Microsoft to Kill Off SwiftKey for iOS and Delist From App Store on October 5

[russell_314]

yeah, because it’s a great idea to only keep it on the Windows Phone…. Oh wait.

They didn’t do too well with that venture.

 

[russell_314]

It's always a conspiracy, isn't it? Never mind that the reasons given (Apple making low level access needed for a keyboard more and more restrictive) are demonstrably true; that much of the app's once USP functionality is now baked into iOS; that Microsoft have continued to provide/support for the iOS app for many years since acquiring SwiftKey, and that they're continuing to support the Android version (Google being arguably much more of a competitor than Apple). And let's not even talk about how many other non-revenue linked apps MS are maintaining in the App Store.

It’s not a conspiracy. Microsoft is directly going after Apple in their marketing, and they consider them a threat. Google or android is not a competitor because chrome OS definitely isn’t a Windows alternative and isn’t really providing any competition. Microsoft and Google are actually partnering together with Windows 11 to make android apps work on Windows.

 

[blazerunner]

this is bad news.
especially for folks that are using more than one language, because Apple keyboard requires you to switch between them, not to use two at the same time
and this is bad for languages that dont have good suggestion support in Apple keyboard.

The only alternative now is gboard, which I always wanted to avoid, because I dont trust google at all.

Get an Android if you want options. I really don't understand why you'd bother with an iPhone.

 

[Octavius8]

I dont think that it works for me. It keeps suggesting corrections to currently active language, even if Im trying to write in the other. I had to switch between keyboard to get proper autocorrections.

Same here!!!. Far inferior to Swifkey!!

 

[Octavius8]

IOS Keyboard is pathetic.
The suggestions are dumb most of the time, for many words it suggest a totally NEVER used word and it never learns to not suggest those.
Please someone bring the Blackberry Smart Keyboard that suggested words on top of the next possible letters. Look for it on YouTube, it was INNOVATIVE!.
Apple has no imagination. At. All. Just kills the competition.

 

[Octavius8]

Get an Android if you want options. I really don't understand why you'd bother with an iPhone.

Gladly!, but Apple locked me out of that possibility with its closed ecosystem at home!

 

[cocky jeremy]

I honestly forgot 3rd party keyboards even existed. lol. I tried several when it was new and ended up hating them all.

 

[russell_314]

Gladly!, but Apple locked me out of that possibility with its closed ecosystem at home!

How exactly are they locking you out of getting an android phone?

Exactly what is going to break in your world if you don’t have an iPhone? Maybe your Apple Watch won’t work but then you buy the matching watch if you want to.

 

[star-affinity]

Get an Android if you want options. I really don't understand why you'd bother with an iPhone.

To… avoid Google like the one you responded to said was a wish?

 

[solq]

Has anyone tried Grammarly?

 

[Janichsan]

iOS Keyboard got updated long time ago with automatic language understanding! Just add all the languages you speak on the keyboard and it understands right away the language of suggestions.

In theory.

In my experience, Apple's own automatic language switching works much worse than SwiftKey's.

 

[saudor]

Sounds good, but how does that work? Don't you need ios 13 or even 12 for that to work? And macos 10.14 or something? Would like to know more as I tried pretty hard, but got nowhere.

On topic: it's because apple is becoming more and more draconian to developers that are looking to do more than they can do in a Web app.

For iTunes method you need to use Windows because the macOS itunes 12.6.5 no longer works.

But you can do it easily in imazing (only need the free trial version) on macOS. Since I'm seeing some people are interested, I made a super quick tutorial to do this.

 

[vikingjunior]

It’s not a conspiracy. Microsoft is directly going after Apple in their marketing, and they consider them a threat. Google or android is not a competitor because chrome OS definitely isn’t a Windows alternative and isn’t really providing any competition. Microsoft and Google are actually partnering together with Windows 11 to make android apps work on Windows.

A touchscreen Windows with Android apps sounds interesting, never understood why Apple didn't make the Mac touchscreen with iPhone app implementation. Typing on an iPad without an external keyboard is a PITA.

