[jimmaswell]

QWERTY is a poor example. The keyboard layout is not the bottleneck for anyone who does not participate in olympic typing competitions. DVORAK is just as arbitrary as QWERTY to everyone else including professionals, and there's value in backwards compatibility e.g. old keyboards don't become e-waste.

[rhet0rica]

It sounds like you're thinking purely about the speed of a skilled typist. Alternative keyboard layouts offer a tangible ergonomic benefit even at lower WPM counts, and can have a lower hunt-and-peck time for novices by clustering frequently-used letters together. (This last effect is particularly pronounced on small touch screens, where the seek time is non-trivial and the buttons are much too close together for any sort of real touch-typing.)

[meatmanek]

I expect dvorak would actually be pretty bad for a phone screen keyboard. All your most common letters are right next to each other, making autocorrect/swipe type's job harder because adjacent letter pairs are much more likely to be interchangeable. (Especially since vowels are on the left side and consonants on the right.)

[jimmaswell]

I remember reaching a really high speed on the keyboard of the original iPod Touch. It actually did feel like touch typing - I didn't really have to look at the on-screen keyboard. I can't pin down exactly what's been missing from newer keyboard apps. Something about the ergonomics and UI came together just right.

[jazzyjackson]

original iPod touch having a 3.5" screen probably had a lot to do with it, with thumb typing a smaller keyboard could be better - finer movements per keystroke. Modern iPhone 14 is 6.1"

[iammrpayments]

The keyboard layout becomes a bottleneck after you develop carpal tunnel syndrome and bad posture due to internal shoulder rotation