. No need to get specific. Write a blog post about how the keyboard is broken and say you’re leaving for another platform because of it. It’s not like Apple is going to check when you did it or for how long (or care). The theatrics are unnecessary and laughable, they undermine the whole message. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone inside Apple is sharing this with their colleagues and laughing.
      • InsideOutSanta 8mo ago
        Another random blog post about the broken iOS keyboard would not get any traction. This is getting traction. I'm pretty sure the author realized that Tim Apple isn't shaking in his boots, looking at the numbers going down. That's not the point, the point is that it's funny and interesting and thus getting attention.
• neuropacabra 8mo ago
  I am not sure what I just read.
• dawnerd 8mo ago
  I thought they fixed the bug where autocorrect would add text but repeat one word in the middle so it would look like: “I’m trytrying to” Been an issue for two years or so. Resetting, all that doesn’t help.
• mlhpdx 8mo ago
  I really hope someone at Apple is paying attention. The text entry experience on iOS 26 really is frustratingly bad. Almost unusable (I’ve been going to the laptop for anything more than a few words). It’s not just the keyboard (display glitches too), but the keyboard UX is particularly awful. In the past, it seemed like Apple paid very careful attention to the minute details of timing size, etc. All that seems to have gone out the window with this liquid gas BS.
• piekvorst 8mo ago
  I have recently switched from 7 Plus to 16e. Now I make typos all the time. I still do not know who I should blame primarily, my muscle memory or Apple.
  • kccqzy 8mo ago
    I didn’t even need to switch. Merely upgrading the version of iOS increases my rate of typos.
• deadbabe 8mo ago
  > But I'd like to think it should mean something to the engineers, UX designers, product people, and whoever else had a hand in building this thing. It means literally nothing. The people working at Apple now are just there for the paycheck. They push some prompts into an LLM, pick through the output, push something to production that satisfies the acceptance criteria, and move on. There is no one staying up late doing extensive testing and refinement to get things perfect. There is no one taking pride in the work they’ve done when they push keys on the iOS keyboard. All that has been cut up and distributed through a system of tickets, teams, and managers so that the amount of pride that finally trickles down to engineers is barely more than the pride of taking a big shit.
• julienreszka 8mo ago
  agreed, found an old android phone from 10 years ago it was better at typing than the latest (dogshit) iphone keyboard
• markstos 8mo ago
  If only there were a viable third option besides Apple and the world's largest advertising company.
  • ActorNightly 8mo ago
    There is, you can have an de-googled android. It works, but very cumbersome. The value add in phones is really services, not the hardware/OS.
• DamnInteresting 8mo ago
  @ozzyphantom: You might consider being more specific about your grievances in the text of your countdown page. As it stands, it's a bit vague, describing the keyboard as "broken" and autocorrect as "nearly useless". 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. As for the underlying issue, I have experienced similar typing issues on my iPhone in recent months. It feels like someone changed the keyboard to optimize for some typing behavior that doesn't match my own, so the "optimizations" work against me. It's reminiscent of when the US Air Force redesigned their cockpits to match pilots' average measurements, only to discover that using averages just made the cockpits bad for everybody.[1] [1] https://noblestatman.com/uploads/6/6/7/3/66731677/cockpit.flaw.averages.pdf https://noblestatman.com/uploads/6/6/7/3/66731677/cockpit.fl...
  • srmatto 8mo ago
    The recent changes to the iOS keyboard and text editing in general have been very counter productive for me as well. Tap to select doesn't really work the same way anymore and the logic of it isn't clear to me which makes it unpredictable. Typing accurately itself has gotten really difficult. I used to be a pretty quick typist on the iOS keyboard but now I find myself looking for my Mac to send a message from there or using voice to text more. Folks can thumb their noses at Reddit but the top comment in every post about iOS updates since 26.0 was released is some variation of "fix the keyboard." The problem seems very real for a lot of users.
    • raylad 8mo ago
      Also why did they get rid of select all? Is there any excuse for that?
      • DamnInteresting 8mo ago
        It's still there, it's just difficult to know when it will appear. Sometimes it takes one more tap than expected, or sometimes one must deselect a word and tap again, or change focus away and back again. Very sloppy UI.
• puttycat 8mo ago
  I keep an iPhone SE 1st gen as a secondary phone. It still has the last best keyboard iOS had. Almost zero mistakes. Probably because no AI and other overoptimizitation BS. Every time I go back to my primary 13 I want to cry.
  • Tempest1981 8mo ago
    Are you a swipe typer or a tap typer?
    • puttycat 8mo ago
      Both
• nickorlow 8mo ago
  I used to think the android keyboard(s) were terrible when I switched over to iOS, but now after switching back to a android, it feels leagues ahead of iOS 26's kb
• sounds231 8mo ago
  Highly recommend Nintype third party keyboard. Such a breath of fresh air to have a keyboard made for power users. The project is abandoned but it still works well. I hope someone sees this and gets inspired to build something to replace it. If you do you can have my money! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nintype/id796959534 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nintype/id796959534
  • causal 8mo ago
    > The project is abandoned but it still works well Hard deal breaker. And alternative keyboards in iOS feel second class in some ways, so we really rely on Apple to get it right.
    • mbs159 8mo ago
      > alternative keyboards in iOS feel second class in some ways From my experience the opposite is true. The iOS keyboard feels unintuitive and buggy whilst most alternatives just work.
• kittikitti 8mo ago
  I stand by this pledge. I even have a Clicks keyboard to avoid the iPhone one. I have an interesting hypothesis as to why, and it's counterintuitive. The larger the screen gets, the less accurate a touchscreen keyboard is. I picked up an original iPhone and started typing and it was outstanding how accurately and quickly I did. Let's take an exaggerated example. Surely, a touchscreen keyboard the size of a flatscreen TV is too large. Maybe even the size of a regular computer monitor. So where is the happy spot, and why? I think it's because of our manual error-correction and the software error-correction. On the smaller iPhone keyboard, if I make a mistake, it's obvious and I click the backspace key. There's much less software error-correction on a smaller screen because of a smaller room for error per key. On larger screens, I find that if I touch a key at a certain angle, it will register an adjacent key through the software. I also find that my fingers have to travel farther, and that increases the rate of errors. Not only that, the obsession with decreasing bezel size requires me to hold the phone in weird ways so it doesn't register a swipe from the sides. Personally, the iPhone 6 was peak iPhone. I find that the obsession with decreasing bezel size is also compulsive because it significantly increases miss-swipes and introduces weird work-arounds like the "notch", "island", or hidden sensors. The flat screen also made the keyboard desirable. It was also slow enough so that the surveillance from the autocorrect wasn't useful but fast enough for everything else.
• davedx 8mo ago
  "the orange iPhone was pretty" Yeah well...
• ex-aws-dude 8mo ago
  Wow I thought it was just me I’ve definitely noticed more typing errors
• lcfcjs6 8mo ago
  [dead]
• jeffrallen 8mo ago
  Apple: "you're holding it wrong"
• ihaveone 8mo ago
  "Oh no. Anyways"
• raphar 8mo ago
  Android keyboards will make you return to iOS in less than a week
• rootusrootus 8mo ago
  With a couple brief exceptions, I've been an iPhone user since 2007. I'm not far from switching to Android myself. I'm not under any illusions that Google doesn't have some serious flaws, in some ways definitely worse than Apple, but from a usability standpoint I do find the keyboard and autocorrect behavior just atrocious on my iPhone. It starts as annoyance, progresses to frustration, then overt anger at a lack of action from Apple. I'm at that last level now. They pulled their head out of their ass when the MBP evolved into a frustrating pile of crap, and I think my 14" M2 Max MBP is my favorite laptop ever. So they DO sometimes listen to their users. Now is the time to listen again.
• jader201 8mo ago
  I’m glad this just isn’t me. I’ve been noticing a slow decline in my iPhones ability to autocorrect or hit the key I wanted to hit (it’s already made two mistakes just typing this out). I thought it was a “me” thing, and “there’s no way a feature like autocorrect or key sensing would regress”. I was apparently wrong.
• KaiserPro 8mo ago
  The website sucks because I had to do work to understand the problem. HOWEVER, the bug is interesting. I can't reproduce this bug, but I have a suspicion as to what it is. As pointed out in the linked video the hitbox for buttons changes size based on predicted next letters. The hitboxes are dynamic based on the most likley next letter. But that changes depends on your typing style. For example my real name is similar but not the same to a common english name. however both auto correct and the dynmaic hitbox allows me to reliably type my name, now. This took time, but when I recently got a new work phone, I had to train it to accept my name. TLDR: I don't think its a bug, I think its a learnt behaviour based on your most common words.
• JohnMakin 8mo ago
  It's so many things other than the keyboard I notice are just like, "wtf, who and why decided this was a good idea?" In safari browser, if you want to go to the menu where you can favorite/bookmark a page, the tiles on the menu are literally different and in different order every time. Sometimes you might need to press an additional button to find what you're looking for, sometimes it's there, sometimes clicking "favorite" will just go "ok, favorited" message, other times it asks for an extra prompt. Like, why? Just be consistent, I can adjust to all the "PM trying to save their role by reinventing something that isn't needed" like liquid glass, but the usability itself suffers all over the place in the latest ios releases. It's very difficult to understand, because up until a little while ago it had been consistently very good.
