SwiftKey to be Available at iOS 8 Launch
by Joshua Ho on September 10, 2014 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- iPad
- iPod Touch
- Mobile
- iPhone
- iOS
- iOS 8
While it was pretty well-known that SwiftKey was coming to iOS 8, it wasn't really clear when this would happen. However, we now know that SwiftKey will be available at the launch of iOS 8, which is definitely great news. For those that are unfamiliar with SwiftKey, this is a custom keyboard that is rather well-known for its word prediction algorithms which adapt to the user over time. In addition to the standard prediction insertion upon tapping the spacebar, SwiftKey's latest version adds automatic space insertion in predictions depending upon context. In addition, if given appropriate permission SwiftKey can scan through social media, email, and text messages to build its prediction systems.
One of the major use cases for SwiftKey is its dual prediction capabilities, which makes it possible for the keyboard to infer what language you intend a word to be in, and change its predictions accordingly. This means you can switch between languages within a sentence without ever tapping a button to switch between languages. This is supported for English US/UK/AU/CA, Portugese BR/PT, French CA/FR, Italian, German, and Spanish ES/Latin America/US. In addition, for the iPod Touch and iPhone SwiftKey on iOS will support Flow, which is largely similar to Swype for those familiar with Nuance's Swype keyboard.
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hawler - Friday, September 19, 2014 - link
I know exactly the problem you are talking about. There is a solution for it though. If you select blahhhhh from the suggestions and it puts in the space afterwards and you want there to be a period DO NOT backspace the sapce. Just type period and SwiftKey will realize that the space shouldnt be there and will replace the space with the period.soccerballtux - Saturday, September 20, 2014 - link
oh, niceBob Todd - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
While I welcome the addition of 3rd party keyboards, I can't help but see this as another example of how far behind Apple had fallen and a somewhat odd shift in focus. When the iPhone was first released (and for its first few iterations) it was always singled out as the gold standard in (virtual) keyboards. Basically every review mentioned how much better the iOS keyboard was than the competition. But instead of keeping focus on this very important aspect of usability and making continuous improvements, they are basically throwing in the towel and leaving it up to 3rd party devs. I've preferred the stock Android keyboard for quite a while, and I use both every day. I do wish they'd gone a bit farther with configurability in iOS 8 and let users pick default apps, especially the browser.BeeksElectric - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
iOS 8 actually has a pretty big update to the stock keyboard with a pretty great predictive type engine. I wouldn't be surprised if they had hardcoded the initial keyboard and took time to rewrite it in a more extensible way, which let them improve it on their end and also open it up for replacement.I do hope in iOS 9 they finally let user select default apps for browsing, email, etc. Until they do, I'll just have to jailbreak to get that functionality.
8lgm - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
SwiftKey!? Fleksy!