“Apple is doing something right,” Ben Munson writes for Wireless Week. “I asked a developer friend of mine what he thought of iOS 8 and he actually had a lot of nice things to say about it. He reserved his biggest praise for third-party keyboards. Besides the benefit of being able to swap out the iOS keyboard, he said that giving developers access to the firmware showed progress for the traditionally guarded Apple.”
“Custom keyboards and other iOS 8 additions like interactive notifications have been available to jailbreakers for years now. Apple making those features iOS official essentially renders those jailbreak tweaks obsolete. There will always be tweaks or modifications enough to motivate some to jailbreak. But my friend said that if Apple keeps this up, he was hopeful that by iOS 9, he won’t even have to jailbreak,” Munson writes. “[But] if the hurdles for developers are shrinking, the learning curve for the common end-user might be getting steeper.”
“The grumblings are minor but the few I’ve seen so far go something like “Oh, great. iOS is getting more complicated?” *frowny face*,” Munson writes. “If the modification-happy crowd likes what it’s seeing, then there’s a chance the everyday user might not.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Nope. Everyday iOS 8 users will be better than just fine, thanks.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “TowerTone” for the heads up.]
I can change my keyboard to my own choosing?!?! Fire Tim Cook!
/s
Laughing out loud and weeping for humanity at the same time.
I thought custom keyboards would be a natural and hugely advantageous feature over the likes of Blackberry when I bought my original iPhone. It is surprising and disappointing that it has taken Apple this long to make them available, but welcome at last.
Personally, I’d much rather have custom keyboards late and do designed in the right way than sooner and designed badly. From what I’ve seen and read so far, Apple has taken the time to design keyboard extensions quite well in iOS8.
Please do not give Apple the excuse that they can have to time to design a keyboard properly. There have been great keyboards out there for years from third-party suppliers and phone manufacturers. The keyboad that will be available in IOS will be the more or less ported from these already established products.
I hope that – finally! – one of those keyboards will be Dvorak — a modern keyboard for a modern OS. (Okay, seventy years old, but a lot better than Qwerty from early Victorian times.)
You want a John Dvorak keyboard?!?!?
Does it only spew totally nonsensical schlock about Apple?
What is nice is that 3rd party keyboards were implemented securely – it is possible with jailbroken iPhones/Android keyboards for keystrokes to be captured or sent to other apps.
Yup, if someone would like to add a keyboard- great. I have no problem with this, as long as Apple does not make a Window or Android “Hellstew” of choices in the UI.
non-issue. most basic users won’t even know a 3rd party keyboard option even exists.
People like to complain, as monkeys like to throw poo.
Those that spend their day rearranging the android interface complain the loudest about not being able to do that with their iPhone.
Exactly like those who spend their days running antivirus software, deleting malware, cleaning out cookies, defragging their hard drive, and endlessly rebooting, bitch about how Mac users don’t need to do those “necessary” things.
I thought politicians were the only ones who spread the shit around.
It seems the the politicos have been mimicking the monkeys all these centuries.
The control center needs another button to toggle Basic/Custom capabilities. If you disagree them you’ve never face getting work done of an un recognizable machine configure for another’s tastes.
I’m curious to hear what the alternative choice would be: an over-the-top, customize-everything Android?
Hard to find more absurd article out there.
The thing the writer does not understand it is not the over-the-top customization that Apple device users like it is the reliability. I have no doubt that there will be problems but I also feel comfortable that Apple is providing better control and much easier to undo customization. I certainly hope the undo would be as simple as delete the customized App and download it again or a “Reset to Default” for the given app or function.
I wish they had this sooner. I finally retrained my brain to get iOS 7’s shift button after months of dealing with its incomprehensibility.
“Wireless Week”
“Wireless Weak”
Jeezus, what a crock of horse shit.