Apple To Stop Autocorrecting Swear Word To 'Ducking' On iPhone (nbcnews.com) 55
At Apple's developer conference earlier this week, the company said it has tweaked the iPhone's autocorrect feature to prevent it from replacing the common expletive with "ducking." Craig Federighi, Apple's software chief, mentioned that the keyboard will now learn and adapt to users typing the intended word. From a report: The iPhone keyboard autocorrect feature has always had its quirks, sometimes taking a misspelled word while texting and substituting what it deems a logical option that ends up changing the meaning of a particular phrase or sentence. Such occurrences generally produce follow-up texts along the lines of "damn autocorrect!" But the "ducking" substitution is a long-standing source of mirth or frustration, depending on how many times one has had to rewrite their own texts or scream at one's own device (the iPhone cannot correct one's verbal epithets).
How about (Score:2, Redundant)
you stop second-guessing and sanitizing what people type? If they type fucking, they probably mean it. Nobody needs your fucking PC filters.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Did you read even the headline?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Did you even read the article?
From TFA:
âoeIn those moments where you just want to type a ducking word, well, the keyboard will learn it, too,â said Craig Federighi, Appleâ(TM)s software chief.
In other words, it doesn't stop autocorrecting: it tries to determine when the user really wants to be profane.
And my beef is: a keyboard has no business trying to determine if you really want to be profane or not, and beautify what you type depending on the context. If you mistype "fucking", it should always autocorrect to "fucking" like it would do with any other misspelled word.
Re: (Score:2)
> If you mistype "fucking", it should always autocorrect
> to "fucking"
You've not thought that through. Duck and ducking are both real words that one might really intend to type if, say, they're describing their day of photographing waterfowl that day near an a mountain pond which they reached by making their self shorter while walking through a cave that was shorter than they are tall. Without analyzing the context to determine if you really want to be profane; autocorrect has no other way of knowin
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
you stop second-guessing and sanitizing what people type? If they type ducking, they probably mean it. Nobody needs your ducking PC filters.
Fixed that for you pathetic human.
Re: (Score:3)
Duck you!
Re: How about (Score:2)
Duck off
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently, the people who actually matter disagreed for a very long time.
Re: (Score:3)
But then a joke like this wouldn't work anymore:
A priest, a pastor and a rabbit go into a bar. Said the bartender "Sorry, no animals allowed ", said the rabbit "damn antisemitic autocorrect!"
Re: (Score:2)
Duck you! :P
Re: (Score:2)
Have you tried typing on a touch screen without autocorrect? The D is right next to the F. With every tap you're hitting several 'keys'. The software has to guess if you meant D, F, G, maybe V, C, R or T. The software is pretty stupid, even more so than you might realize if you only ever use English. It also learns from your input, so if it has 'corrected' your word to duck a few times and you've sent it, it learns that that was probably what you wanted. It will even offer a duck emoji. Not everything is a
That's even worse. (Score:1)
Holy sheet, has no one ever looked up 'ducking' in a NSFW dictionary of sex?
And Apple were doing this the whole time.
Re: (Score:2)
Does it involve a very large bill?
Fuck (Score:1, Redundant)
In case anyone wonders, the swear word in question is "fuck."
Re: (Score:2)
Ducking A!!!
About Ducking time! (Score:2)
For duck's sake that took long enough.
Too ducking little, Apple (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Just don't be using an iPhone in a Commonwealth country when commenting on the great Cnut [wikipedia.org], king of England. Obviously, I mean the ruler from 1023.
I use a proper phone but... (Score:3)
If you make contacts with names that include your profanities of choice, your phone will stop arguing with you about what you're typing. At least, it does on Android.
Fixed This Long Ago (Score:2)
Simple fix for this years ago.
Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement
Simply set one for "ducking" to change it to the word you want. Also great to turn your shorthand into words of sentences. Type OMG and it types out Oh My God.
Lots of fun if you can get your hands on a friends phone. Have it change their spouses name to something else. Have it change the word "love" to "hate" and much more.
Re: (Score:2)
Text replacement is not a solution for pointless censorship. My phone keyboard has tickbox to not autocorrect profanity. No need for a walled garden to protect me from bad words.
Re: (Score:2)
Text replacement is not a solution for pointless censorship. My phone keyboard has tickbox to not autocorrect profanity. No need for a walled garden to protect me from bad words.
I simply turned ducking autocorrect OFF completely on my iPhone years ago. Not because of the ducking issue; but because I use a lot of jargon words, and I got tired of changing things back twice to override it.
BTW, it still gives you the red dotted underline if it thinks you mistiped something, and even still puts its suggestions above the keyboard (which actually is occasionally helpful; but it doesn't actually change anything automatically. IMHHO, kind of the Best of both Worlds; at least for me.
