After
Apple announced support
for third-party keyboards on iOS 8 at WWDC 2014 on Monday, popular
keyboard makers Swype, Swiftkey and Fleksy have jumped the gun to
announce that their keyboards should be available on the operating
system soon.
Swiftkey and
Fleksy have made announcements on their
websites and are providing beta access to early subscribers. On the
other hand, the popular Android-only keyboard Swype was shown as a demo
at the WWDC conference. Talking to Geekwire
via email, Mike McSherry, the former Swype CEO said, "Excited to see it
finally happen and I'm sure this will instantly capture millions of app
downloads".
(Also see: 10 New iOS 8 Features Showcased at WWDC)
Apple
hasn't allowed developers to access keyboard APIs in the past and the
company believed that this would help in maintaining the best customer
experience. As a result extremely popular keyboard replacements never
made their way into the iOS ecosystem. There is a Swiftkey app that is
currently available on iTunes which is basically a note-taking app and
not as powerful as the standalone keyboard. Swiftkey basically scans
through the user's social networking accounts and understands typing
patterns to predict the next word. It is rather intuitive. Apple's new
QuickType keyboard works almost similarly. Swiftkey has no affiliation
with the engineering of Apple's new keyboard.
Swype, as the name
suggests, uses a swipe mechanism which lets users run through the
alphabets on a Qwerty keyboard to create a word. It also does
prediction. Fleksy, which is already available on the app store and
compatible only with 50 apps at the moment, features a patent pending
autocorrect system that claims to work even when the user is not looking
at the screen.
(Also see: 10 Big Changes in OS X Yosemite)
At
the 25th anniversary edition WWDC, Apple unveiled a new version of OS
X, called Yosemite,
as well as the latest iteration of its mobile OS,
iOS 8.
Microsoft Adds Bing AI Chatbot to SwiftKey Keyboard on Android and iOS: All Details14 April 2023
Search
