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Comment by reidjs | Hacker News Reader

Part of my solution to this is to identify what parts of a project can be done from my phone and then intentionally avoid doing those on the computer.

- Writing correspondence, essays, docs, todolists? The voice-to-text feature works great on iPhones.

- Reading blog posts or articles? Extract text then run it through the iPhone's screen reader.

- Moving trello tasks around? Do it through the phone app. etc.

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Writing an essay via voice-to-text on my phone sounds like one of the most painful things I could voluntarily subject myself to.

Siri can't even get simple text messages write (pun intended)

The great thing about text editors, and to a large extent also paper, is that they give you random access - you can easily see the whole document and make edits at arbitrary points. It's incredibly ergonomic (there is a reason why books overtook scrolls!) and I doubt voice-driven editing can come close. At the same time, audio is easy for creating conversational-style pieces (e.g. podcasts) but a good final product must always come with timestamped transcripts (how else would one grep and/or skip?)

Part of my solution to this is to identify what parts of a project can be done on my computer and then intentionally avoid doing those on the phone.

If I have access to a nice screen, full keyboard and a mouse, the only reason I need to use my damn phone is developers who prioritize their phone apps over computer based applications (see Apple Music, etc).

I’d be curious to hear what you’re using on iPhone for voice-to-text. I’ve tried a few things and the results have been pretty awful for me.

Oh just tap the little mic button next to the space bar with any app. It works great (admittedly a white, American male here).

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