Hacker News Reader

Comment by pasquinelli | Hacker News Reader

or maybe typing on a touch screen sucks

My wife’s an editor and writer and uses voice to text all the time when messaging on her phone.

I think OP means sending actual voice memos. Yeah, I’d just never listen to most of those. I’m not the sort who has AirPods in my ears all day, so stuff with audio in messaging apps usually gets skipped.

I can swipe with Google gboard faster than I can type on a real keyboard (and I'm a programmer and can type), but I tried that google keyboard ("Gboard") on my iPhone and it was awful - slow to respond, lots of mistakes. (Until fairly recently, Apple didn't allow third-party keyboards at all, and iPhone still doesn't allow third-party keyboards access to all the API's, so they're a bit hamstrung). (Note: on GrapheneOS, I block Gboard from all network access, so it doesn't learn from my mistakes or new words, but it's still light years beyond running it on iPhone.)

So it might be a platform-specific thing. I definitely find typing on an iPhone to be rather painful, but swiping on Android is very, very fast.

I've been using swipe on Android for almost a decade and it still features me. Sometimes it works well. Other times it mangles almost every word in a sentence. I've sent thousands of embarrassing messages over the years, but I can't imagine doing regular typing all the time.

Smartphones have built-in dictation. And having to listen to audio messages sucks. As does reading all-lowercase messages without punctuation.

Everything sucks without training.

I am faster on a touchscreen than most people are on a keyboard. I have seen teens who are ~50% faster than me.

It's just training.

Why do you compare speed to "sucking"? I don't care about the speed or efficiency, it just feels terrible.

On the other hand (on both hands ;) ) it feels wonderful to type on my thinkpad. I never compared speed or accuracy, it's just undeniably much more comfortable.

I don't think I will convince you, but that is training as well.

Yes, in the beginning, it feels terrible, because you hit the glass too hard, but after some time you adjust your tapping and hit the screen with the minimal force necessary to register a touch.

Yea, it will probably never feel as comfortable as your thinkpad, but once you get the hang of it, it isn't the difference between "wonderful" and "sucking".

What do you mean "in the beginning"? For how long do you think I've been using a phone lol?

There's no convincing, it's like comparing old, low quality shoes that don't even fit you to my perfect pair of shoes.

I can use all 10 fingers with minimal movement, I get immediate feedback, I don't have to hold anything. There's no training that can replace that. Typing on a touch screen will never not such.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com