  • itopaloglu83 8mo ago
    Let me name names for you: Alan Dye is responsible for it, he messed up all the Apple operating systems and then fucked off to Meta.
• ddtaylor 8mo ago
  > I randomly tried Android again for a few months last spring. Using a functioning keyboard was revelatory. But I came crawling back to iOS because I'm weak and the orange iPhone was pretty and the Pixel 10 was boring and I caved to the blue bubble pressure. But the keyboard on this beautiful phone is worse than ever. Most of those problems aren't solved by software. You are using your phone as a fashion item.
  • 1970-01-01 8mo ago
    Plus devices can be wrapped for a few dollars. Turning a Pixel orange is trivial. https://qskinz.com/en-us/collections/google-pixel-10-skins/products/google-pixel-10-luxuria-sunrise-orange-matt-textured-skin https://qskinz.com/en-us/collections/google-pixel-10-skins/p...
• techsystems 8mo ago
  [dead]
• halapro 8mo ago
  I don’t think the keyboard is any more broken than it has ever been. It works pretty well for me aside from its awful, awful repeated "corrections" it applies, I delete and it reapplies. This is not new at all. There are a lot of broken things in iOS, just try any apps in landscape and you'll wonder if QA even realizes the iPhone has landscape.
  • whicks 8mo ago
    Someone actually took the effort to make a video to show how broken it is, it’s worth a watch: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo It’s only 2 min 24 sec.
    • halapro 8mo ago
      I know the video, again it doesn't matter. I speed type on my phone exactly the same way I used to. I understand how autocorrect works and that it retroactively fixes multiple words later on. I typed this whole comment on my iPhone and I encountered no such issue. What the video shows could be a problem only if you disable autocorrect or if you want to type a single letter. I made a bunch of errors typing this one and in the end the phone autocorrected it all.
• vzaliva 8mo ago
  Why the drama? If you do not like native keyboard, install 3rd party one like Gboard.
  • Someone1234 8mo ago
    3rd Party Keyboards exist, but they don't have the same rights/abilities as Apple's native keyboard, directly resulting in some features/functions being impossible to implement.
    • vzaliva 8mo ago
      Interesting (I am Android user myself). Any examples of such features?
      • Someone1234 8mo ago
        - Apple's keyboard has richer context; third-party keyboards are largely limited to the text proxy (surrounding text/selection) and cannot inspect the host app/see the underlying context of where the text is used/what for. - No caret/cursor control; cannot reliably set the cursor to arbitrary positions - No custom dictation pipeline inside the keyboard; must rely on system dictation (or move voice input outside the keyboard). - No camera access from the keyboard extension; blocks scan-to-type (OCR), QR/barcode capture, etc. - Can do basic text expansions, but cannot implement privileged automation/macros that interact with other apps/UI or run broadly in the background. - Due to aggressive lifecycle + tight resource limits constrain large language models/dictionaries; cloud sync/personalization
      • dabbz 8mo ago
        The ability to auto-fill the text/email verification codes is a huge one.
  • Zagitta 8mo ago
    Because thirdparty keyboards are equally bugged. Sometimes keyboards simply fail to show up or cover app content without rhyme or reason. This happens across multiple thirdparty keyboards so it must be an ios issue.
• philipallstar 8mo ago
  > But I came crawling back to iOS because I'm weak and the orange iPhone was pretty and the Pixel 10 was boring and I caved to the blue bubble pressure. If your decision-making is this poor, you cannot say for sure that you're leaving iPhone.
• whicks 8mo ago
  Very related for those not familiar: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo (2min 24sec)
• thenaturalist 8mo ago
  Ain't gonna change nothing as long as the phones sell themselves. Apple is beholden to its stockholders, not its customers.
• aantix 8mo ago
  I thought it was only me. The autocomplete has a preference for proper nouns, even when they make zero sense . The next suggested word is, at best, naive. Using the previous word, it would be clear that the subsequent suggestion would not be reasonable.
• SilverElfin 8mo ago
  They broke text selection and autocorrected things they don’t need it. Completely broken.
• semiinfinitely 8mo ago
  im not sure why you need to be so dramatic with the timer. just switch already if you don't like it
• everybodyknows 8mo ago
  > I randomly tried Android again for a few months last spring. Using a functioning keyboard was revelatory. But I came crawling back to iOS because I'm weak and the orange iPhone was pretty and the Pixel 10 was boring and I caved to the blue bubble pressure. Here's a more substantive reason to prefer iPhone to Android: Android phones, mine anyway, have no option to suppress audible notification of incoming texts or calls from numbers not found in Contacts.
• charcircuit 8mo ago
  I prefer the iOS keyboard than over the Android ones. Why does my autocorrect work fine and my keys and swipe typing work, but not yours?
• throw7 8mo ago
  "I caved to the blue bubble pressure" The fact that this is a real thing is ridiculous. Say no and move on with life. This is the type of freedom that is actually freeing.
  • pradmatic 8mo ago
    Especially with RCS support, I’m more willing to leave iOS more than ever. Group chats aren’t as easy but everyone uses WhatsApp anyway.
    • digiown 8mo ago
      RCS on Android seems to require Google services, which is just as bad as Apple, and seems to not work well with GrapheneOS.
  • bnchrch 8mo ago
    Its a real issue in North America. SMS and as a result iMessage is the dominant text based chat. iPhones have become the default smartphone, and is a status symbol compared to Android. Mac vs Windows is similar on the laptop front. Which means if your an Android user in a relatively average social group: * You will get left out of group messages * You will be starting on a back foot in the dating scene On top of you wont be able to answer messages from friends on your laptop, because again, sms is dominant, not whatsapp. Now don't shoot the messenger here. I don't like it either, but this is the social/technical reality in NA at the moment. (sigh: receiving downvotes)
    • driverdan 8mo ago
      Sounds like a good way to filter out assholes. Anyone who cares what phone you use in this way is someone you don't want in your life.
      • bnchrch 8mo ago
        Maybe, but let me pose you mental model that a lot of NA iPhone users have. For a long time, if you were on iOS and added a android user to your group chat. All threading was broken. It was no longer a group chat just a bunch of out of band messages. So iOS users naturally started leaving the android user out of the chat. They would text their 5 friends on iOS in one group to make plans, then text their Android friend separately to update them when plans were made. I believe this is relatively fixed in latest iOS, but that habit is still very much their in iOS users today. Anecdotally I did just experience a group chat of 4 iOS users this year that was very active, then died when one person switched to Android.
• john_alan 8mo ago
  If iOS/macOS 27 isn't a snow leopard I'm gone too, I've been a user for nearly 30 decades... fuck this, it's all so sloppy, too many grievances to even begin enumerating.
• satvikpendem 8mo ago
  As an Android user of SwiftKey with swipe typing, can someone explain the whole iOS broken keyboard situation? I guess I literally don't understand what the issue is, is it not allowing people to type in the letters they press?
  • mattcantstop 8mo ago
    There was a video posted in the article that demonstrates it better than a comment would. One of the most glaring defects these days are the keyboard registering the press on the correct letter, and then inputting a different letter. The keyboard is hot garbage right now.
    • satvikpendem 8mo ago
      Wow that video [0] is incredible, in a bad way. How can the OS correctly register the letter tapped but then input a different letter? That is like the most fundamental feature of a keyboard. It's not even autocomplete because the letters "Thj" as shown in the video don't even match any words that start with T. Glad I'm sticking to Android then, whose typing, you know, actually works, not even to mention how good (at least SwiftKey's) autocomplete and swipe typing is. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo
• riversflow 8mo ago
  Maybe try this? I have great results on the ios keyboard by simply making two changes to the keyboard settings. I turn off auto-correct, and turn off slide to type. I made this transition when they first introduced slide to type, as that setting changes the touch algorithm to prefer where you lift from vs where you tap initially, or at least that’s how it felt. I also have turned off predictive text because I never use it, it’s faster for me to just type out the words than it for me to watch the predictive text.
• sgt 8mo ago
  I think it's hard for Apple to reproduce because maybe none of them are experiencing the issue? I have never seen issues with the keyboard, and I'm pretty pedantic about it. If Apple is getting occasional feedback about a mysterious bug, but it's near impossible to reproduce, what can they do?
• Operyl 8mo ago
  I feel like I’m the only one without major issues here. The autocorrect works, the keys I tap are right. Going to Android with the Android Keyboard drives me nuts.
• sequoia 8mo ago
  I have a lot of issues with dictation as well which I feel has gotten much worse as it gets "smarter." It used to take literal dictation & I could say "comma" "period" etc. to insert punctuation. Now it tries to guess when commas or full stops should be added and it's horrible. If I pause to take a breath it puts a comma or period, sometimes entirely changing the meaning of the sentence. Recently I said "I ran into this too earlier on the project" and it wrote "I run into this tube earlier on the project." So now I'm running into a tube... because this makes more sense than "too"? And it can never write the names of immediately family members I text about every single day, and it has 5th grade vocabulary so if I said I demurred or that something was germane or any other word beyond the 500 most common words it butchers it. What I want: 1. let me handle the punctuation manually 2. assume a broader vocabulary 3. let me specify how people's names are pronounced!! How are we this many years in and it still misinterprets my wife's name on a daily basis?
