Comment by DamnInteresting

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.

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.

My favorite ( /s) IOS hassle - aside from running around on 12% battery at all times, didn’t I buy a pro max for the extended capacity ? -

… is not being able to paste into an empty box unless I type a letter there and select it/clobber it/overwrite it

And I just LOOOOOVE not being able to tap a URL in safari and get to the end of it to add parameters or change a path anymore…

Just gave my MacBook that hasn’t been turned on in months away(i haaaaate Tahoe) and been using GrapheneOS on a pixel 7a.

so far I’m not in love with it but I’m getting used to it and starting to like downloading apps anonymously (if I name the app, I’ll probably get scolded) anyway this might be the end of the line for me and Apple.

They're a modern tech company. They need to changes things every so often no matter what downsides come with the change.

YES. WHY?! GOD WHY!?!!?!?!?! I'M GOING INSANE!!

Do you know a corrector that "understands" a typo at the third or fourth character?

If it's 1st or 2nd, then it's ok.

Your statement isn't incorrect - but I think it needs a slight qualification of "And none of them are acceptable". Both Apple and Android have regressed in quality and it's only possible because of a duopoly.

Is there a windows autocorrect? I thought that was a feature implemented by the individual program, not any sort of OS functionality.

I can't tell about windows - never used autocorrect there - but GBoard became laughable. I don't think I was able to use its suggestions since a few years. For instance, it will NEVER but really never put a uppercase I when I'm talking about myself. Never. I could select it from suggestions if I feel like, but I kinda gave up (this is written in Windows, that's why you see capital Is). Or my name, used quite often right, is also never spelled correctly - although it's there in the suggestions. I am using a yahoo email, GBoard knows the username, but it will ALWAYS suggest a gmail extension, which simply doesn't exist. I don't know any other keyboard which can properly handle multiple languages, so I'm stuck with GBoard, but it's nothing to be proud of.

Sounds like the liquid glass animations are so heavy that if the system is busy with anything else for a second then everything simply breaks.

I remember seeing the videos about cpu usage spiking over 40% just to show the control center.

And similarly, even on a Mac I find myself clicking on links and button multiple times, just for things to work. It has a dedicated keyboard, how is it that they messed it up so much that a physical keyboard stops working. It's an interrupt based interface, it takes less than a millisecond to process things, how can someone mess things up so freaking stupidly.

Extremely common pitfall in UI engineering. If you treat all input as a queue that's divorced from output, you end up with situations like this.

It's kind of a paradox, but in many cases you need to actually discard touch inputs until your UI state has transitioned as a result of previous inputs. This gets extremely nuanced and it's hard to write straightforward rules about when you should and shouldn't do this. Some situations I can think of:

- Navigation: User taps a button that pushes a screen on your nav stack. You need to discard or prevent inputs while the transition animation is happening, otherwise you can push multiple copies of that screen.

- Async tasks: User taps a button that kicks off an HTTP request or similar, and you need to wait on the result before doing something else like navigation or entering some other state. Absolutely you will need to prevent inputs that would submit that request twice. You will also need some idempotency in your API design to handle failure/retries. A fun example from the 1990s is the "are you sure you want to make this POST request again" dialog that Web browsers still show by default.

- Typing: You should never discard keystrokes that insert/delete characters while a text input field is focused, but you may have to handle a state like the above if "Enter" (or whatever "done" button is displayed in the case of a software keyboard) does something like submit a form or do navigation.

Essentially we're all still riding on stuff that the original Mac OS codified in the 1980s (and some of it was stolen from Xerox, yes), so the actual interaction model of UIs is a mess of modal state that we hardly ever actually want to fully realize in code. UI is a hard problem!

> They were arguably the pioneers in OS UX

Who is "they"? The employees at Apple when the HIG was first published in 1986, 40 years ago? That Apple is dead, what you see before you is an empty and rotted husk.

First is not the same as best. First is not even the same as good. First is only first. Just because someone was the pioneer doesn't mean they should be considered a positive example.

Introduced a concept decades ago in no way implies that their current implementation of the concept is at all ideal or market leading.

The people at Apple who were the pioneers are long gone. The people at Apple now have killed them and are wearing their skin.

> You could do worse.

Perhaps you shouldn't encourage them. Based on recent software releases from Apple they might see it as a challenge.

> arguably

Sick of this weasel word. Either argue it or don't.

Operative word here is "were".

As long as we are ranting: I have many multilingual converstations. At some point iOS started offering the "German/English" keyboard option. I assume it also does "French/Swahili" or whatever, but for some reason it didn't auto-create a combination for "Hungarian/English" which I use more than German/English.

This sounds like a great idea, but in practice it just autocorrects incorrectly in two languages instead of one. Which is a shame, since even the German government uses a lot of Denglish these days, you'd think it would be trainable.

Meanwhile, when the chat gets stuck in the wrong language, it's a comfort to know that selecting another (or trying to press Shift for that matter) will take me to Keyboard Settings at least 80% of the time. Because who knows when you might need to change those!

Come on, the 6th word after 5 English words is obviously going to be a rare word in your second keyboard language, not another common English word.

