Oh, I wasn’t even defending those who don’t like change (though they’re not always automatically just wrong; new things are shittier than what they replace just as often as they are better). Just expressing fatigue with people going to the old buggy whip well every time that general type of discussion happens…
(It’s like people saying “[Insert title here] II: Electric Boogaloo” every single time a sequel to anything is announced or even speculated about as a possibility.)
You were guessing wrong.
No. However, as a progammer I use a real IDE these days, unless I do toy projects in Perl or make simple adjustments in old code.
Smartphones , tablets and even Google Glass are real computers. They are just not the tools for programming, at least not with the current paradigm of using structured language with a fixed vocabulary and a grammar.
Not screen real estate but device real-estate. Smartphones and tablets are limited by the size of the users hand and the what weight we want to carry around. A physical keyboard takes away from that, even though text entry is not one of the main points of the device.
Oh, I’ve got a toddler on my own. I do not have to use the smartphone to get his attention, just sitting at the computer will do that, so the point what I use to enter text is kinda moot.
However, when he’s sleeping in my arm, hitting fn twice and dictate short replies is a great help.
But we’re talking about keyboard with the context Blackberry, i.e. mobile device to be used on the go. Blackberry is famously about direct communication between people, that’s their schtick. And if that includes writing really a lot while on the go, a hardware keyboard is probably better. But this skews their view on the overall market: The vast majority of people do not exchange large texts. I believe even people using forums like BoingBoing are already outliers when it comes to reading and writing texts on the web.
I take part in many discussion boards and yes, I’m using a keyboard. Of course, I got raised on VIC-20, Apple ][ and so on, so a keyboard feels perfectly natural to me, too. Hell, I still do much of my stuff on the command line and edit epubs in emacs.
But when I’m away from my desks, I don’t edit epubs, I don’t code, and so on. Why would I? Even if the tools weren’t the problem, many of these tasks require time to think with no outside interruption. A normal programmer doesn’t like task switches and you can’t avoid those while traveling or walking and so. Same for many other professions, too.
I still do lightweight stuff. Reading mail, sending short replies, deleting mails, checking accounts, answering tweets, scheduling home repairs - a hundred things can be done while away from the desk and those require only minimal text entry, which can still be done by dictation.
Privacy is an issue, of course, but saying “Text my husband I’m coming later“ is not really different from calling my husband and telling him myself.
Ooooooh, burn.
I used both SwiftKey and Swype, and preferred Swype.
For what it’s worth, I use both. (With a two-click sequence to shell out from Eclipse to Emacs when I need a more powerful editor.)
I have Swiftkey and Swype. But I’d still look seriously at a vanilla Android phone with a physical keyboard. Maybe BlackBerry could try that?
How long ago? SwiftKey has been radically updated over time. If it was a recent, extensive comparison, what gave Swype the edge?
Sarah Palin, for example.
There was a recent influx of astroturfers with an affinity for rob ford, and general trollery. Welcome, stick around, be nice.
The default new user => basic user rules according to this are:
If a user sticks around long enough to read a bit, Discourse now trusts them as a basic user.
They can get to trust level 1 by…
- entering at least 5 topics
- reading at least 50 posts
- spend a total of 15 minutes reading posts
[…]
Users at trust level 1 can…
- use all core Discourse functions
- have all new user restrictions removed
BoingBoing may have different settings, but I think if you just wander around a bit you will stop being a “new” user.
I like- no I LOVE touchscreens with slideout keyboards. I just wish that more smartphones came that way.
This was back when I had a smartphone, 2 years ago. At that point, Swype was lightyears ahead of SwiftKey.
And I, in this case. 
Dictation over typing is superior in some cases.
I have these cases on a regular basis:
Leaving the kitchen and telling Siri to set the time to 10 minutes.
Walking from X to Y or steering a car and telling Siri to take a note, create a reminder, etc
It would be impossible to this with typing on any keyboard, hard or soft. The technology works well enough for me to use it (otherwise I’d drop it like a stone) and can be expected to work better.
This was back when I had a smartphone, 2 years agoThat explains it.
They’ve pretty much reached feature parity (overall), but I’ve found that SwiftKey has surpassed Swype in speed because of code bloat (although Swype devs are aware of this issue and working on it) among some other advantages.
It’s easy to get locked into one technology or another over time especially when it comes to things like this because it can take time for the final evaluation to properly manifest itself - and, to complicate things, it’s often evolving.
Kind of like Launchers on the Mac. Some people swear by Alfred because they only used LaunchBar for a couple of hours several years ago in comparison and vice versa. And, of course, everyone has their own idiosyncratic usages of the tools as well that makes one tool work for better for them than the other, perhaps. For this reason, I actually use both Alfred and LaunchBar at the same time (which I know is highly unusual, but works for me).
Overall, I’m just glad that both Swype and SwiftKey exist to compete with each other and push each other to excel.
EDIT/UPDATE:
I just updated and re-enabled Swype to test it.
It still doesn’t show a live preview of the words as you swipe them like SwiftKey does. Swype only shows you the text after you’ve completed swiping. That continuing situation unfortunately makes Swype pretty lame unfortunately and I’m sticking with SwiftKey.
SwiftKey has much better options for keyboard layouts… i.e., the lack of handy left and right arrow keys (next to each other) is driving me nuts in Swype and I still don’t see that option to enable them. I mean, I can see arrow keys if I do a gesture first for the number keyboard, but that’s extra steps I don’t want in order to simply move the cursor left and right.
Swype still has its advantages though and if they can tackle the critical live preview option and have better options for keyboard layouts (with left/right arrow keys, for example) I’d definitely look into switching back to it someday. But as of today, SwiftKey has got it beat and is lightyears ahead when it comes to a predictive live preview (that way you can swipe tremendously faster because you’ll see the word you want pop up and stop swiping when you see it and start the next swipe).
On a positive note, the Swype update has made it much faster than it was after it got bloated. As far as why I’d switch back to Swype if they took care of those critical issues I mentioned above is mainly because Swype has far superior gesture implementation.
Swype superior gestures: http://www.swype.com/tips/advanced-tips/
SwiftKey janky gestures: http://support.swiftkey.net/knowledgebase/articles/163468-what-gestures-can-i-use-with-swiftkey-
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