Stopping text entry aggro (Score:2)
When I get a new phone (not an iPhone, but), I do this:
1: Ensure autocorrect is off.
2: Ensure auto-capitalization is off.
3: Replace the stock text entry keyboard (with this [google.com]) so I have a keyboard that isn't brain-dead. Cursor controls, delete key, etc., plus way quicker to type non-alpha characters with. [Github source here [github.com]]
Good (Score:2)
Because when I want to talk about the former name of a particular village in Austria [wikipedia.org], I don't want it auto-corrected to ducking or Fugging or anything else [wikipedia.org].
That goes for the other village in Austria [wikipedia.org] as well.
Posting from a fucking iPhone right now (Score:3)
I'm not even on the latest fucking version of iOS (15.0), and I'm having no fucking problem repeatedly typing "fucking" several times for this fucking posting. My fucking understanding was that if you swear a lot on your fucking iPhone, it already learned that you weren't fucking talking about fucking waterfowl.
I assume they've just tweaked the algorithm a bit so you don't have to fight with it so much initially before it accepts that you have a potty mouth. Kind of sad that that's now what passes for a new innovative feature at Apple. Guess all real R&D is going into their scuba goggles these days. Fuck.
Re: (Score:1)
it already learned that you weren't fucking talking about fucking waterfowl.
The first rule of waterfowl fornication is not to talk about waterfowl fornication.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
aweeee (Score:2)
Next up, Hasbro (Score:2)
For fuck's sake, I think it's about fucking time that those fuckers at Hasbro quit fucking around and let fuck be a Scrabble word.
Re: Next up, Hasbro (Score:2)
Dornication
Under
Consent of
King
The correct replacement is "Fugging" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't want to go that far with your sweetheart, Bavaria has a place for you [wikipedia.org].
So ... they debugged their code (Score:2)
Are we going to run a story every time some company debugs part of their crappy code?
Re: (Score:2)
Apparently. Nothing really happening anymore in the software space, it seems.
About Fucking Time (Score:1)
What is this "autocorrect" of which you speak? (Score:2)
I have my Android phone configured for autosuggest - I get a list of words that changes as I type more characters, and I can either select one or just continue typing whatever the hell I want.
I prefer the ownership relationship balanced heavily toward me owning my devices, rather than the other way around.
Re: What is this "autocorrect" of which you speak? (Score:2)
Well, (Score:2)
Just remember what the MPAA says... (Score:2)
Horrific deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty words!
Saved, from the truth (Score:2)
What the duck? (Score:2)
That was one of the few times I liked autocorrect!
Just stop killing patients (Score:1)
I wish the spell checkers would add common medical and medication terms to their dictionaries, or at least stop auto-correcting from common prescription medication names to nonsense without asking. Their negligence kills people.
It's not a 'quirk' it's the sanitation police. (Score:2)
Every time I text 'bitch' (only when deserved) it is changed to 'batch'.
Apple has a culture problem (Score:2)
Apple has a culture problem. Well, they probably have more than one culture problem. But the pedantry to disallow their customers from typing certain words, not once or twice but every time, indicates that they don't respect their customers. Sometimes issues are just hard to fix and don't affect that many people, but this isn't one of those cases.
Lack of respect is far from the worst problem a company can have, but it's one more factor that makes me feel a little dirty about the idea of buying their product
Where can I see a video of the presentation of thi (Score:1)
Where can I see a video of the presentation of this new feature?
Huh! (Score:2)
Not that I use profanity much, but my Android phone autocorrects duck to fuck.
Swype had this down ten years ago... (Score:3)
You just edited your personal wordlist to add your favorite curses. A tiny bit of setup, and the prediction was WAY better than any of the other options.
But they were bought out and buried. Probably some nefarious shit happened, but it really did work better than anything you can get today. More useful, too, because you had the "Swype" key in the bottom left. Swype-X, -C, -V would cut, copy, paste. Swype-Space brought up an editing keyboard with actual cursor keys. Need to capitalize a word? Just Swype slightly above the keyboard between the first and second letters. My 2015 Nexus 6P had its own problems, namely the godawful dying battery syndrome and lack of security updates, but the iPhone that replaced it was a huge step back in how I worked with technology. (I switched because I needed access to iMessage for work.)
Why *are* Americans so hung up on swearing? (Score:2)
I'm British, and among all the trans-Atlantic cultural differences between the English-speaking peoples of Britain and the US (the deep-frying of whole turkeys, the drinking of tea, etc.), I find the American aversion to swearing one of the more fascinating.
In private, I'm sure Americans swear as much as the British. Yet when they are in public or polite company, some terrifying taboo arises about it that the British just don't have. The only explanation I can give for it on the American side must be some t
Turn off autocorrect! (Score:2)
I do let iOS highlight my misspelled words, and then I pick or manually correct my typos.