“Found in a number of well-crafted apps including Launch Center Pro and Wordbox, the iOS-friendly alternative keyboard Fleksy today announced the release of a public SDK allowing developers to easily integrate it with their own apps,” Zac Hall reports for 9to5Mac.
“Prior to the public SDK, support was somewhat limited as it required a private partnership. Fleksy say a dozen new apps will gain support today expects new support to be frequent based on the volume of requests from developers to integrate the keyboard prior to the public SDK,” Hall reports. “‘We’re very excited to finally make our SDK available to hundreds of thousands of developers around the world. We learned a lot from the private beta and today’s release brings the most beautiful, streamlined 3rd-party keyboard experience yet for iOS,’ said Ioannis Verdelis, COO of Fleksy.”
Read more in the full article here.
I really wish Apple would open up the iPhone to third party keyboards. Android definitely has an advantage here. While the iPhone keyboard was pretty nifty since the iPhone first launched in 2007…but seven years later, it’s still the same keyboard. The fact that whole websites exist to show off amusing iPhone typos would seem to indicate they keyboard could use some improvements….
I don’t disagree about opening up the keyboard to replacements or plugins.
I do disagree that evidence for this need can be found at “typo websites” however. If you pay attention to incorrect autocorrection results, it’s because the closest word to what you typo’d was something completely different than what you meant or would make sense in context. So those websites play off the bad reputation with silly claims of autocorrection failures. It’s not autocorrection’s fault that it guessed wrong based on what you typed. I’m all for a keyboard design that leads to fewer typos, but those websites poke fun at autocorrection for a problem the user created. And the existence of such “parody” websites does not lend credibility to the need for better keyboards (rather, I think, they demonstrate an on-going problem in society today where people don’t take responsibility for their own mistakes).
I don’t really disagree with your points. My main point is that, for all of Apple’s innovations (admittedly an over-used word) and constant, incremental improvements, they keyboard has essentially remained unchanged.
The keyboard is one of the most important parts of a smart phone. Sure, transcriptions by Siri are great and impressively accurate, there are many, many times I don’t want to have to talk to my phone.
Anyway, back to my original point — c’mon, Apple — wow us with keyboard improvements, or let others lead the way.
I agree with you accept for the Siri part. Siri is just bloody awful… More often than not I get the ‘I’m really sorry about this but I can’t…’ message from Siri. Additionally when Siri DOES actually work it is ‘impressive’ all accept the fact that it just takes way too long to process. This another area where Android is just killing us right now. Google Now, is accurate, locally processed so it doesn’t get all dumbfounded when data connection isn’t good, and equally as important it’s FAST. Sure, it definitely can’t do half the things that Siri can do but who cares about expanded ability if you can’t even use it because of the inadequate implementation? Isn’t that what Apple is suppose to be about?
Apple does not want some hapless woman once installing some crippling keyboard (crippling effect in such thing can not be always immediately visible, so even curated AppStore might easily pass it), not really understanding and/or forgetting how she did it and how to uninstall it — only for poor woman to suffer from this mess for all of her ignorant eternity of being normal human being, not like us who could easily grasp what we want and how we want, and know what to do to undo things.
This is the only reason why Apple did not provide additional keyboard input methods or third-party keyboards yet. Customizability can cause a lot of suffering for regular people. Even if none of us here can imagine and believe it, this is exactly how real world works, and why limitations are needed.
Maybe Apple will find ways to make sure to not cripple user experience while allowing more keyboards, and maybe not.
I completely understand this issue of not giving too many people too many choices, but if optional keyboards had to be purchased and installed (as opposed to just some switch in Settings), the vast, vast majority of users wouldn’t ever bother changing keyboards. (Similar argument with letting the user select the default Mail and Browsing app).
I’ve been playing with an Android phone for a while now. One of my gripes about the OS is that often times there are way TOO MANY customizable things — it becomes too confusing, even for techy folks. So I’m definitely not advocating for Apple to overdo the options…just want its iron grip loosened up just a little.
I couldn’t disagree with you more… If this so called hapless woman purposely creates an iTunes account, purposely goes into the app store, purposely picks and chooses an keyboard app, downloads it, and purposefully put’s in her password, then purposely opens the app to use it then either:
1.) She doesn’t sound so hapless to me that she wouldn’t know how to delete an app/keyboard
2.) This could already happen with any other of the millions of apps on the App Store since it past the Apple curation process… The keyboard is just another kind of app you can download…
It’s not like this is some sort of malware that popped up on her screen that is perpetrating as a legitimate app and can easily mislead people such as this ‘hapless woman’ and she just clicked on it while being totally confused on what’s legitimate and what’s not… You’re story albeit nice mate, doesn’t hold water in the logic test.
Keyboard is totally different than other million applications. If it is glitchy, it can totally kill user experience for whole device.
As I wrote, this is the only reason why there are still not third-party keyboards, you can not possibly come up with any other reason.
Apple iOS was known for its straight forward approach of non-customizing, simple design, easy-to-read keyboard.
In other words, we do not choose our keyboard, let the easiest way of interaction between human and machine be in its way. Apple did this very well in all aspect.
Adding option to customize keyboard brings fragmentation, it’s time consuming, and it eats resource.
I want my time utilized by using it rather than customizing
Does it have a proper Delete key for Forward-Delete functionality ? Drives me nuts that iPad keyboard doesn’t have a way to do that. A simple shift-delete combo would do, come on Apple its there on every business computer in the world for a reason!
I guess they want you to highlight text and press delete in that situation..
I’m wondering if this keyboard ‘replacement’ supports all the languages that iOS supports.. Otherwise would developers have to manage Apps with and without the Flexsy keyboard.