
The Trials and Tribulations of Writing a 3rd Party iOS Keyboard - archagon
http://beta-blog.archagon.net/2014/11/08/the-trials-and-tribulations-of-writing-a-3rd-party-ios-keyboard/
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lukifer
While Apple's software quality has never been perfect, it certainly feels like
it's been trending more negatively than positively in the past several years,
since Tim Cook took over and Forstall [left / was kicked out].

My guess is that it's largely a sin of omission: Apple has such a strong drive
to add features and keep pace with Android, that fewer resources are
marshalled to do purely internal improvements (iOS 7/8 badly needs its Snow
Leopard iteration). They've also been even more focused on hitting arbitrary
release dates (as driven by events and new hardware) which is never a good
formula for reliable softare.

~~~
FireBeyond
It seems to be hugely bad nowadays. The third party keyboard bugs have been
constant for me (and across different ones), both my GF and I’s Facebook apps
regularly stop updating (pull down and it spins endlessly), requiring an app
restart (though that could be the app - but many other apps seem to be plagued
with issues, and I -know- my home wifi is rock solid - also happens on LTE).

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saurik
> Consequently, all the 3rd party keyboards currently available on iOS feel
> like some sort of jailbreak hack.

This broad-stroke characterization is a little heavy-handed... one of the
really powerful things about writing software on jailbroken devices is that
you actually _can_ , _easily_ , just modify the system keyboard to add
functionality, instead of having to build an "alien" work-a-like: the power of
development on jailbroken systems is just how absolutely native and integrated
you can be. Sure, the things that might be most memorable to you are the
things that looked the most out of place, but I have seriously had people who
own an iPhone as their main device--people who have their iPhone in their hand
at that moment--look at me with disbelief when I show them extensions like my
Cyntact (which adds contact photos to all native address book lists; iOS 7
finally added this to the Favorites list, but this story is from a time when
none of the lists had this seemingly obvious feature), insisting that their
iPhone also has the same feature, only to be shocked when they pull it out of
their pocket and it actually doesn't. Things that blend in to their
surroundings just aren't memorable in the same way as disturbing mistakes,
leading to this skewed impression.

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kevingadd
Depressing to see developers of 3rd-party keyboards suffer for Apple's
mistakes with the low reviews. Apple gets to destroy other developers' brands
instead of get the criticism they deserve from users for shipping a subpar
product. :(

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drewjaja
I too tried using Autolayout when developing my 3rd party iOS Keyboard. It
took a good 2-3 seconds for my keyboard to load on an iPhone 4s when using
Autolayout. Autolayout doesn't seem to be an ideal solution for views with
many elements.

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archagon
Sorry, the CSS for mobile, and probably other platforms, is messed up. I'll
fix it... eventually...