 

[segfaultdotorg]

They should have rebranded it “Taylor Swiftkey.”

 

[Janichsan]

If Microsoft bought it to put it on their Windows phone, then yes I can see pulling it from the App Store because they would want that keyboard exclusive for their phone, but where exactly is Windows phone right now? Oh yeah, still sleeping and dreaming about the iPhone’s funeral 😂

Joke's on you. Microsoft still sells tablets and licenses Windows to other tablet manufacturers. The default touch keyboard built into Windows?

SwiftKey

 

[carlsson]

maybe works for countries that Apple care about, but for my language (polish) with additional english enabled it doesnt really work well. when Im writing english words it wants to autocorrect them to polish words.

not to mention total lack of suggestions like english language has, for the polish language.

I'm from Sweden, and do not see this behavior. If I change language to English it works as intended. Have you applied English as another language in you settings? 🤔

 

[hacky]

Also: This functionality is built into iOS now

It is not. This may be some news for you, but native keyboard does not have (prediction) support for many languages worldwide. And using iPhone without prediction is painful.

 

[Mrjoedot]

was it useful?
There's google doing that already right?

 

[phillypharm]

Shocking that Microsoft would remove an app that benefits a competitor. This is just Microsoft being Microsoft, doing the things they’ve always done. I used SwiftKey long before Microsoft bought it, and I knew that was going to be bad.

LOL because Apple provides all its services to competitors too, right? Yep, I love that I can iMessage my Android friends and respond to texts from my Garmin… oh wait.

Did you also just ignore a similar situation with Dark Sky in the post before this one?

 

[Burger Thing]

Really bad news. As I type multi languages, I have been using SwiftKey for years. It wipes the floor with Apple's pathetic keyboard attempt which seems to be stuck in 2012 or so.

 

[KevinN206]

It’s not a conspiracy. Microsoft is directly going after Apple in their marketing, and they consider them a threat. Google or android is not a competitor because chrome OS definitely isn’t a Windows alternative and isn’t really providing any competition. Microsoft and Google are actually partnering together with Windows 11 to make android apps work on Windows.

I am really not sure if MS partnered with Google to create Android Subsystems for Windows. Android is open sourced so MS took that and integrated into Windows similarly to how it did for Linux. That's why it has Amazon App Store and not Google Play. However, with the Android system in place on Windows, Google will also now release native games for it as well.

 

[star-affinity]

I'm from Sweden, and do not see this behavior. If I change language to English it works as intended. Have you applied English as another language in you settings? 🤔

Swedish was added for ”Predictive Typing” in iOS 15 (I think) but as seen here Polish is still not included for some reason: https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/#quicktype-keyboard-predictive-typing

Also, Swedish is not yet working with ”Multilingual Typing”:

iOS and iPadOS - Feature Availability

iOS and iPadOS have so many amazing features. Find out which ones are available on iPhone and iPad in your country or region.

www.apple.com

 

[gco212]

The big difference is Apple is shutting down Dark Sky because it wants to use the technology in their weather app. If Microsoft bought it to put it on their Windows phone, then yes I can see pulling it from the App Store because they would want that keyboard exclusive for their phone, but where exactly is Windows phone right now? Oh yeah, still sleeping and dreaming about the iPhone’s funeral 😂

Also, they’re not pulling it from the android store from my understanding. Apple completely removed Dark Sky even from its own App Store. I’m not happy to shut that up down because I use it but I understand the motivation. It’s not to spite their competition.

So, Microsoft's grand plan was to buy a keyboard company six years ago, make it really good, and then take it away from Apple users out of spite? But they chose to just be benevolent to those on the Android platform, which for some reason is not Microsoft's competition? Have I got that right?

 

[russell_314]

How does it benefit Microsoft tho?

By hurting their competitor, although only slightly.

 

[nburwell]

I've tried Swiftkey and Gboard, but always gravitated back to the stock iOS keyboard. Kind of surprised to see this being pulled, but then hearing the app hasn't been updated in awhile, it makes sense.