  • citiguy 8mo ago
    I struggled with family member names too until I realized I can create shortcuts for them (usually just their initials). Now I just type the shortcut and it always works. Joy!
  • dkga 8mo ago
    Same frustration here. It’s somewhat painful for me to type but using dictation on the iphone is so terrible I prefer the physical pain. As for names, I an also baffled. Most people in my family have either a Brazilian Portuguese or German name, but my work life is in English, so guess what, no getting anyone’s name right!
  • jama211 8mo ago
    I still use spoken punctuation and it works ok so long as you don’t pause. E.g. “ hey siri text my wife I’m not sure when I’ll be home comma but I’ll text you when I’m leaving” if I say that without pausing, it puts the comma in the right place
    • anonymars 8mo ago
      I think the point is the opposite. Heaven forbid you might need to take a moment to think: now you get a comma or period
• pickleglitch 8mo ago
  You send an email to customer service to complain. I build a whole ass website to complain. We are not the same.
• neuroelectron 8mo ago
  Anyone else feel like they're doing this on purpose because they want people contributing less words to the Internet, kind of like a throttle on training data, social media and communications? Think about how much slower the output of the entire human race is because of one software issue.
• etler 8mo ago
  It used to be better? I use android daily and was given an iPhone for work, and using it is incredibly painful because of the keyboard. I was wondering how people have been putting up with it for so long. When I've asked other long time iPhone users about it they just nodded along so I though it was a long running issue.
• peterisza 8mo ago
  just switch bro
• reboot81 8mo ago
  The issue is that the letter that pops may be replaced, if it later changes its mind. Eg if you hit U, get a U popup, and sofly release while moving into the target area for J. You get a J.
• arendtio 8mo ago
  For the people who wonder what this is about. You might want to take a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo
• Damogran6 8mo ago
  My keyboard is currently behaving. For once. It's been useless roughly three times since the last major update. Over the course of each year-long iOS version life, I've become used to it sucking for a bit, either at the beginning (with bug fixes improving things) or towards the end (where, I assume, accumulated learning diverges from clean slate behavior.) I suspect that the keyboard team is pegged with using new features on the silicon (Neural processing in earlier processors, then Neural Engine with newer processors) and they're doing what they can when tasked with new code. But man, iOS4 didn't have all that and the keyboard was GREAT.
• bhelkey 8mo ago
  > The iOS keyboard has been broken since at least iOS 17...But I came crawling back to iOS because I'm weak and the orange iPhone was pretty So the keyboard has been broken since iOS 17 (>2 years [1]), and to show your displeasure, you bought an iPhone Pro? Your threat of leaving in 3 months rings hollow. All Apple has to do is verbally say things will get better and, if they can't even do that, you only commit to leaving for two years. If you want to leave, just leave. I am confident that blue bubble pressure will exist in 3 months. I am also confident that the iPhone 18 Pro will be pretty. If a nice color and blue bubbles are enough to keep you in the iOS ecosystem today, why should anyone believe you will leave tomorrow? [1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/ios-17-makes-iphone-more-personal-and-intuitive/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/06/ios-17-makes-iphone-m...
  • 0cf8612b2e1e 8mo ago
    There are exactly two mainstream phone providers. Neither is perfect and there are heaps of tiny (fixable!!) annoyances in both. I do not expect someone to be a “single issue voter” with regards to any one bug. There is significant friction in switching platforms and you are just as likely to be annoyed by something else in the competition.
  • ozgung 8mo ago
    > So the keyboard has been broken since iOS 17 (>2 years [1]). 2 years? How is this even possible? This is a major bug affecting more than 1 billion iPhone users and they did nothing? And even the Youtube video is from 3 months ago. This is insane. Why? Only sane reason I can think of is that they are from a satanic cult and deliberately torturing 1 billion people in subtle ways.
• system2 8mo ago
  APPLE, this is real, stop ignoring it, I even looked at Samsung phones last week because of this. The amount of time I waste trying to correct or select mid-words is insane.
• everyone 8mo ago
  [dead]
• runjake 8mo ago
  I'm entertain by the potential meta in these kinds of posts. Apple does not care at all about the contents of the post (presently). But, if this post goes viral, it will affect the stock price and Tim Cook will pay attention. It makes me brainstorm other "stock manipulation" schemes with the sole goal of improving product quality.
• stackedinserter 8mo ago
  HN, fix this stupid top navigation bar, or I'm leaving HN. Timer's started.
• seven237 8mo ago
  The problem with Linux phone is app support. I dont know how it can compete with Apple or Android.
  • everyone 8mo ago
    What? there's probably millions of programs for Linux.
    • thewebguyd 8mo ago
      Sure there is. But not for wha people use their phones for. Can I call an Uber from a Linux app? Pay for things with tap to pay? Food or grocery delivery? Public transit passes? Etc. Windows phone tried to unseat the duopoly. The OS was surprisingly good. But, no one made apps so it died. Same thing for Linux phones. edit if Apple didn’t go through great lengths to cripple PWAs then it wouldn’t be as big a problem. But even all the various services are crippling their own websites to direct people to apps for that sweet sweet data harvesting.
      • everyone 8mo ago
        U have internet and browser on Linux phone.. If the service cant be used with those (or some other normal software) then its not worth using.
• tlogan 8mo ago
  I saw the video and understand the problem but I cannot simulate it. The keyboard always works great for me. Could it be that this bug is related to AI? Or some language settings?
  • bouke 8mo ago
    Same. I have both NL + EN configured languages on my keyboard and I couldn't reproduce it with either NL/EN and EN/NL. In the video you can see they have 4 keyboards configured. It would be helpful to know which keyboard they are using.
• asimovfan 8mo ago
  120 days and 2 years? Lame.. You might as well just use your iphone in the meantime.. Stupid to get a phone for 2 years just to buy an iphone again later on..
• walthamstow 8mo ago
  My wife, an archetypal normie iPhone user of 15 years, has recently switched to Pixel for this and many other small reasons. It's just crap software.
• thepaulthomson 8mo ago
  "now you're just a fruit that I used to know"
• mberning 8mo ago
  It’s honestly embarrassing that no leader at apple has enough juice to get this done.
• shevy-java 8mo ago
  It's a bit strange because why purchase from Apple but then complain? If the quality is below the expectation; and/or the price too high, people can choose with their money to purchase something else. Viewed more objectively most people probably don't consider this to be a main impetus for people abandoning iPhone. I have not purchased any apple-specific hardware, but to me it is strange to e. g. make Apple big (by purchasing their stuff) and then assume there would be many people who are angry at Apple. That does not appear to make a whole lot of sense.
• nunez 8mo ago
  Several Redditors have observed that turning off swipe-to-type has improved keyboard accuracy. I tried this and confirmed that it makes a small difference. Nevertheless, I shouldn't have to disable this (and AutoCorrect, as that has definitely gotten worse) on iOS, especially when Google's GBoard is as good as it is. Anyone else remember the days when you switched to iOS for its legendary keyboard? I want those days back!
• soneca 8mo ago
  Oh, that is happening a lot to me and I wasn’t sure if it was only me! A lot, I mean, about 80% of my ”não” (I speak Portuguese) are becoming just ”na”. And about 50% of my ”mais” are becoming ”mas”. “o” and “i” are next to each other at the top row, so I wondered if the keyboard got smaller and my thumb automatic moviment became discalibrated. But… I started to often see ”na” where it should be ”não” in other people’s texts. Turns out it is a bigger issue it seems
• marc_g 8mo ago
  The lag in the latest update on my 13 mini is almost unbearable too. I'm typing, it lags out, it then adds a lot of letters at once and, as expected, they're incorrect. Getting very, very frustrating.
• flanbiscuit 8mo ago
  > and I caved to the blue bubble pressure Ha! I feel this. I was a long time Android user since the original G1 (aka HTC Dream). Was a strictly Pixel phone user for my last 4 phones. Recently jumped over to iPhone. For the most part I’m enjoying it. There are minor things, like the keyboard being annoying to type with. For instance, when I’m typing something into the URL bar of Safari, for some reason, I’m constantly hitting the period key next to the space bar, and I feel like I’m not anywhere close to it. I also find it confusing how to dismiss the keyboard. Android had a very clear icon for this, on iOS it’s just a checkmark which is a little misleading in my opinion. On iOS, speech to text is pretty good, but I have to annunciate clearly, where I felt that android was a little bit more forgiving. Another issue I’ve noticed is that I don’t think the GPS (or maybe it’s just Google maps) is as accurate as it is on android. On iOS, if I’m on a highway it sometimes thinks I’m on the shoulder road next to the highway. So I’m constantly being rerouted to get back on the highway. I felt like I didn’t have that on android. Back to the blue bubble thing though. Being the one and only android user amongst my friends and even my wife, I was always hearing about how I ruined the chat. I didn’t realize until switching over to iOS just how integrated everything is and what you can do in the chat when everybody else is on iOS, like editing previous messages, being able to answer messages via your Messages app on your laptop, and of course, not having images and videos getting compressed terribly. Although RCS chat improved that more recently. One thing I do love is that automation and shortcuts is something that’s natively part of the system and that I don’t to install some app like Tasker or whatever the more modern version of that is. At this point, I really like both of the OSes. What made me actually finally switch over was that everyone I knew who had an iPhone would have it for like five or more years and I was going through pixel phones every two years. I got tired of spending all that money.
