This is not a cell phone. Do you know what's faster than predictive text for entering data? A good solid keyboard. 50wpm is not very fast for a touch typist and it's not hard to get up to that speed. Do you really think it's faster to type half a word and touch the rest on a predictive list? Do you really think it's better for a non-typer to get used to that nonsense rather than typing properly?
Personally, I spend about 6 hours a day typing and type around 90wpm, often with my eyes closed in a semi-relaxed state. One thing I'm never going to buy is a computer with a crappy keyboard.
That said the function keys or touchbar is a complete non-issue to me one way or the other because I really don't use the function keys often. Going to the flat keyboard from the rMB is a dealbreaker for me.
Yep, and what percentage of keyboards will have the magic touchbar over the next few years to encourage app devs to spend the effort on special functionality for it?
Everything I want is tactile keys with good travel
Have you considered a Galaxy s7 edge sitting on the desk next to your computer? The scrolling news feed on the always-on display is pretty impressive.
Ooh, this is a lot to unpack! Okay, so first off, I don't consider myself an excellent touch-typist, but as I've said I average around 75 wpm, which is faster than you can get by pecking. So I do touch-type. And no, I don't think that having predictive text in a word processor would make me faster. But it might make some people faster, so I can see the appeal for those folks. Which I why I said it would likely be configurable. I'd personally turn it off.
The fact is that if you don't have a reason to spend hours a day typing (which we both do, apparently), then you'll never actually get any faster. Like any skill, it takes practice. And like most skills, if you don't have a reason to learn it, it's probably not worth your time (part of the reason I am terrible at, say, basketball). So, if someone doesn't type regularly and can't touch-type and would benefit from some predictive text... well, why not?
And I doubt that would be a per-app sort of setting. If predictive text exists in a future release of macOS, it'll be handled by Apple's default text entry schema, just like spell checking and replacement. So a system-wide setting, unless the app overrides it. In fact, I'm skeptical that any 3rd party apps will have access to that bar in the near future. It would be nice, like I said, but I doubt it'll happen.
I'm with you on not having any idea where the function keys sit by muscle memory, I just don't use them often enough for that. So replacing them with a touch bar for me is a non-issue as well.
But I love the nMB keyboard. I type much faster when there's less key travel. I've actually hit 87wpm on that keyboard, but that was a single datapoint, so I'd need to try it a few more times to get a reliable average. But considering the fastest I'd managed up to that point was 80 (maybe 81, I can't recall exactly), it's a non-trivial improvement.
And uh... sure, I'll give the S7 a try just as soon as it's not running Samsung's bloated take on Android.
