Thursday, December 17, 2020

iOS Autocorrect and the Delete Key

Hank Green:

On Android, if you type a word and it wrongfully autocorrects it, the moment you hit backspace it changes back. On iPhone, if you type a word and it wrongfully autocorrects it, and you delete it and retype it IT WILL CHANGE IT AGAIN TO THE EXACT SAME WRONG WORD.

Ken Kocienda:

When I created the original iPhone autocorrection code, I treated the delete key as an important signal, and I made sure that the software didn’t offer the same correction after a delete.

Not doing the wrong thing was just as important to me as doing the right thing.

Previously:

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I actually finally turned off autocorrect on my iPhone. I've had it. It's easier to type without. It somehow manages to get progressively worse the more it learns.

It's been said before, but since its flaws keep repeating themselves, I'll repeat it again: autocorrect is much worse nowadays than it used to be on older iOS.

Hell, I can't even override its dumb proclivities: whenever I type "ya", it insists on replacing with "y'a". Every time. Even when I re-type it. Despite having manually added "ya" as a word to my autocorrect dictionary.

Holy cow that really grinds my gears. The OS should make things easier, not harder.

I agree with Ben, autocorrect is much worse now than in the past

Just last week, I finally disabled autocorrect, and have no regrets. It's mildly annoying that I now have to capitalize things manually, but that's *way* less annoying than repeatedly deleting the wrong word (Hank Green's complaint), or having it change a word unnoticed. The suggestion feature seems horribly broken, and my guess is that it updates the choices just before I tap a suggested word, because the damn thing nearly always inserted the wrong word.

Autocorrect, Preview, Disk Utility, etc. have never recovered from their utterly unnecessary rewrites. Apple seems stuck in CADT churn, and has been for a long time now.

Agree that autocorrect continues to be substantially worse than its original implementation. This, combined with the new cursor movement gestures which make it far harder to place the cursor predictably, and swype constantly mis-firing, has made text entry on iPhones continually frustrating.

Case in point: I had to type a bunch of words in this comment 5 or more times to get them right. Almost gave up in frustration.

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