  • rehevkor5 8mo ago
    You can send messages from desktop on Android too.
• nekusar 8mo ago
  Random whiner is whining. News at 11?
• tim-tday 8mo ago
  Post viable alternatives here and your thinking around why. Being free to leave the iOS ecosystem is the biggest flex anyone can make to enforce beneficial change. E.G. Signal is the iMessage killer. What’s your answer around lockdown, security, updates, hardware, iCloud replacement, AirPods etc
  • nunez 8mo ago
    I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, as I've long wanted to switch to Android. If you have an Apple Watch and are using it for anything other than fitness tracking, then you're SOL. Non-Apple alternatives are nowhere near as capable. (In fairness, Apple has done a very good job of making the Watch a useful device on its own and providing a strong app ecosystem for it. I can straight-up leave my phone at home if I'm going to the gym or going somewhere nearby outside of working hours.) If you don't have a Watch but do have AirPods, then you can switch to Android, but their capabilities will be slightly reduced. (Customizing noise cancelling and transparency mode, as well as add-ons like Live Translation, are only available on iOS.) If you don't have either of these, then it comes down to apps, iMessage and FaceTime. Many apps use StoreKit for managing subscriptions. These will need to be cancelled and re-subscribed with Google Play. Apps that were bought outright will need to be repurchased. Several apps (like the Vinegar/Baking Soda Safari extensions, which I, surprisingly, haven't been able to find alternatives for) are also iOS-only, so you'll need to find alternatives or live without them. Regarding iMessage: you'll need to accept being a green bubble and breaking people's chats. If you use iMessage for most of your communications, this alone might be a dealbreaker. RCS is bridging the gap but isn't all the way there yet, and that's before considering how slowly carriers do things. Good luck getting people to change apps; that's like trying to turn a cruise ship. FaceTime is really good. Google, despite launching 752 messaging apps in the past, doesn't really have an equivalent that works as well as FaceTime does (to my knowledge). Not an issue if you don't use FaceTime.
• lpeancovschi 8mo ago
  Just use SwiftKey
• tech_ken 8mo ago
  WOW I've spent years thinking that I suck at typing on phone screens, I never even considered that it might be the keyboard software is just shitty....
• goshx 8mo ago
  I was skeptical. I then recorded the screen of myself typing, using the iPhone's screen recorder itself, and it is happening with me. I thought I was the issue. Wow.
• kyralis 8mo ago
  Apple has become beholden to announcements. Work that someone can shove into a feature that someone else decides is flashy enough to maybe get mentioned on stage gets resourcing and support. Work that isn't going to show up in a Keynote deck gets ignored. That means that all of the polish work is shoved to the bottom of the stack until it reaches sufficient critical mass that someone finally makes time for engineers to pick some of it back out. That, I think, is the critical failure of modern Apple. The company used to understand that polish could be more important than something new and flashy, and they've forgotten that in favor of marketing and Liquid Glass.
• sys32768 8mo ago
  On the Apple TV interface on my Roku, I can't tell which movie thumbnail I'm on because their UI just slightly enlarges the image which I can't really make out from my couch. I always wonder who makes these decisions and whether they fancy themselves a designer.
• yomismoaqui 8mo ago
  On a capitalist society your power is how you use your wallet (arguably more important than even the vote you do every 4 years). So let's vote with our wallet.
• gwbas1c 8mo ago
  > But I came crawling back to iOS because I'm weak and the orange iPhone was pretty and the Pixel 10 was boring and I caved to the blue bubble pressure. My Pixel 10 is in a pretty orange case. Furthermore, if I get sick of it, it's not too big of a deal to change. Maybe I'll even figure out how to 3d print one! FWIW: Pretty much everyone keeps their phone in a case today. Seems to make a lot more sense to focus on the case instead of the aesthetics of the phone.
• blemasle 8mo ago
  > I'm switching to Android for good. (Good = at least 2 calendar years) wow, such a commitment. Not only it's as said only one customer but it is a customer who thinks "for good" is just skipping one phone. Which means she/he usually buys phone every single year. What a bold and committed move. It's astonishing...
• cmckn 8mo ago
  Autocorrect just cuts out for me pretty often, usually when I’m a couple sentences into a longer text entry. This is particularly annoying when using the Claude app or similar. The suggestion bar above the keyboard goes blank and I just stop getting any corrections.
• presz 8mo ago
  We all yearn for the BlackBerry. I wish we got a modern one with support for the popular messaging apps (WhatsApp, Slack, etc). I know there are some smartphones out there with physical keyboards that run Android, but they feel more like a prototype than a full product.
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• Rover222 8mo ago
  I swear the current IOS keyboard is gaslighting me for some reason every time I use it. It's like a low-key torture.
• Willish42 8mo ago
  > I randomly tried Android again for a few months last spring. Using a functioning keyboard was revelatory. But I came crawling back to iOS because I'm weak and the orange iPhone was pretty and the Pixel 10 was boring and I caved to the blue bubble pressure. I know this is somewhat a joke site, but I think admitting this really proves Apple's dominance and doesn't really help in making your case. So long as the walled garden / "platform" approach still works, enshittification will continue
• hnthrowaway0315 8mo ago
  What's the point of this web page?
• junon 8mo ago
  Android is the same. Grass isn't any greener over here. I miss T9.
  • tremarley 8mo ago
    On android there are 1000s of keyboards to choose from. They have various perks, customizable and if you don't like what's available you can simply build your own if you have the skills
• bentt 8mo ago
  Yep! I can’t type on this thjng
• Griffinsauce 8mo ago
  The amount of typos in this comment section is pure gold.
• bluSCALE4 8mo ago
  I wasn't aware it does it insidious. I always assumed I miss typed something, not that the phone itself was messing things up.
• mcpar-land 8mo ago
  I watched the video and immediately tested it on my iphone. It's true?? About 50% of the time, typing "Thumb" resulted in "Thimb" or "Thjmb", while the visual feedback on the keyboard showed u being pressed instead! Other comments here say Predictive Text is the culprit, but I already had that off. I also turned off Slide to Type. Same result.
  • cyberpunk 8mo ago
    I had just sort of assumed it was me, but yes, this happens on my phone too. If i type very quickly i see the u feedback and i get an i or a j. First notepad.exe gets a rce then this, is it the bottom, sadly I think not…
• garyfirestorm 8mo ago
  i believe a lot of us are tired of this mess and will switch. can you enable an option where i could too join on this deadline/timer? this way we can all quit all at once.
• enbugger 8mo ago
  We live in time when instead of booking a ticket you have to create a landing page to draw developer’s attention to a quite irritating bug.
• hayleox 8mo ago
  What the hell is this?? If the product has terrible issues, just leave! Why are you grovelling before a corporation, begging for fixes, when you have other options? I totally understand why people want to buy the same phone as their friends and have a blue bubble and whatever; iPhone is not for me, but I get it. If it's meeting your wants and needs, then I'm genuinely happy for you. But I will never understand what binds someone to a product/company that's no longer meeting expectations. It's a product, a means to an end and nothing more.
• mwillis 8mo ago
  maybe it’s just some quirk of how my fingers work, but when typing with two hands, I constantly get the letter “n” where I want a space. Itngetsnquitenfrustrating and it’s really annoying to go back and correct, because none of the intermediate words got autocorrected either. It seems like a) such an easy thing to prevent, and b) such an easy thing to detect and fix after the fact. Second most egregious issue is how every space becomes a period when typing in the Safari url/search bar. I’m using it for search 90% of the time, and directly entering URLs 10%, but Apple must think those proportions are flipped. Free the space! Finally - could we have a simple gesture that toggles words between lowercase, first letter capital, and all caps? Highlight a word and swipe up or something? So much needless input to make a word capitalized.
• snarky123 8mo ago
  "I'm leaving iPhone" is the new "I'm quitting Twitter". Nobody ever does it.
• unsupp0rted 8mo ago
  I've never figured out how to type a sentence into the Safari search without.every.word.ending.up.like.this
• thot_experiment 8mo ago
  > But I came crawling back to iOS because I'm weak and the orange iPhone was pretty and the Pixel 10 was boring and I caved to the blue bubble pressure. I love how diverse humans are, this is literally an alien sentence to me, it's actually impossible for me to conceptualize. I'm here with my Pixel 7 mourning my Pixel 4a, which was exactly the same to me as every other phone but had the fingerprint unlock sensor on the back which is the only meaningfully differentiating feature. I guess can imagine a non-boring phone like one of those gamer phones, but I can't imaging wanting one, and I can't imagine a phone that's exciting in a way I care about. The idea of finding a phone boring enough to want to switch from it though is just crazy to me. Is scrolling instagram and texting people and googling directions somehow different and exciting on iOS? (save i guess i'd probably be pretty excited if a company was giving me root by default and not having banking apps break because of it)
• dotBen 8mo ago
  Just use Android (Google stock not Samsung). Come over, the water is great. Yeah he's right - my Pixel 10 is not as sexy as an iPhone but not only is the keyboard great but the AI integration is first class citizen. iOS will never have first class citizen AI even if Apple finally develop their own model because Apple doesn't control the user's data.
