My experience sounds much the same, yes. I suppose your friend also touch-types? I find it very difficult to look at my fingers instead of the text while I'm trying to write - it's so distracting! - but of course that makes it tougher to hit the simulated keys I mean to press. I suspect that people who never learned to type properly might have an easier time of it.
This likely compounds: when some task will be an order of magnitude easier if I wait to do it on a computer, I'm unlikely to bother attempting it on a phone, so I likely never spend enough time trying to write on a phone to develop fluency with its interface.
I never use autocorrect or any sort of typing-assistance features, on the phone or anywhere else. All the flashing and zooming is unbearably distracting, and the machine guesses wrong often enough that it feels like more hindrance than help.
I have not yet spent enough time playing with AI tools to have developed much of an opinion about them, but I can easily imagine why your friend might feel that way - I, too, have very little patience for unruly tools! If I have to think about the tool, and manage it, and can't just wield it as an extension of my mind, it usually feels better to just do the work by hand, even if that would take longer.
> My experience sounds much the same, yes. I suppose your friend also touch-types? I find it very difficult to look at my fingers instead of the text while I'm trying to write - it's so distracting! - but of course that makes it tougher to hit the simulated keys I mean to press. I suspect that people who never learned to type properly might have an easier time of it.
We are both touch typists, I actually don't know how I would type on a phone keyboard quickly while looking at the letters. I don't, I look at the words to see if they correct the way I want them to.
> I never use autocorrect or any sort of typing-assistance features, on the phone or anywhere else.
Yeah, that pretty much makes touchscreen keyboards useless. It is a fundamental part of their design IMO. Like trying to use a stand mixer to make bread but cranking it manually instead of using the motor because you can't feel the dough.
> Yeah, that pretty much makes touchscreen keyboards useless. It is a fundamental part of their design IMO.
If it’s a fundamental part of their design, then why does it suck so hard?
80/20 problem. You are in the 20 and they don't care.
Interesting that you also touch-type, but it doesn't bother you that you can't know whether you're hitting the keys you're aiming for. I wonder what that would feel like.
Autocorrect/complete features may well be a fundamental part of the intended usage, but they make the experience substantially worse for me. It takes less work and causes less frustration to simply fix my typos than it would to battle with an obstreperous moron robot which thinks it knows what I am trying to say better than I do.