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The Trials and Tribulations of Writing a 3rd Party iOS Keyboard

17 points by archagon 12y ago

archagon 12y ago
Sorry, the CSS for mobile, and probably other platforms, is messed up. I'll fix it... eventually...
kevingadd 12y ago
Depressing to see developers of 3rd-party keyboards suffer for Apple's mistakes with the low reviews. Apple gets to destroy other developers' brands instead of get the criticism they deserve from users for shipping a subpar product. :(
lukifer 12y ago
While Apple's software quality has never been perfect, it certainly feels like it's been trending more negatively than positively in the past several years, since Tim Cook took over and Forstall [left / was kicked out]. My guess is that it's largely a sin of omission: Apple has such a strong drive to add features and keep pace with Android, that fewer resources are marshalled to do purely internal improvements (iOS 7/8 badly needs its Snow Leopard iteration). They've also been even more focused on hitting arbitrary release dates (as driven by events and new hardware) which is never a good formula for reliable softare.
- FireBeyond 12y ago
  It seems to be hugely bad nowadays. The third party keyboard bugs have been constant for me (and across different ones), both my GF and I’s Facebook apps regularly stop updating (pull down and it spins endlessly), requiring an app restart (though that could be the app - but many other apps seem to be plagued with issues, and I -know- my home wifi is rock solid - also happens on LTE).
saurik 12y ago
> Consequently, all the 3rd party keyboards currently available on iOS feel like some sort of jailbreak hack. This broad-stroke characterization is a little heavy-handed... one of the really powerful things about writing software on jailbroken devices is that you actually can, easily, just modify the system keyboard to add functionality, instead of having to build an "alien" work-a-like: the power of development on jailbroken systems is just how absolutely native and integrated you can be. Sure, the things that might be most memorable to you are the things that looked the most out of place, but I have seriously had people who own an iPhone as their main device--people who have their iPhone in their hand at that moment--look at me with disbelief when I show them extensions like my Cyntact (which adds contact photos to all native address book lists; iOS 7 finally added this to the Favorites list, but this story is from a time when none of the lists had this seemingly obvious feature), insisting that their iPhone also has the same feature, only to be shocked when they pull it out of their pocket and it actually doesn't. Things that blend in to their surroundings just aren't memorable in the same way as disturbing mistakes, leading to this skewed impression.
drewjaja 12y ago
I too tried using Autolayout when developing my 3rd party iOS Keyboard. It took a good 2-3 seconds for my keyboard to load on an iPhone 4s when using Autolayout. Autolayout doesn't seem to be an ideal solution for views with many elements.

17 points by archagon 12y ago

Sorry, the CSS for mobile, and probably other platforms, is messed up. I'll fix it... eventually...

Depressing to see developers of 3rd-party keyboards suffer for Apple's mistakes with the low reviews. Apple gets to destroy other developers' brands instead of get the criticism they deserve from users for shipping a subpar product. :(

lukifer 12y ago

While Apple's software quality has never been perfect, it certainly feels like it's been trending more negatively than positively in the past several years, since Tim Cook took over and Forstall [left / was kicked out]. My guess is that it's largely a sin of omission: Apple has such a strong drive to add features and keep pace with Android, that fewer resources are marshalled to do purely internal improvements (iOS 7/8 badly needs its Snow Leopard iteration). They've also been even more focused on hitting arbitrary release dates (as driven by events and new hardware) which is never a good formula for reliable softare.

FireBeyond 12y ago
It seems to be hugely bad nowadays. The third party keyboard bugs have been constant for me (and across different ones), both my GF and I’s Facebook apps regularly stop updating (pull down and it spins endlessly), requiring an app restart (though that could be the app - but many other apps seem to be plagued with issues, and I -know- my home wifi is rock solid - also happens on LTE).

saurik 12y ago

> Consequently, all the 3rd party keyboards currently available on iOS feel like some sort of jailbreak hack. This broad-stroke characterization is a little heavy-handed... one of the really powerful things about writing software on jailbroken devices is that you actually can, easily, just modify the system keyboard to add functionality, instead of having to build an "alien" work-a-like: the power of development on jailbroken systems is just how absolutely native and integrated you can be. Sure, the things that might be most memorable to you are the things that looked the most out of place, but I have seriously had people who own an iPhone as their main device--people who have their iPhone in their hand at that moment--look at me with disbelief when I show them extensions like my Cyntact (which adds contact photos to all native address book lists; iOS 7 finally added this to the Favorites list, but this story is from a time when none of the lists had this seemingly obvious feature), insisting that their iPhone also has the same feature, only to be shocked when they pull it out of their pocket and it actually doesn't. Things that blend in to their surroundings just aren't memorable in the same way as disturbing mistakes, leading to this skewed impression.

drewjaja 12y ago

I too tried using Autolayout when developing my 3rd party iOS Keyboard. It took a good 2-3 seconds for my keyboard to load on an iPhone 4s when using Autolayout. Autolayout doesn't seem to be an ideal solution for views with many elements.