• MaintenanceMode 8mo ago
  Yes, it's badly broken. Try building an app, it's so inconsistent, I have no idea what the heck is going on. It seems like every place my app uses a keyboard it has a different look, different feel, different way to dismiss it, etc. What the AF.
• ggregoire 8mo ago
  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…
• bravoetch 8mo ago
  And no Colemak support. I bought an in iPad to try as a home assistant kiosk and found the keyboard layouts don't have colemak as an option.
• PunchyHamster 8mo ago
  We both know you're staying regardless
• nvarsj 8mo ago
  iOS keyboard is such garbage. Almost a daily pain point for me. But I suffer for the amazing battery life and hardware. Like all Apple kit the software is crap.
• evanjrowley 8mo ago
  I have a personal Android but spend a lot of time on a work iPhone. I was not expecting the keyboard (and voice-to-text) to be such a poor experience on iOS. Selecting text and autocorrections are both a nightmare.
• nmilo 8mo ago
  There’s one specific thing driving me insane: it corrects “we’re” to “were” and “we’ll” to “well” EVERY TIME. It even did it while writing this comment. If I go into the symbols menu and find an apostrophe and type it in IT MEANS I MEANT TO PUT IT THERE
  • deepspace 8mo ago
    It does EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE for me. It autocorrects to "and" to "and's" very single time, for example.
• notorandit 8mo ago
  There's clearly something wrong here. Either this user is faking everything about the keyboard, or Apple is. None is testing (the keyboard) at Apple? Possible, but unlikely. None is checking test results at Apple, possible and much less unlikely. They want you to forget about the keyboard and go all vocal because "it's easier"? Sure. That user wants his/her 15 minutes og glory? Possible, but unlikely.
• shermantanktop 8mo ago
  I always imagine employees from the vendor (in this case Apple) reading the blog or this thread. They’re here, lurking. I see you! I see you in the shadows! Anyway, they know things we don’t, for both good (real constraints that users don’t see) and bad (fake constraints from bad internal decisions). But dear Apple employee reading this: if you have fought the good fight, I appreciate your attempt, please keep it up. If you didn’t, we’re having a keyboard experience that you shouldn’t be proud of, no matter what the internal corporate logic maze you are caught up in.
• _thisdot 8mo ago
  Why don’t third party keyboards take advantage of this situation? Why hasn’t Google updated Gboard on the App store in years?
• Akarnani 8mo ago
  hilariously, this will happen on or about when dictation is Wispr quality or better and you won't need your keyboard as much. I do second the Select All item, it's beyond frustrating.
• kleiba 8mo ago
  Bitdefender flagged that website for me, but it does not give me any useful details as to what the reason might be...
• cloudhead 8mo ago
  Uhm yeah, a touch screen is not a keyboard. It will never be one.
• devhouse 8mo ago
  This is a brilliant, Love that timer, not sure why the exact time frame was picked though. It makes me want to create a similar landing page for Apple to fix Spotlight Search. I remember when I used to be able to just find and launch apps on my Mac.
  • TACD 8mo ago
    I categorically do not love the timer. Timers should be a fixed-width typeface so the numbers don't jiggle.
    • ozzyphantom 8mo ago
      Good point, I’ll fix this in a bit, any typeface recommendations?
• mghackerlady 8mo ago
  I'm still on iOS 16 (I don't use a smartphone anymore and my old iPhone 8 works fine for the handful of times I need one) and even I notice it, I'm constantly pressing one letter and it gives me another
• fainpul 8mo ago
  I tried to call Tim Apple to complain about the shitty keyboard on my phone — here's what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjpcLplkMUs&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjpcLplkMUs&t=2s
• londons_explore 8mo ago
  My guess is that the 'wrong letter entered' bug is by design. The keyboard animation happens on the touchdown event, whereas the letter is entered into the text box on the touchup event. Between the two, more information might emerge about the touch - for example the exact shape of the touched area, and movement during the touch, etc. I would guess the keyboard sees a down in one spot, and an up in a slightly different spot which falls into another letter.
  • necessary 8mo ago
    You can indeed see this behavior in action by tapping a letter and briefly swiping slightly to an adjacent letter. Maybe I’m missing something but I don’t see why the letter should be submitted on touch-up, since I’ve never intentionally tried to correct an individual letter between touch-down and touch-up.
  • BobAliceInATree 8mo ago
    I tested this, and if I have slide-to-type disabled, and slide my fingers, then every letter I slide over will highlight, but only the letter I let my finger up on will show up in the text input box. If I don't have slide-to-type enabled, then only the letter I press down on will highlight, and what shows up in the text input box is pretty inconsistent for horizontally adjacent letters.
• someantics 8mo ago
  "Now you're just a fruit that I used to know." Sounds like a fantastic song parody idea.
• someantics 8mo ago
  "Now you're just a fruit that I used to know." Sounds like the title for a FANTASTIC song parody idea.
• devguy2 8mo ago
  Imagine being so full of oneself that you set up a webpage to tell a Trillion-dollar company you might not buy their stuff anymore.
• RASBR89 8mo ago
  I don’t have an issue at all.. I have swipe turned off..
• biotechbio 8mo ago
  +1. From the original post, I found this video to be particularly damning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hksVvXONrIo Does anyone have an explanation for how something like this passes QC at a company with the resources of Apple? Is this video misrepresenting something?
  • kilroy123 8mo ago
    Watching that makes me irrationally angry. I use the Google Keyboard myself and I find it's a lot better.
  • osener 8mo ago
    For years I thought I had a faulty touchscreen and started relying on dictation more and more. Seeing this video saved me from going insane. They must have crunched the numbers and decided that these choices benefit more people than not. BUT HOW!
    • sleight42 8mo ago
      I keep talking to friends and family who aren't techies and use iPhone. They believe their typing has gotten worse or something like that. Don Norman has written about this. Users are more likely to blame themselves than the tool. It's a weird sort of almost gaslighting.
      • drawnwren 8mo ago
        I suffer from chronic migraine and had begun to think my typing failures were early signs of severe cognitive decline…
• n8cpdx 8mo ago
  It will be hard, but I’m transitioning out of Apple ecosystem regardless of whether they improve. Just like Windows 11, I get ads whether I want them or not - just got a push notification for a new financial product (!!!) despite going out of my way to opt out. iOS 26 made my 16 Pro, practically brand new, feel slow. I upgraded because my 13 mini was slow, and I chose Apple in the first place because they had some of the best performing phones (especially cpu/gpu; they always had less ram but before llm it didn’t matter). The keyboard is horrible, but I don’t trust Google or Microsoft keyboards either; I think my next phone will be graphene; just waiting to see who their new hardware partner is. I loved Apple TV because it was fast; under 26 it is slow. I chose Mac for best in class hardware. That is unfortunately unchanged; really hoping snapdragon X 2 elite has good Linux support. My Apple Watch, despite doing nothing new it didn’t used to do, has also become slow and annoying, and its battery was never as good as it should have been. When I jump to Android I think garmin is probably the best choice, but maybe there are good wearables now. Unfortunately Android doesn’t have its act together re:built in health data database. Replacing Athlytic and keeping my history will be one of the biggest challenges in the transition. Competitors unfortunately still have huge blind spots even if some of the core experiences are better.
  • rationalist 8mo ago
    With Android (GrapheneOS), I can customize stuff on the phone that you can't customize with iOS. It reminds me of Apple's 1984 commercial, except that Apple users are the ones sitting down, all looking identical, drinking the Kool-Aid from Big Brother.
    • nathan_douglas 8mo ago
      Which customizations do you find most beneficial?
    • n8cpdx 8mo ago
      The irony is that things like HealthKit make it easy to build a system out of parts that just work together - my glucose monitor, watch, and scale all feed data into my nutrition tracking app seamlessly, and if I want an AI spin on the data, I use a separate app that reads the same data. Very hard to do that on Android. My iPhone seamlessly adapts to my working context using focus modes automation - Android still doesn’t do that; maybe they have launchers with equivalent features. Android makes it easy to customize the things I don’t want to customize, and hard to customize the things I do.
• wheelerwj 8mo ago
  I thought it was just me… like maybe my hand eye coordination was failing as I aged or maybe my dexterity was decreasing. Its been driving me absolutely nuts since i upgraded my phone a few months ago.
• saos 8mo ago
  oh all this time I thought it was me...
• sfblah 8mo ago
  This is my number 1 complaint with iphone, even above battery life with their new crappy 3d effects. I bet these issues have actually cost a bunch of lives, given that people type while driving, and this nonsense makes it far harder. It can't be that hard to do this.
