I think I’ve figured out why the iPhone keyboard performs so badly compared to Android’s. Setting aside the many features it lacks compared to Android, like being able to type in one language and send the text in another, let’s focus on the basics. On iPhone, the keyboard often feels disappointing. It frequently fails to keep up with your finger, autocorrection is unreliable, the dictionary is missing many words, especially newer and more advanced ones, and so on.
I’ve run some fairly thorough tests recently. I tried using the keyboard in two different ways: like a young person would, with two hands and very quickly, and like an elderly person would, with one hand and slowly. When you use the iPhone keyboard like a young person, typing turns into a mess and you end up preferring voice messages. When you use it like an old person, everything changes completely. Typing is accurate, corrections are accurate, and the suggestions at the top are actually useful because they appear slowly enough for you to read them and tap them if needed. Overall, it’s definitely a slow experience, but one that works much better.
Based on this, I think I understand what Apple’s current problem with the keyboard is. It should be one of the most polished parts of the system, yet on iPhone it’s clearly inferior to the competition. Apparently, Apple’s engineers are boomers who use their phones in an old-fashioned way, so during beta testing they don’t notice these serious issues that, for a very young person who types extremely fast, can be genuinely frustrating. Otherwise, it’s hard to explain why anyone switching from the iPhone keyboard to Google’s keyboard on a Pixel notices an almost shocking improvement, as if they had jumped forward twenty years, typing with two hands at the speed of light.
I’ve run some fairly thorough tests recently. I tried using the keyboard in two different ways: like a young person would, with two hands and very quickly, and like an elderly person would, with one hand and slowly. When you use the iPhone keyboard like a young person, typing turns into a mess and you end up preferring voice messages. When you use it like an old person, everything changes completely. Typing is accurate, corrections are accurate, and the suggestions at the top are actually useful because they appear slowly enough for you to read them and tap them if needed. Overall, it’s definitely a slow experience, but one that works much better.
Based on this, I think I understand what Apple’s current problem with the keyboard is. It should be one of the most polished parts of the system, yet on iPhone it’s clearly inferior to the competition. Apparently, Apple’s engineers are boomers who use their phones in an old-fashioned way, so during beta testing they don’t notice these serious issues that, for a very young person who types extremely fast, can be genuinely frustrating. Otherwise, it’s hard to explain why anyone switching from the iPhone keyboard to Google’s keyboard on a Pixel notices an almost shocking improvement, as if they had jumped forward twenty years, typing with two hands at the speed of light.
