[abandonliberty]

I was really surprised when I first got an iPhone. After all the hype about it being so intuitive and polished, it was just different. Some things better, some things worse.

But Apple devices take a bit longer to go obsolete, and seem just a tiny bit less invasive as they don't rely on an advertising model for revenue.

[dotancohen]

For the few months that I had to use an iPhone in addition to my regular Android phone, I also tried to convince myself that some things were better and some things were worse.

But the iOS keyboard was completely unusable for me as a power user, and it cannot be replaced. I was missing so many features of Gboard. I absolutely could not consider an iPhone or any other replacement phone for that matter, if it does not support Gboard.

[whycome]

iOS must have changed some things related to keyboards. On an iPhone many years ago it was definitely a better experience. I’m not sure if some sort of predictive text gets in the way or what. Or maybe something with the spacing. Or it also seems like some sort of thread priority issue because there are times where I can distinctly tell that there’s some sort of input lag that’s messing with it.

Gboard is crippled on iOS — why can’t we just have a damn comma on the main screen?! And why can't I just get my keyboard to be at the very bottom of my screen.

It's 2025 and we have gone so far backward.

[JustExAWS]

You’ve been able to replace the iOS keyboard for almost a decade - including with Google’s

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gboard-the-google-keyboard/id1...

[LexiMax]

> But the iOS keyboard was completely unusable for me as a power user, and it cannot be replaced.

If you're still on Android, try FUTO keyboard. I found the voice-to-text feature to actually be on par with Google's, but without the delay of a phone-home.

[sanswork]

You can install gboard on iPhones, I've been using it for several years on one.

[incone123]

I went from OnePlus to Nothing recently. Differences in Android skin felt like rough edges at first.

Google is collecting data but I do not see adverts in the OS.

[dijit]

in the very beginning, there was a lot of animation stutters on android. The UI was much less consistent, and the design language of different programs varied pretty wildly. This gave me at the time, a feeling of a distinct lack of polish..

I would say, though that in the year of our Lord 2025, largely hardware is good enough that the animations never stutter on android anymore, an android applications have largely converged on similar UI paradigms.

So I think the issue with criticism is that people hold in the heads for a very long time, I mean a clear example is how people think Linux is extremely user hostile, despite most metrics of what makes something user hostile being significantly superior on most widely available in the next distributions except of course the power user focused ones. Whereas Windows 11 and macOS clearly do not give a shit about breaking muscle memory or having UI inconsistency.

Criticisms live longer in our minds than they do in reality.

[yepitwas]

It’s gotten worse. 6 and earlier, it was uniquely friendly and approachable.

[ruszki]

In my experience, this was true also with Google’s version. The first few iterations were great, then went shit. I need only one thing: add diacritics, and fix basic misspellings. Now all of them try to be “smart” even when they should just add a diacritic to an “a”, they suggest me something completely different even when the word which I need is in their dictionary.

Maybe most people need more, but it annoys me greatly that it tries to be more than simple misspell fixer.