• numpad0 8mo ago
  The actually issue according to another comment [0] is this[1]: > Around iOS 17 (Sept. 2023) Apple updated their autocorrect to use a transformer model which should've been awesome and brought it closer to Gboard (Gboard is a privacy terror but honestly, worth it). > What it actually did/failed to improve is make your phone keyboard: > Suck at suggesting accurate corrections to misspelled words > "Correct" misspelled words with an even worse misspelling > "Correct" your correctly spelled word with an incorrectly spelled word Which makes me wonder: is Transformer model good with manipulating short texts and texts with errors at all ? It's kind of known that open weight LLMs don't perform well for CJK conversion tasks[2], and I've also been disappointed by their general lack of typo tolerances myself as well. They're BAD for translating ultrashort sentences and singled out words as well[3]. They're great for vibecoding, though. Which makes me think, are they usable for anything under <100 bytes at all? Does it seem like they have a minimum usable input entropy or something? 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47006171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47006171 1: https://thismightnotmatter.com/a-little-website-i-made-for-apple-inc/ https://thismightnotmatter.com/a-little-website-i-made-for-a... 2: The process of yielding "㍑" from "rittoru" 3: No human can translate, e.g. "translate left" in isolation correctly as "move left arm", but LLMs seem to be more all over the place than humans
• brianweet 8mo ago
  Reminds me of some research I once did in order to reduce typos on low-end Firefox OS devices. The capacitive touchscreen had horrible limitations, especially for typing. It had bands across the screen where it could only detect one finger at a time. Once you picked up typing speed it ended up in similar misses you see in the YouTube video, albeit even worse (you end up with a letter between your two fingers). Eventually found two simple but effective ways to improve autocorrect/typing performance. First build a personalized and adaptive touch model trained on the device itself, mainly to fix simple typos. Second to fix low end screen limitations, use simple heuristics based on touchstart, touchmove and touchend [1]. Anyways, I'm no iPhone user but interesting to read. It would drive me nuts. [0]: https://www.brianweet.com/2015/03/24/implement-touch-model.html https://www.brianweet.com/2015/03/24/implement-touch-model.h... [1]: https://www.brianweet.com/2015/04/08/low-end-touchscreen-limitations.html https://www.brianweet.com/2015/04/08/low-end-touchscreen-lim...
• amatecha 8mo ago
  Yeah, text editing on iOS has gotten progressively worse and worse. It's astonishing how much it has degraded in usability compared to the earlier versions of iOS. "It just works" is no longer a phrase I would ever consider saying about iPhones or Apple products in general. Pretty disappointing as they used to be quite an inspiration for quality software design.
• muppetman 8mo ago
  I'm thinking of switching to iPhone after always having and Android. All these negative posts are really making me reconsider though.
• SpaceManNabs 8mo ago
  I thought i learned to forget how to type. knew i wasn't going crazy. edit: another apple issue i have been hearing about recently is that the apple watch alarm just doesn't work some days. i have no idea why. i don't have silent mode on when it happens. i have tried so many different settings to fix it. ended up buying the hatch alarm.
• SkyPuncher 8mo ago
  I thought this was just me! Every now and then, I feel like I simply cannot tap the correct keys. Things I do from muscle memory are jumping to the next letter over. This isn't just a temporary problem. It lasts for days/weeks. Then suddenly, it's fine again.
• rock_artist 8mo ago
  Reading everyone’s comments it looks like there is a lot of rant with current iPhone state. I’m also feeling last releases introduced huge regressions. I bought an iPhone 16 seen many issues including keyboard ones. I do hope Apple’s iOS 27 will be focused on fixes and optimizations. Apple Intelligence isn’t useful if the basic experience is mediocre —— Sent from my iPhone sorry for the autocorrect
• davnicwil 8mo ago
  The most frustrating one for me is how in safari in the address bar the keyboard changes and drops '.' to the right of the spacebar in the exact spot I usually hit the spacebar with my thumb (because I'm just tapping the edge, not stretching to the middle of the screen). This means in the modern mode of using the address bar as search, and not to type a domain manually (which is what I believe most people are also doing) I just end up with a search string separated by dots which Google can evidently deal with but is just very annoying. I see threads on the internet going back years complaining about this issue and yet there's no configuration to change it. It would be such a simple and easy fix (like, just give me the regular keyboard, nothing special). It's a bit baffling since it seems such a glaring everyday UX problem.
• mrcwinn 8mo ago
  I’d love a fix for that and I’d love to see nano-texture on the iPhone. I have a test device S25 Ultra and I always enjoy looking at that screen so much more than an iPhone. The most recent iPhone says it has stronger anti-glare, but it’s really quite poor still. Samsung’s display is way ahead in my book.
• EugeneOZ 8mo ago
  This isn't just you
• BoardsOfCanada 8mo ago
  Not sure if it's gotten worse in the last release for English-only users, but for us writing in and often mixing multiple languages in the same message, the spelling correction has gotten way better in the last releases.
• RobertLong 8mo ago
  I've been staying on iOS 17 and macOS 15 because I just don't see iOS/macOS 26 as an upgrade in any way. This is the first time I haven't been running a beta or getting a day one upgrade for Apple operating systems. I can't imagine moving away from iPhone or a MacBook, however if they want to avoid OS fragmentation and security issues caused by users like me refusing to upgrade, 27 better address these UX and stability issues.
• porsager 8mo ago
  Just use Type Nine! https://www.typenineapp.com https://www.typenineapp.com Write a comment if you want some free promo codes.
• ost-ing 8mo ago
  Im convinced its all planned to force users to upgrade. The “7 years of updates” selling point is just a trojan horse to install a newer iOS that makes the product run like garbage. Id honestly prefer never to update than get these bogus “security updates, features and fixes”
• butler14 8mo ago
  i cannot upvote this enough, the keyboard is a DAILY annoyance, especially selecting words
• LowLevelKernel 8mo ago
  It’s also reading your inner thoughts via neurallink
• inanutshellus 8mo ago
  Arg. What's the quippy internet adage for this? Where someone (traditionally in a FOSS project's support / bug report / feature request pages) posts some angrygram of "Fix my pet peeve OR ELSE YOUR PROJECT IS DEAD TO ME!!11!!one!11!!!" The only thing that's coming to mind is "emotional blackmail" but that's not it...
• ett0018 8mo ago
  Fix your website before the day ends or I'm not upvoting
• klasko 8mo ago
  I emphasize with the author: switching from Android to iOS was an abysmal change in terms of keyboard quality. I installed GBoard which is way better but the experience is not the same as with a default keyboard.
• npilk 8mo ago
  For what it’s worth, swipe to type works just fine on the native keyboard, for those who didn’t know. Agree about many of the other bugs / issues.
• InMice 8mo ago
  I almost switched to pixel before getting my new 17 pro max. I feel like im just constantly fighting the ios keyboard or having to type so slowly and carefully but it still is screwing up. I have a pixel 8a and Im shocked how quickly I can type on it while constantly tip toeing and fighting the ios keyboard. It's ironic because my first iphone i used was a 4s and i was pleasantly surprised how nice it was to type on after using samsung phones. Now it's like the tables have turned. Im constantly fighting the ios keyboard. Sometimes when i tap and get the wrong character i will move my thumb to where i would have had to type to get that wrong character and i know for sure i did not move my thumb that far away from the character i actually wanted and thought i tapped on. Im honestly shocked how bad typing on ios has become. i got a pixel 8a just to amuse myself and i was again totally surprised how fast and easy the typing was. something is going rotten inside apple. even controlling when the keyboard appears and when you want it to go away is frustrating on ios. i find the little universal down arrow on the pixel phones much better.
  • sleight42 8mo ago
    I've also debated Android because there are cheaper phones that, ostensibly, don't suck—and can run non-Google-ized not-spying-on-you Android.
    • InMice 8mo ago
      Exactly my thought as well. Im considering trying graphene now that I have one myself.
• jacobsenscott 8mo ago
  It's not so bad over here in android world. If you don't like the keyboard you can just pick a different keyboard.
• mrb 8mo ago
  "caved to the blue bubble pressure" As an Android user, I truly don't understand this "pressure". I exchange SMS/MMS with various users, some Android, some iPhone. I am in group chats with both Android and iPhone users. I feel there is no major issue. It's interoperable. We all see each other's emojis/photos/videos/etc. There are only minor technical rough edges: for example an iPhone's user emoji reaction sometimes (not always?) shows up as separate text instead of the emoji appended at the bottom of the text bubble... And I am pretty sure videos are sent in a lower quality. But is any of this really enough to cause a "blue bubble pressure"? I asked ChatGPT to explain but only got this vague answer: "Group chats with a mix of iPhone and non-iPhone users can be less seamless (e.g., lower video quality, no read receipts, or issues with group chat features)." I had to open my texts to check: I indeed have read receipts when texting Android users, but not iPhone users. And this is funny but up to this very second, I had never noticed this difference... because, at least to me, read receipts is such a minor feature that I rely on very infrequently. This leaves me still as perplex: why the "blue bubble pressure"?
• jtrn 8mo ago
  In later iOs versions i started making much more mistakes. Felt i got old or something. But whenever i type on my Android phone, its like nothing has changed. I swear that the iOs keyboard is trolling, I HIT O NOT I! O AM CERTAIN!
