Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

And that's just the tip of the iceberg for the iOS Keyboard's issues. They've tried to fix it multiple times, and while it is undeniably better than its lowest point - it is still staggeringly worse than Google's native offering on the Pixel range. Swiping is just so painful, and Microsoft's Swiftkey keyboard is on life support.

Considering arguably the keyboard itself is one of the most common "touch surfaces" on iOS, the level of neglect and level of overall quality is staggering. There's some serious incentive problems at Apple if nobody is tasked with making one of the best digital keyboards in the world.

PS - Whoever came up with the concept, on swipe-style touch keyboards, of the "Tap Map"/Heatmap wherein keys visible location doesn't match their touch area - so that BY DESIGN it always provides an inconsistent user experience needs to be fired into the sun. You literally cannot disable it on most mobile keyboards. It is on iOS's native keyboard AND Microsoft's Swiftkey.

This isn't a "bug" with the iOS keyboard, this is directed and intentional censorship.

Of course; but my point is just add it to the giant pile of problems with iOS's keyboard. Every part of it has bugs, broken stuff, or annoyances like this, it isn't fit for purpose, and needs significant work.

The fact Apple aren't embarrassed by the iOS keyboard is very surprising and disappointing.

They are, if I may borrow a phrase, "Too Big to Care".

Yes, but they got that way by caring about the user experience.

Every big company reaches a point where their business becomes selling their users out to other businesses.

Apple has been doing that for years:

- The iCloud Keychain API that lets Facebook, TikTok etc. track users across devices, app reinstalls and device resets.

- Ads in formerly ad-free built-in apps.

- Removing the Disable Javascript from Safari's menu so you can't easily disable the now-mandatory tracking bullshit on most sites.

- Ads

- "Force closing" apps on iOS not really force quitting them instantly anymore, giving each app a "last breath" chance to call home about anything it wants to send about you.

- Ads

- And now they've added nagging when you try to cancel recurring in-app subscriptions.

So the ad/subscription stuff, sure.

And I don't know enough about the keychain.

But removing the easy access button that breaks so many websites is not selling out users.

Giving an app some fraction of a second to clean up is not selling out users. This is a pretty ridiculous stretch on your part. If it had something to phone home it could have done it five seconds ago, why wait? Or it could probably do it the next time you open the app. That's not what the grace period is about.

Nobody was "accidentally" clicking that Disable Javascript button, what the hell

Oh and did you notice how for several macOS versions the "Manage Website Data…" button in Safari Settings, for selectively removing cookies, magically fails to work?

Oh OH and how iCloud+'s paid Private Relay feature doesn't work in authoritarian countries like the UAE etc where it would actually be needed?

> Nobody was "accidentally" clicking that Disable Javascript button, what the hell

I didn't say they were, what the hell.

> Oh and did you notice

I did not notice. I don't use any Apple products.

> I didn't say they were, what the hell.

You said that's not selling out users, because it was breaking websites if the users wanted to.

That is taking a feature [farther] away from [power] users,

in a move that favors other companies.

Fully disabling javascript has become very niche. It's okay to not have that button and wanting a simpler UI with fewer footguns is plenty of justification to remove it from the menu. Even if I would occasionally use it myself.

LMFAO

Anything can be censorship if you want it to, and then it means nothing.

Apple is free to make their product work however they want. They're not creating laws or public utilities.

"Censorship" doesn't automatically imply "government censorship." This is absolutely Apple applying a chilling effect on its customers.

Lack of autocomplete doesn't mean you can't type something yourself and press enter.

That's different than youtube demonetizing or suspending you because you said some word in a video.

There’s also levels to censorship, like the chilling effect the other commenter noted.

Apple, evidently, does not want you to say these things. They can’t outright ban phrases due to optics, so they do this instead.

It’s the other way around. Apple don’t want to suggest offensive phases and have it look like they wants you to say those things.

The middle ground here is to not suggest anything at all. Because they’re either pushing people to say something or preventing them from saying something.

The HN crowd forgets that average people don’t know how technology works. Everyone I know would see this as a good feature.

Give them the same position as the people who implemented that feature and it would most likely come out worse.

This should be a preference then, just like in video games where profanity can either be shown or hidden in multiplayer chats. Then it makes the user aware this exists as a feature and gives them control over it.

My rule of thumb in software is: if there's enough of a dispute on how something should work, it should probably turn into a preference available to users. It's adds scope, but it respects user choice in places where it matters.

Building software long enough I've realized that the valuable part is your vision of it. The opinionated part. There's no toggle to allow p0rn in the app store, and that's good. We can argue about user choice, but undeniably even if such a toggle existed, more users would fall into addiction. Environment matters more than "self control" or "discipline".

I agree with you (on certain types of software), and I also don't see Apple as the be-all and end-all or assume that its opinions are always right. This is just my opinion based on my lived experience, both as a user and as an engineer.

I still think the original iPhone keyboard in 2007 was better than what we have now. It’s been downhill ever since iOS 7.

I used to tell people just type and trust it to work, it was great. Now, even when I type the right thing, the auto-complete will screw it up after the fact. I feel like I need to proofread everything. I wish we could go back to whatever setup they had 19 years ago.

Autocorrect aside, the keyboard itself got broken around the iPhone 6 release. I've mostly had autocorrect disabled back then and now. It used to be so much better on the 5. And of course if you're horribly misspelling everything, the autocorrect will perform worse.

I remember it being whenever they first added the next-word predictions above the keyboard. I was guessing it was iOS 7, just because that was the massive UI overhaul, but it very well could have been iOS 6.

I'd argue iPhone got ahead of the game then just stopped getting at all better. Siri AI is straight garbage, they won't let the interface be anything but what they want it to be, and the app store lock in/lack of ad blockers on browsers has made it basically just a phone for me. I have no intention of upgrading beyond my 12, and when it finally dies, I'm probably moving back to some kind of android phone if there's not a viable open source model out there by then (viable for everything, banking, etc). I only moved to apple because the watch was leagues better at the time than samsung's offering, but now I can't even claim that (and quit wearing it years ago)

Apparently iOS supports custom keyboards: https://keyboardkit.com/

Do you know any good ones?

The hilariops think is that the phome with the mosy terrible keytoard wants to add a tagline to every eamail which can only be read as am apology.

- Sent from my iPhone.

In my experience it’s worse than it’s ever been in the 15 years I’ve been on iOS. It’s absolutely enraging to me. I’m too lazy and hate smart phones so much anyways that I am not investing mental cycles and emotion into switching. But it’s a disgrace how shitty it is.

I'm surprised at this point they just don't pay google to license their keyboard

Whole OS really

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