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

Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android (ios-countdown.win)

ozzyphantom

1568 points

DamnInteresting

@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.fl...

srmatto

a day 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

a day ago

Also why did they get rid of select all? Is there any excuse for that?

bobbylarrybobby

a day ago

Select all always appears if you have no text selected and never appears if you have some text selected. Insane UI decision by apple but that's how it is.

longfacehorrace

a day ago

It's not just the keyboard. My iPhone 15 is often so unresponsive I am tapping twice as much.

Example but the issue not limited to web browsing; Safari will do nothing, I tap again, it does the thing, then it does the thing again due to the second tap. I have to tap back to get to where I really wanted to go.

Normal_gaussian

a day ago

It turns out he posted a better example in his blog post about it - https://thismightnotmatter.com/a-little-website-i-made-for-a... - which is technically linked to in the bottom of the site. I guess if you spend your life learning UX from Apple this is what you get...

ozzyphantom

a day ago

I see where you’re coming from, this was an impulsive creation after months/years of frustration without any expectations.

For anyone curious of my experience here are my main pain points:

- autocorrect failing to correct minor mistakes

- autocorrect “correcting” a mistake with another mistake

- autocorrect “correcting” correctly typed words

- swipe to type is painfully behind Gboard (third-party keyboards are universally under-supported and inferior to Android equivalents)

- “Select All” is often hidden away

- Selecting/unselecting text in general is a pain

- keyboard seems to run out of steam after hitting a certain word count in applications such as Apple Notes or iMessage and take forever to register taps

- The Big Daddy: key taps registering incorrectly in one of two ways: 1. Clearly tapping a letter “taps” a different letter (hot spots poorly calibrated) 2. A correctly tapped letter (keyboard highlight indicates correct letter) but incorrect letter is rendered on document

Anyone irl I’ve discussed the iPhone keyboard with has described frustration so I figured this as more a “some of us are annoyed” flare than a technical manifesto.

As another commenter noted I put a tiny link to my slightly more detailed blog post once this started gaining traction but I’m just having fun here really.

Happy Friday the 13th everyone!

nunez

a day ago

I have autocorrext turned off on my keyboard and typed this without any corrections. These sre the issues i've faced with the stock keyboard:

- accidental periods when typing URLs in Safari

- key target inaccuracy (though turning off swipe-to-tect gas ikproved this a little, though not enough)

- key latnecy which causes letters innsome words to get swapped or extra unwated letters to appear (this could be a me-getting-older prblem, howeverg

- autocorrect suggesting words that I've never typed before (I turned on autocorrect for this list item to make sure i gave it a fair shake; it didn't suggest anything crazy this time, but the number of times it has in the past has led me to turning it off, even after iOS 18 wherein the keyboard supposedly used a small language model to improve suggestions)

I also type longform on my phone sometimes; the keyboard makes this much more exhausting than it needs to be.

BinStorm

a day 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.

Liftyee

a day 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.

sequoia

a day 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?

itopaloglu83

a day ago

Here's a recent conversation I had with Siri.

Me: Hey Siri, set the living room lights to 100%.

Siri: 100% = 1

This has been working for 6-7 years without any issues, and suddenly Siri is giving me math lessons. What the hell is happening in this company?

brianweet

a day 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.h... [1]: https://www.brianweet.com/2015/04/08/low-end-touchscreen-lim...

n8cpdx

a day 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.

biotechbio

a day ago

+1. From the original post, I found this video to be particularly damning: 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?