When Apple announced a new predictive typing feature called QuickType for iOS 8 earlier this summer, it looked like a copy-cat challenge to other keyboard apps that Apple had banned from its App Store. The user interface featured a trio of words above the keys, which looked eerily like the interface of SwiftKey, the most popular third-party keyboard apps for Android.
Today, some saving grace for SwiftKey. In launching QuickType (which Apple calls its smartest keyboard ever) with its iOS 8 update yesterday, Apple finally allowed keyboard apps on the App Store. And iPhone users are going for the alternatives in droves. Today the top-three paid- and top-two free apps on the App Store are all third-party keyboards.
Swype, owned by Nuance Communications, lets users swipe over keyboard letters rather than tap them, to more quickly churn out sentences. Today it's the No. 1 paid app on the App Store.
SwiftKey raced to No 1 on the free app charts after it passed 1 million downloads, less than 24 hours after launch. "We’re over the moon," SwiftKey's media rep Ruth Barnett said in a blog post.
For years Apple has made it impossible to customize the keyboards of its iPhones and iPads. Now users simply need to go into their settings to select a new keyboard vendor after downloading the corresponding app.
Devindra Hardawar at VentureBeat tested three, third-party keyboard apps -- Swype, SwiftKey and Fleksy -- against Apple's Quick Type. He couldn't find a single player that beat out the others, but concluded that choice over Apple's predictive keyboard was generally better. In trying SwiftKey on an iPhone I've found the service is faster to type with its Swype-like "Flow" feature, and a little smarter at predicting words.
iOS 8 is set to be downloaded tens of millions of times over the coming weeks, so 1 million downloads in a day for SwiftKey doesn't necessarily mean it will end up on a sizeable chunk of iPhones.
Still, the fact that consumers have rushed for keyboard alternatives underscores now much Apple has needed to work on listening to, and appealing to the masses in offering not just bigger-screen iPhones, but a greater choice over how people type on them.
