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How Microsoft, Google And Apple Are Fighting For Your Thumbs

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It's Google vs. Apple vs. Microsoft in a Keyboard Battle Royale

Anthony Karcz

The big three have been busy in the past few months when it comes to iOS keyboard innovation. Well, two of the big three have been at least. With yesterday's upgrade announcement from SwiftKey (acquired by Microsoft back in 2016), I figured it was time to see how Microsoft, Google, and Apple are vying for your attention while you type.

Apple - Tap, Tap, Tapping Along

Let's get this out of the way first. What's Apple doing in the current battle for keyboard loyalty?

Nothing. No swiping. No GIF search integration. Not even in-keyboard emoji search. Nada.

But inaction has its own benefits. Apple is sitting back and letting others innovate in the space and duke it out. The iOS keyboard is unchanged since the release of iOS 11 and its right- or left-aligned single-hand-typing update. As with that change, I imagine Apple is going to sit back and see what gets widely adopted by developers, how they change those features, and what their users ultimately find useful.

Only then will Apple make changes, putting their own spin on popular features offered by third-party apps. It's a shrewd strategy that saves wasted development hours and almost guarantees success. But it also runs the risk of other companies gaining the loyalty of users that are disgruntled with the lack of modern features.

Google - Big G, Front And Center

Making sure you never forget exactly whose keyboard this is.

Anthony Karcz

Google, on the other hand, is doing everything it can to cram the entire Google experience into your keyboard.

Recent Gboard updates give you quick and easy access to your recently-used GIFs and emojis via the toolbar. But that's not all the toolbar can do.

Now, when you click the "G" logo, the keyboard expands, even more, highlighting the Google Doodle of the day (which you can click to get pertinent facts, just like it behaves everywhere else). From the toolbar, you can conduct a full Google search, directly search YouTube, or access Maps. It's a lot of synergy, more than you'd expect from a keyboard app.

It's also very real estate-hungry. Fully expanding the toolbar now takes up over half of your iPhone screen. It's less third-party keyboard than it is a Google Assistant trojan horse.

There are some odd behaviors in this latest Gboard version. Occasionally the search bar entry field will expand in the toolbar, which is handy, but I haven't been able to figure out how to consistently launch that feature manually. It will also get stuck in an extended state, crowding out word suggestions (which are vital for someone like me whose sloppy swiping is fully reliant on Google figuring out what it is I'm trying to type). Still, its predictive text is better than anything else out there and that keeps it at the top of my keyboard rotation.

Microsoft - SwiftKey And The Magically Minimizing Toolbar

Nickel X theme with toolbar hidden and extended

Anthony Karcz

That brings us, finally, to SwiftKey and their first big upgrade since being acquired by Microsoft two years ago.

SwiftKey 7.0's new toolbar is hiding under the plus symbol at the left side of the screen. Unlike Google's there's no "in your face" branding here, no links to Bing, no brand pushing. Instead, there's a handy GIF and emoji search tool (which, oddly, doesn't allow swipe input?), as well as access to your themes and clipboard contents.

As you grab GIFs and use emojis, SwiftKey will keep track and maintain a collection of recently used items as well as predict emojis based on previous behavior.

If you like stickers, better get an Android device.

SwiftKey

If you're on Android, you also get access to SwiftKey's fun new stickers (sorry iOS users), of which there are Microsoft exclusives on the way. Some are editable as well and you can save them to collections for quick access.

I have a love/hate relationship with SwiftKey's data algorithms. I like knowing how fast I'm typing and how accurate, but just knowing that the app is tracking those data points make typing with SwiftKey a little more stressful. Now, when I enter a typo or an incorrect word is suggested by the app, I end up pausing for a second, mad that my numbers will suffer. Not everyone will be as susceptible to the gamifying as I am, but if you're the type (heh) that's driven by numbers, it could make something as simple as typing a text a more harried affair.

Who Wins?

Right now I'm using a mish-mash of SwiftKey and Gboard across all my apps. Google's predictive suggestions are exponentially better, but I'm curious to see if SwiftKey can catch up with more frequent use. I like that SwiftKey doesn't force me down a Microsoft rabbit hole whenever I go digging in the toolbar, but then there are instances (like in Messages) where not having to break the conversation to do a deep web search is preferable.

So who wins this round? It's a three-way tie. But only because Apple forces me to use the iOS standard keyboard whenever I have to enter text involving passwords or security.

This arms race is just starting to heat up. I'll be interested to see how Apple responds when they unveil iOS 12 at WWDC in June.

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