• deafpolygon 8mo ago
  I am not having that much problem with it — it’s been relatively easy to ‘train’ it to make the correct corrections, and I rarely have any problems with autocorrect. it usually does the right thing. the thing is, when you do make a typo… just double tap the word (to select) and it will usually highlight the previous spelling. undo that, around 3 or 4 times, and it will simply stop autocorrecting that. i find people who experience the most trouble with the keyboard are the ones who aren’t very patient, and keep tapping around like crazy - it’s not a physical keyboard. - To select all, if you don’t have any selections — just simply triple-tap a word, and it will select the entire paragraph text. - If you have text selected and you want to de-select, just tap in any area outside of the selection. If you have any ‘word’ selected, and you want to select a different word, double tap another word. - If you have the Copy | Paste | etc bubble, you have to de-select the text before you can do anything else. (De-select by tapping anywhere /outside/ the selection). - If you want to select a phrase or longer string, you need to tap at the beginning of the word once and WAIT for the cursor to move and blink again. If you do it too quickly, you might end up selecting more than you intended. If you did it right, it should just land right under your tap. Then double tap the cursor and drag up or down to select your longer text. It works very reliably for me, and I’ve learned to type long prose on my phone quite well.
• afcool83 8mo ago
  On the same week that an AI's PR was rejected and it turned around and published a hit-piece in order to pressure an open-source community to accept it's change [1]...on the same week...we are watching a human publish a hit-piece (more or less) in order to pressure a closed-sourced project to accept their change. Someone needs to help me with the ethics here; is it okay to post hit-pieces or...? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46987559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46987559
• learingsci 8mo ago
  I for one enjoy the plausible deniability afforded by the iOS keyboard. On occasion I may make intemperate remarks online or curse at someone I shouldn’t. With an iPhone, I can just follow up with “sorry, iOS keyboard!” or “oops spellcheck” and nobody gives it a second thought.
• noripcord 8mo ago
  [dead]
• tcpekin 8mo ago
  Does anyone have a keyboard suggestion that is multilanguage and has a comma on the top layer? German without a comma is, troublesome.
• misiek08 8mo ago
  Funny how Apple get to mediocre level with the phones while making really good progress with hardware and acceptable level on tablets and notebooks. I see in Europe iPhone is now common - it was a little bit premium for long time, before. Only Samsung is so bad that iPhone still isn’t the worst experience, but iOS 26 brought so many bugs, issues and bad UX decisions that it’s depressing. But having macOS with „completely different, but the same” natural scroll switch - you have the switch „separate” for mouse and touchpad, but they switch together as one. Incredible that company having such history makes so stupid features. Having „lower level”/masses join the Apple-train I wouldn’t expect them to fix anything in near future. As long as money will flow - the won’t look at quality.
• ComputerGuru 8mo ago
  I haven’t been able to swipe-type “you” (on qwerty us) for two+ years now – it autocorrects to “your” every single time.
• Twey 8mo ago
  Why not just switch to a different keyboard?
  • Zagitta 8mo ago
    Because thirdparty keyboards are equally bugged. Sometimes keyboards simply fail to show up or cover app content without rhyme or reason. This happens across multiple thirdparty keyboards so it must be an ios issue.
• BobMontgomeryJr 8mo ago
  relevation!! Someone who actually levels well-deserved anti-synchophany against the IT majors!!! Volumes can be written about the collective abuses which reduce hundreds of millions to squinting at tiny impossibly illegible displays and noncontrasting fonts, typing at 5WPM with two thumbs, further reduced (3WPM?) by battles against 'auto-correct' and 'assistive cursor control'.. I use full-size BT & AAPLS wireless keyboards with my iPh and DroidTab. I have a 19" diag HDMI display via WiFi widget that actually makes the iPh screen landscape and readable. I use 'Assistive' crippling which overlays an actually visible orange cursor in a textline losenge over the ultraviolet-invisible unchangeable default one. I have maybe 800 notes (more than Googl has sent me false positive security alerts) of every Gaffe and insult going back to the Xeros Dorado epoch. Keep it up. Start a revolution!! The word needs more posts of the realities of these afflictions. I use the Futo onscreen kb on Android, and the devs there say there's nothing they can do to control when of how it pops over and obscures something you're tying to type. Typical of AAPL and GOOG tyranny and 'our way or the highway'. There's more to fill hundreds of pages to get distracting ad-injected, poorly implented UX back to un-affectively efficient realizations which don't foment vsceral aggravation, but I've had it with this little textbox here, and I'm not going to shuffle this comments back and forth to a text-editor to improve it. But thanks HakerNews hopefully for letting me post without forcing me to go find mycredentials to login!! Othersie this entire post -pfft-
• scottscambaugh 8mo ago
  [dead]
• abetancort 8mo ago
  [dead]
• sleight42 8mo ago
  /sign
• hyperluz 8mo ago
  Split mode is completely broken since 26.2.
• smugtrain 8mo ago
  I’m feeling this way about the removal of “Select All” so that I can no longer easily copy/paste articles to my chatbot. Freedom’s not Tim Apple.
• tonymet 8mo ago
  The Password Autofill features are all premature and broken. In Safari & Apps, the autofill prompt doesn't show, or it will show once and never again. Manual autofill trigger fails, and negotiating autofill providers is premature. The other big area is Autocomplete & Autofill while using external keyboard. There is no control over autocomplete except for CAPSLOCK. correcting autocomplete leads to autocomplete re-complete infinite loop. I could go on for another 6-10 bugs but just want to highlight your great work and that autocomplete is an entire category of keyboard bugs on iOS / iPadOS
• catskull 8mo ago
  Whenever I have an Apple platform issue, I simply write up a detailed complaint and then send it via iMessage to one of my friends. I know that it's all supposedly e2ee but I swear it's a lot more constructive than firing it into Apple's feedback black hole. So far, it's worked pretty well. On macOS (26.2), if you have a game controller that has been connected over bluetooth but is not currently connected, if you go into the bluetooth device list in System Settings then click the circled "i" icon, it opens an information modal. This modal incorrectly lists the device type (my controller right now says it's AirPods 4). It also has a button for "Game Controller Settings...". If you click this button, it opens Find My. If the controller is connected, it opens the "Game Controllers" pane where you can adjust the settings. I'm not sure if this is just my specific controller (Nintendo Switch N64 Controller), but it seems like a pretty obvious bug. And while you're at it, why don't you just go ahead and roll back the entire System Preferences app UI to what it used to be?
• crossroadsguy 8mo ago
  That's the thing. Android is equally bad in their own idiosyncratic ways. Or actually worse if you factor in stuff like Google tracks everything you do or don't do on the phone or while having the phone on you and sells/exposes those trackings to advertisers, even when you explicitly ask it to not do that. Its distractive design is by design. If you are going to change the iOS just for the keyboard (and yeah it's keyboard is bad; but that's not even a mild atrocious design and implementation decision they have made) then I guess your intention is just a big rant and a this post and a little discourse and that's it. Esp. the 120 days timeline. To be honest if you had to switch you'd have switched you know if Apple even does such "fixings" they will take decades (not years) because 1). yes, they are that incompetent when it comes to software, 2). they wouldn't want to mix the opportunity to say even something silly like For the First Time on an iPhone™ you have TrueAutocorrect™ (which will stick suck and will be at least 2 decades behind the 20th worst Android keyboard) So yeah, good luck.
  • sleight42 8mo ago
    But there are the forks of Android that don't include anything Google.
    • crossroadsguy 8mo ago
      And any app that normal non-rooting non-hn folks use or might actually need to function in the real world will refuse to work. Not only that there will be no OTA. List goes on.. and it’s actually going to get worse.
• lippihom 8mo ago
  I don't understand why people are such huge fans of iMessage / iOS. I have both an iPhone and an Android and the iPhone texting experience is worse in almost every way, including getting way more spam. Why doesn't a keyword filter exist? Any time someone tries to send me a recruiting message, just let me flag it for auto-deletion please. Jfc.
• andix 8mo ago
  My iPhone Xs is slowly dying (being stuck on iOS 18 is probably a good thing). I guess I will replace it soon with a cheap refurbished iPhone 13 or so. Just to wait out iOS 27. If there is no dramatic improvement of software quality, I guess the next phone is a high end Android device.
• mancerayder 8mo ago
  Is the Android keyboard so much better? I'm suffering enormously from some of the same symptoms some people here describe - the keypress adaptation seemingly better for someone who isn't me. I found ridiculous how the Apple keyboard requires you to press shift or alt equivalent to get to the period. That's a weird one.
• dash2 8mo ago
  My keyboard is convinced that when I type “is”, I really want to say “OSS”. This seems a priori unlikely.
• rkunal 8mo ago
  Staying with Apple even after they "purposely" hand you broken keyboard is psychological abuse. When people become habitual of abuse, they even start defending it. I am searching for my next Android. No longer waiting for Godot.
• whycome 8mo ago
  There’s gotta be a term for “technical gaslighting” as in when a software change makes you think it was always this hard to type on a virtual keyboard and you slowly forget how fast you once were.
• beacon294 8mo ago
  I considered starting a similar tweet to Tim Cook today but decided it would do nothing. I tried adding swifter, i tried vtt, they filed that up to. If true wondering, this message is typed on my apple phone. *Edit: Just figured out I can delete the apple keyboard from the enabled list. They can put that in their metrics and smoke it.*
• beacon294 8mo ago
  I would like to know why it is correcting thanks to Thanksgiving.
