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

Ledgem said:
People are shouting this one down over multilingual issues, and while that's valid, English users should care because of another reason: iPads. If you want swipe-style functionality on an iPad, you're not going to get it on the full-sized iPad keyboard. You need to shrink it down to the iPhone-sized, minimized or split keyboard to be able to swipe. That's a pain. Swiftkey allowed you to have the full-sized keyboard and retain swiping functionality.

This is horrible news. Once you get used to swipe-style keyboards, tapping letters feels archaic. It's similar in feel to the difference between typing with an on-screen keyboard and tapping out letters by repeatedly having to press certain numbers with old-style "dumb" phones.
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It's not valid, that functionality is only available for a handful of languages.

Specifically English, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and Hindi.
 
russell_314 said:
I never said that, and if you read my replies, I explain how the situation with dark sky is completely different than what’s going on with this. I know with this thread it’s probably getting out of hand with so many replies. It becomes impossible to track who said what sometimes
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You're right, Apple's move is worse. They removed Dark Sky from the Play store and they are shutting it down completely on 1/1 so you can't even use it if you still have it (which I do). At least MS is letting you still use it as long as you have it on your device. Also, they are only integrating it (poorly IMO) into their native weather app so they can only take advantage of it while MS just said it's not worth keeping it there because they can't improve it the way they'd like with Apple's restrictions.
 
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I'm using SwiftKey until it stops working, but I did install Gboard just to future-proof myself.

Below is the review of Gboard that I posted on the App Store.

"I've used SwiftKey for as long as I can remember, but it will soon be delisted on the App Store. I'm going to continue using it as long as it works, but since it obviously isn't a long-term solution, I'm going to have to switch to another third-party keyboard (I can't stand the stock Apple keyboard). A friend mentioned that Gboard allows custom backgrounds (or "wallpapers," if you will), so I'm giving it a try. But that enormous colorful G on the upper left-hand corner of Gboard is ugly. Microsoft didn't feel the need to slap a huge logo of their company on SwiftKey (in fact, SwiftKey merely has the words "Microsoft SwiftKey" in a tiny font on their space bar), so I don't know why Google feels the need to have that huge G on Gboard taking up space that could've been used for something useful. I'm giving the app a three-star rating and will consider increasing it if and when Google chooses to shrink or eliminate the gargantuan G from Gboard."
 
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Rafagon said:
I'm using SwiftKey until it stops working, but I did install Gboard just to future-proof myself.

Below is the review of Gboard that I posted on the App Store.

"I've used SwiftKey for as long as I can remember, but it will soon be delisted on the App Store. I'm going to continue using it as long as it works, but since it obviously isn't a long-term solution, I'm going to have to switch to another third-party keyboard (I can't stand the stock Apple keyboard). A friend mentioned that Gboard allows custom backgrounds (or "wallpapers," if you will), so I'm giving it a try. But that enormous colorful G on the upper left-hand corner of Gboard is ugly. Microsoft didn't feel the need to slap a huge logo of their company on SwiftKey (in fact, SwiftKey merely has the words "Microsoft SwiftKey" in a tiny font on their space bar), so I don't know why Google feels the need to have that huge G on Gboard taking up space that could've been used for something useful. I'm giving the app a three-star rating and will consider increasing it if and when Google chooses to shrink or eliminate the gargantuan G from Gboard."
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The G is greyed out if you disable full access, which I would recommend.
 
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Sucha shame... Apple keyboard doesn't really support many languages and SwiftKey is superior to it in almost every aspect.
I guess we're doomed to use Gboard now
 
man. this was my first third party keyboard i used and still had used it up until a few months ago. it started acting up and not popping up. that was a main issue with mine. it wouldn’t pop up or freeze on pages.

RIP in peace Swiftkey.
 
prwnr said:
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.
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It works but not in a way that’s useful or reliable for me at least
 
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This is sad news. I use SwiftKey because of the number row at the top. Plus he has my email and text predictions from years ago.
 
malko said:
For me this is a BIG dealbreaker. I just got myself an iPhone 14 Pro Max but it is likely to be my last iPhone after this announcement.