Yes this behaviour is infuriating, the surprise autocorrect! Can result in some really embarrassing messages being sent..

Try typing

Other times were not so bad.

I got anxious about autocorrect potentially inserting the wrong words and what kind of social fallout that could cause, so I just disabled it entirely. Takes longer to type everything manually but at least my anxiety has gone down.

that is the worst! i hate that so much!

there must be some kind of event trigger on text focus being removed or keyboard hiding that does that... ughhhh

The keyboard actually does this all the time, and many assume they are the problem (making typos, etc.). A few have recorded videos to show what is actually happening and it's wild. If I had a link handy I'd share it. The user directly taps on a letter, and the system picks what it thinks the user actually meant, even when the key hit was dead on.

Turning off slide to type in settings improves the situation, however it still happens.

There already was one. For all its faults, Swype for Android ~12 years ago was better than any swiping keyboard available now - both in its interpretation of swipes, and in its other features like "squiggle over one letter to indicate a double letter", "run your swipe above the keyboard to indicate a capitalized word", and the incredible editing features (it had an editing keyboard!). The Swype key, located in the bottom left? You could Swype-A to select all, Swype-X to cut, Swype-C to copy, Swype-V to paste. Swype-space brought up the editing keyboard.

Yes to both. That and Safari reloading the page you were just on (from the cache, sometimes) if it can't reach a URL

[dead]

This just feels so backwards. Yes, I know recreating ambiguous issues is annoying because it’s a lot of work, but it’s also our job.

Reminder: we are asking users to give us money in exchange for software.

It’s our job to deliver that working software. It’s not the user’s job to hold our hands and pep talk us into fixing problems. Users can and should find another product that will just do it for them without the whining.

I think the real point of the website, besides joking around, is poking fun at the broke state of the software industry where a bunch of whiny developers and managers will make a million tired excuses for why their software doesn’t just work.

Highlighting bug report and bureaucratic process in response to “your keyboard is jank” is exactly the mindset we need to change.

The point isn’t to start a forum or technical conversation with Apple devs. The point is to laugh at them because their software sucks and “just one more Jira ticket” isn’t going to fix it.

Then again, sometimes a big feature is so comprehensively broken that it’s hard, from the outside, to break it down into specific flaws. Even if you can reproduce the complex circumstances where they manifest.

In the case of the iOS keyboard, I remember one bug that made the rounds (in the popular press!) after somebody recorded their typing in slow motion to validate it [0]. Once they documented it, everybody recognized the feeling and felt vindicated; but it took actual work to substantiate.

That’s the work it seems that Apple engineers should be doing. They have the telemetry, the source access, the design documents, the labs, and the time in their day to make a comprehensive study of it. Just as I can say “my car is handling funny around turns” and let it be the mechanic’s job to diagnose what’s wrong in mechanical terms.

There was a time when this humane aspect was Apple’s particular magic: engineering beyond technical requirements to the point of simplicity, ergonomics, “it just works”…

[0] https://www.macworld.com/article/2952872/heres-proof-that-th...

This isn't a bug report.

Do you honestly think that the developers working for apple looks at the "keyboard experience" and thinks "yeah this is good"? Of course, not. They are competent developers.

I’ve noticed since iOS 7-ish that some sliding animations have such a long tail-end easing of the animation that it blocks the touch input of the user. Like if you accidentally scroll to the side instead of down, you have to let go and wait for the side scroll to completely stop.

Then I watched Tim Cook have trouble with tapping the screen multiple times for one action at one of the older WWDCs pre-COVID.

I felt validated and exasperated. Does Tim just put up with this?

It's so bad that I have to assume that Cupertino is filled with people who "hold the phone differently" and tap with their long fingernails or the very tip of their fingers or something.

I'm always mistyping and I don't know how to fix it to do what they want.

if my experiences at google are any indication, when it comes to "regular user" facing features management pays very little attention to negative feedback from the engineers. it always seems to be assumed that we are atypical in our dislike for things.

They must be, I can't imagine they're all on Android. I'm on iOS and didn't know there was an issue with the keyboard. Maybe it's because I've not tried out any competing ones or maybe because I don't type that much on the phone generally.

I think the keyboard is fine. A few small issues here and there but in general I can type quickly and accurately. I must be lucky though, perhaps my typing style is what apple expects.

My wife got me to switch over from Android 2-3 years ago and I have fucking hated the iOS keyboard from day one.

She has only been complaining since iOS 26, though.

You get that kind of nonsense when people get an irrational attachment to a technology brand.

I see that a lot with Tesla, there's the group that praises them publicly and makes outrageous claims about self-driving... But remains strangely silent about how the windshield wipers don't work right and Tesla won't fix them.

it is under "Keyboard" in settings. I turn off:

auto-capitalization

auto-correction

smart punctuation

It's a 2 minute video. It gets the point across faster than any blog post.

No, it’s not a lot to ask.

That is assuming the user doesn’t first have to offer incense and whisper a fervent prayer to the Omniscient Deity of USB Devices to seize control of the mouse and click the link in divine intervention.

However for most of us that is uncessary and clicking a link to a video requires no effort at all.