[nathantotten]

I think this is the wrong read on the “threat”. One user going out of their way to spent time writing this post is a canary in the coal mine. Most users never give feedback, they just churn. This is the same reason your toothpaste has a phone number on the back - that one random person who cares deeply calls the number and provides invaluable feedback on the product.

It’s not about the one person, it’s about that person representing tens/hundreds/thousands of customers. This feedback is a gift to a product manager that listens.

[dqv]

It's one of the downsides of having dedicated and fervent fans. They obfuscate problems regular users are having by drowning them out with praise for Apple.

During my last weeks on the iPhone, I reached out to various Apple discussion spaces on the web for help with some problems I was having.

I was met not with assistance, but ridicule. The majority of the people "helping" were saying some variation of "you're holding it wrong" or "I personally don't have that problem" (which is such a funny quirk of the Apple fandom - I didn't ask if you are having that problem, I'm asking for help achieving a specific outcome).

You can even see examples of this sort of behavior in that post about the window resize handles for the latest version of macOS. There were Apple fans saying some variation of it's not an actual problem, that they don't have that problem, that they don't use the window resize handles anyway, or that the post was an exaggeration. Turns out it was an actual problem that Apple addressed with a bug fix. Of course, Apple fans, being shameless, will jump to reframing the discussion from "Apple can do no wrong" to "See, Apple listens! You know who doesn't listen? Microsoft!!" I get it, not a monolith, but recognizing Apple fans aren't a monolith doesn't make them less off-putting.

The final nail in the coffin for me for the ecosystem was getting called a child for *checks notes* making the adult decision to move to Android to have a phone that did the things I needed (with much fewer annoying, uncritical fans and a lot more people who genuinely want to help).

So, yes, there is a danger in letting the fandom do all the work and laughing off "threats" of user exoduses. The conduct of Apple fans coupled with Apple's ignorance to regular users' feedback soured me to the ecosystem. It would take a lot to bring me back. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.

[Someone1234]

Exactly! The fact that this has 300+ votes and is on HN's front page (and is just CONSTANTLY brought up on Reddit), should really tell you how fed up people are with the iOS keyboard experience.

I legit feel like Apple should actually make a public statement like "we hear you, we're working on it!" because it is actually bad PR at this point.

[LanceH]

Apple is allergic to admitting anything. They go straight from "there is no problem" to "this update brings improvements".

[recursive]

This new keyboard is revolutionary. It's not just an improvement in the way you will type. It's an entirely new way of expressing yourself.

[alterom]

This new keyboard is revolutionary. It's not just an improvement in the way you will type — it's an entirely new way of expressing yourself.

Works better with an em-dash to make it feel more like today's default ChatGPT style.

[tormeh]

Do robots wear turtlenecks?

[alterom]

Dunno, but they surely are weighted a lot to sound like some people who do.

Perhaps it's just a natural case of convergent evolution when the fitness function is bullshit at scale.

[eptcyka]

I feel like the people who could move the needle don’t actually type on their iPhones, they pay someone to do that.

[eddieroger]

Its presence on Hacker News and Reddit tells you that the folks who use Hacker News and Reddit are fed up with the keyboard. Most people don't care. Tech nerds do, and that's not nothing, but it's not necessarily a majority either. No one I know outside of tech brings up the keyboard to me, ever.

[array_key_first]

Everyone cares, most people can't express it because they're not techies and don't know what's going on. But the keyboard is straight up buggy. Everyone is just working around it.

That's just how software works. People also care that the windows taskbar just kills itself sometimes. But they feel powerless, stupid even, so they just work around it every day forever and never say anything.

[bornfreddy]

Once you lose tech nerds, the battle is lost. Other users always follow them.

[echoangle]

By that logic, Linux should be the most popular desktop operating system. But even most tech nerds realize that their needs are different from regular users and recommend stuff to them they wouldn’t use.

[antonvs]

> Most users never give feedback, they just churn.

Sure, but this is a duopoly and it's not as if the competition is perfect. A lot of issues like this simply don't matter because of that. The response that goes through the PM's head is likely to be along the lines of, "What you gonna do, switch to Android? Ha!"

> This is the same reason your toothpaste has a phone number on the back - that one random person who cares deeply calls the number and provides invaluable feedback on the product.

You'll notice that tech companies go out of their way to avoid offering that option.

[causal]

Yup and it's clearly getting attention.

[raincole]

> Most users never give feedback, they just churn

Uh...

We're talking about iPhone here. You can read complains about iPhone online all the time. When you have more than a billion of users, lack of feedback is the least problem you concern.

[notatoad]

as a counterpoint to that, i'm an iOS user, i use the apple keyboard every day, and it's fine? i don't really understand the complaint. it's clearly not "broken".

and i also never give feedback. there's probably hundreds of millions of iOS users out there who agree with me. so maybe don't change the behaviour just because this guy is mad?