• mvdtnz 8mo ago
  If you were willing to switch to Android you would have. We all know you won't. You know it. We know it. Apple knows it.
• ANarrativeApe 8mo ago
  Feeling smug as I type this on my 'boring' pixel 10
• grishka 8mo ago
  The one related thing that has always driven me a bit crazy on iOS (which I hardly ever use, only for testing) compared to Android (which I've been using daily since 2011) is how touches register slightly higher than where you're physically tapping. This alone makes hitting small-ish targets, including keyboard keys, quite challenging and infuriating. This does seem intentional too, as it depends neither on the device model nor on the OS version, it's been like that for over a decade at this point.
• grahar64 8mo ago
  Autocorrect is balls. I have a friend in my contacts, and when I type her name it sometimes autocorrects to "leaving".
• troseph 8mo ago
  I had kind of accepted maybe I had brain damage or something when it came to typing on my phone recently. I pulled out my iphone X the other day and had the most validating feeling of "I can type on my phone again".
• prameshbajra 8mo ago
  This used to be by biggest annoyance with iOS, it no longer is. Now my app search does not work properly after iOS 26 update and that has been literally making this phone harder to use.
• akrymski 8mo ago
  As a longtime Android user, I can't imagine going back to iOS for a number of reasons: - Still no multiple-accounts feature in WhatsApp - No app cloning (multiple versions of the same app with different logins) - Crazy monthly storage fees with no ability to control photo storage on phone - All google apps including Chrome, Gmail & Maps work better on Android and sync with Chrome on desktop - No gemini built-in - No fingerprint reader - No multiple physical sims - Slower charging I'm really not sure why anyone would pay more for an iPhone besides social signalling.
  • ricardobeat 8mo ago
    I suspect 99% of users have no use for multiple versions of the same app. €10/month for 2TB storage is pretty good. I don’t use any google apps, or Chrome. Charge overnight so speed doesn’t matter. Now the parts you didn’t mention: - Apple makes great hardware, iPhones last forever (typing this from my virtue-signaling 2020 phone, my 2007 iPod touch still works). - A similar spec Android costs about the same but usually has a flimsy plastic build and will become unsupported in 2-4 years - Amazing integration with MacOS; continuity, camera, seamless sync for everything, seeing SMSes and calls on your laptop And most importantly, despite the seriously degrading quality in the past years, the Apple ecosystem is still ahead in software and design. iOS apps are better designed, especially third party ones. They rarely crash, I go years without restarting my phone. Android is definitely a lot closer than it was 7-8 years ago, but Material UI is still a complete clusterfuck and who wants to entrust Google with all their data? Apple not being an advertising company plays a huge role here.
    • jhasse 8mo ago
      > A similar spec Android costs about the same but usually has a flimsy plastic build and will become unsupported in 2-4 years Maybe 10 years ago, but this couldn't be further from the truth today.
    • SSLy 8mo ago
      > €10 Apple has frozen their currency matrix at 2022-2023 levels, so in plenty countries they charge much (20%+) more than that.
• geoelectric 8mo ago
  Turn off swipe typing in the keyboard settings, and tap typing works a bazillion times better. It's like toggling a completely different codebase behind the keyboard and resetting it back to when blind-tap and autocorrect actually functioned as expected. I assume the code that checks for tap vs start-of-swipe is to blame. I have no idea why that would cause word recognition and/or autocorrect to work so differently, but it seemingly does.
• seba_dos1 8mo ago
  > You were the "it just works" company. Yeah, two decades ago.
• maxdo 8mo ago
  The select copy and paste experience is terrible on iPhone too. They randomly shuffle when to show select or not and rarely show select all. I had situations where I had to wait for 2 minutes with return pressed due to iPhone not showing select all
• trimethylpurine 8mo ago
  I can't compare because I've never owned an iPhone but Gboard sucks pretty bad too, in case you're wondering. Swype was the peak for touchscreen keyboards and it all went downhill from there. No idea why.
• flkiwi 8mo ago
  I read things like this, which I absolutely agree is happening, but then compare it to my ongoing, multi-day failures to create a child account on a Samsung device (which also involves a child account on Google, which is where the workflow is failing) and I wonder if the entire technology industry has simply given up. Every mobile experience is awful lately, nothing seems to work, errors pile up, and people just quit.
• ramanova 8mo ago
  No phone is perfect, It's the overall complexity of the systems that is causing the multiple issues. I moved from iphone 13 to pixel 10pro and it wasn't such a great transition. It's totally not "better". Each have their own disadvantages. Android: - Pixel really sucks at apps and sharing content in app/ between apps. This is really killing me, because it's impossible to share more than image from whatsapp to telegram e.g. No image copy in apps. - The apps are not as polished - The gaming performance not even close to apple (or samsung for that matter) - Wifi / GSM doesn't feel as reliable or fast as it was on my 4yo iphone - Videos cameras switching is unreliable, photos colors are washed out and dead - You can't compare Pixel watch and Apple Watch (same goes for Garmin with it's terrible sluggish UI) Iphone: - No Screen text translate in real-time like on Pixel. Currently the only deal breaker for me personally and reason I'm using the Pixel. - The keyboard is dumb. But speech recognition is ok. - Duplication of photos between icloud and google photos. The Google Photos is crazy good in comparison to the icloud.
• sharperguy 8mo ago
  "But I came crawling back to iOS because I'm weak and the orange iPhone was pretty and the Pixel 10 was boring and I caved to the blue bubble pressure. But the keyboard on this beautiful phone is worse than ever. " I don't understand. What could Apple possibly have that is better than a working device?
  • rkuykendall-com 8mo ago
    "blue bubble" here is undersold. It means Apple has anti-competitively broken the experience of speaking with loved ones on purpose if you leave their ecosystem.
    • sharperguy 8mo ago
      As a European it's hard for me to comprehend the influence that iMessage has on the US.
• iNic 8mo ago
  For what its worth I use the Microsoft SwiftKey on iOS and I am a fan!
• mrsssnake 8mo ago
  Imagine having to ask manufacturer to fix some tiny component of software with no way to fix it yourself, even if you had the skill and time capabilities.
• qnleigh 8mo ago
  It's so strange, when I switched to Android, it felt like iPhones had more polish and fewer glitches like these. But there's just aren't any usability bugs that I deal with on Android anymore. I think the blog explains why people put up with such a buggy OS: > I randomly tried Android again for a few months last spring. Using a functioning keyboard was revelatory. But I came crawling back to iOS because I'm weak and the orange iPhone was pretty
• ajyotirmay 8mo ago
  Frankly, just switch the stock keyboard. It's 2026, this should be working on that ancient Egyptian joke of an OS. If not, Apple users deserve this kind of behaviour where the user willingly signs off on their freedom
• ece 8mo ago
  When some iPhone users try to get past their snobiness, but still can't without a timer.
• sitzkrieg 8mo ago
  we need a site like this for ios alarms going off completely silently. still happening
• cuddlyogre 8mo ago
  I had to use an iphone for 3 years when I moved because my Android didn't get good reception at my new house. I loathed every single moment of it solely because the typing experience was a hostile and counterintuitive nightmare.
• GeorgeOldfield 8mo ago
  nobody is switching
• bbrake 8mo ago
  Hope you enjoy Android, cause you don't matter to Apple. You never did.
• Cluelessidoit 8mo ago
  The IOS keyboard (literally as I type this) is a fucking pile of shit. It used to be so good (iOS 10, idk or some shit) it’s absolutely awful now. It doesn’t correct words, it doesn’t suggest correct spelling, it’s not intuitive at all. In fact, the only place where ai should thrive and be implemented is fucking texting/type
• b__d 8mo ago
  I too struggled with the keyboard, especially since iOS 26. I then tried to DEACTIVATE ALL keyboard "features", so: - NO auto-corr - NO predictive text - NO check spelling - NO char preview - NO feedback - NO sound - NO auto-cap - NO smart punctuation - NO slide to type - NO everything And this ABSOLUTELY solved my problems with the iOS keyboard. Yes, I do mistype from time to time. But that is in no relation to how it was with all those features…
• hendricius 8mo ago
  I had the exact same frustrations. Bilingual user(German/English), and the keyboard situation with multiple languages is even worse than what you describe. Your post actually inspired me to stop complaining and try to fix it myself. I built an iOS keyboard that uses AI to handle the parts Apple refuses to get right. You speak or type roughly what you want to say, pick a tone or language, and it outputs clean text. The translation + tone combo alone saved me from switching to Android. It's called Cerebro, currently in TestFlight if anyone wants to try it: https://cerebro-keyboard.app https://cerebro-keyboard.app Not trying to plug my thing here, genuinely just wanted to say: your countdown resonated with a lot of us. Some of us just dealt with it differently.
• martin82 7mo ago
  I basically have to hit the edit function in Signal and correct typos in Every. Single. Thread. Every. Single. Day. It is infuriating. This has been going on for years, so I guess when this guy claims this started at iOS 17, it seems to make sense. The iOS keyboard really really is utterly broken. I'm glad it's not just me. I was already wondering if I should schedule an appointment with a doctor and check if I have early onset dementia or something.