Swiftkey: We just want to be free - Apple didn't bump us The British creators of a smart-typing app called SwiftKey have denied the decision to give it away for free was inspired by Apple's announcement of its own keyboard software. London-based SwiftKey has cut the cost of its app from £1.49 to nothing, relying on a freemium model to help bring home the bacon. Apple recently threw …
It's not like this sort of thing should come as a surprise clear out of the blue.
If you build Angry Birds I think you can assume your business model is pretty safe from Apple. I doubt Apple will include Angry Birds functionality in the next iOS release.
But if you decide to compete directly with Apple with a keyboard product (guess what, Apple made a touch keyboard way before any iOS app developer) then it shouldn't come as a huge surprise if they decide to compete back.
Anybody who can't predict this sort of thing shouldn't be in business in the first place.
Interesting no-one mentions that Google have being doing exactly the same as Apple on android for years.
The stock keyboard on my Nexus 5 does Swype style typing out of the box.
Apparently "one faceless corp does same as another faceless corp" doesnt play well to the biases of the more bigoted of the commentard zealots on here.
"Interesting no-one mentions that Google have being doing exactly the same as Apple on android for years.
The stock keyboard on my Nexus 5 does Swype style typing out of the box"
The difference being that Google has always allowed the likes of Swype in its store, even when their own stock keyboard was nowhere near as good, whereas Apple has banned them until its own product could match their functionality.
"The difference being that Google has always allowed the likes of Swype in its store, even when their own stock keyboard was nowhere near as good, whereas Apple has banned them until its own product could match their functionality."
Allowing 3rd party keyboards is a feature. Google had to do work to allow this. Apple didn't do that work. That doesn't mean they "banned" 3rd party keyboards, they just didn't do any work to support them.
I don't have a Ferrari, but that doesn't mean I'm banning myself from having a Ferrari.
I've used Google's predictive keyboard on Android and don't see the point. By the time I've distracted myself scanning the list of predictions, recognize that one matches what I'm trying to type, and gotten my finger out of the muscle-memory flow of pressing keys in order to tap on the prediction, I could have just typed the word I wanted.
While I'm at it, I also hate swiping to type. I type with two hands (well, fingers) and feel ridiculous if I'm reduced to "typing" with one finger by dragging it [sometimes relatively long distances] around a keyboard. It's definitely slower for me.
I wonder if Apple has done any studies about how much this sort of stuff actually helps users type vs. how much users assume it helps.
Have you ever had to type # or £ or = or + or - or anything like that on Android? Do you hate flipping through the pages of special keys to find them? Don't you wish you could get to it just by holding down a letter key on the regular keyboard for a fraction of a second longer than normal?
You need SwiftKey.
They may not have had a choice: Google ripped Swype off something shocking with the default Android keyboard (and keeps changing the default keyboard back to it on my Nexus 4) and now Apple are throwing money at predictive keyboards too. They must have to keep the cost of entry to zero to tempt people to take a look.
But SwiftKey is just amazing: I will install it the second it launches on iOS. If you can't stand flipping through THREE SCREENS just to find underscore you will love it.
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