I'm typing in three languages and SwiftKey was the only "OK" keyboard for iPhone – not really "good" since it could only handle two languages on iOS due to artificial memory limitations imposed by Apple. But still good enough since it at least allows me to type in my main two languages effortlessly.

But without SwiftKey there is not even a "good enough" keyboard for me on iPhone. Sure, it will remain on my iPhone even though it doesn't get updates, but no chance I will buy a new iPhone in a year or two if there is no new keyboard in App Store to fill the empty space after SwiftKey...

PS. To anyone suggesting to use Apples built-in keyboard with multiple languages set up: No, that is not an option. Apples keyboard only supports English + 9 additional languages – none of which I use.
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Sorry to hear that this will cause problems for you, but it's super impressive that you are fluent in multiple languages. I'd love to be a polyglot. I struggle with just one.
 
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NO!!!! my favorite keyboard. Apple's own sucks. I can type in 2 simultaneous languages and the corrections are flawless and twice as fast as Apple's...
:(
 
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I'm getting frustrated with Apple lately... Nothing really innovative in years... Just got a 14 Pro Max and sitting next to my old 13 Pro Max and my girlfriend's 12 Pro Max, from the front, you couldn't tell one apart...even from the back they look almost the same. Samsung is doing flip phones and new stuff and they started by copying Apple but improving on it... Same goes with iOS... Same old stuff from years ago. No real way to customize the UI, same icons, same menus... The Dynamic island is just a gimmick and the same useless keyboard without multi language since I can remember...
:mad:
 
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ppdix said:
I'm getting frustrated with Apple lately... Nothing really innovative in years... Just got a 14 Pro Max and sitting next to my old 13 Pro Max and my girlfriend's 12 Pro Max, from the front, you couldn't tell one apart...even from the back they look almost the same. Samsung is doing flip phones and new stuff and they started by copying Apple but improving on it... Same goes with iOS... Same old stuff from years ago. No real way to customize the UI, same icons, same menus... The Dynamic island is just a gimmick and the same useless keyboard without multi language since I can remember...
:mad:
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the dynamic island is the gimmick they’ll feature for at least the next 3 iphones until the full screen comes with USB-c. i hate it
 
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S G said:
The G is greyed out if you disable full access, which I would recommend.
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No it's not. In fact I tried a plain background and the G is full black inside of a white circle. Bold. If I select the G, it then says to enable full access to search.
 
yanki01 said:
the dynamic island is the gimmick they’ll feature for at least the next 3 iphones until the full screen comes with USB-c. i hate it
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It's still a NOTCH, now floating! The gap on the top is hideous. How on earth is everyone falling for the "dynamic island" gimmick, because the Apple Marketing Team want to control the narrative?
 
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bLackjackj said:
It's still a NOTCH, now floating! The gap on the top is hideous. How on earth is everyone falling for the "dynamic island" gimmick, because the Apple Marketing Team want to control the narrative?
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Sadly everyone is drunk on the Apple juice.

Rather that the stupid island, I wanted under screen touch ID and USB-C. It is beyond embarrassing that a 2022 iPhone that shoots 4k has to export files at USB 2.0 speeds.

3rd party iOS browsers are also severely crippled by Apple.
 
malko said:
PS. To anyone suggesting to use Apples built-in keyboard with multiple languages set up: No, that is not an option. Apples keyboard only supports English + 9 additional languages – none of which I use.
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Where are you seeing the 9 language limit? There are at least 100+ languages variants supported and some of those variants have their own keyboard variants like QWERTY and DVORAK for English. The number of languages you can switch between is also way more than 9 if there is even a limit. I just added like 20 and it still lets me add more.

Edit: I see, you are talking about multilingual typing.
 
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Haiku_Oezu said:
Oh my god yes

Also when speaking to Siri, good luck having it understand the name of a track when it’s set to anything but English
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Siri never worked with multilingual environment, and may never will, since apple doesn’t want to support it In any meaningful way.
This reason alone will put Siri in perma ban list of iOS features for me.
 
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