The Degeneracy of Apple Spell Check

Many years ago, you’d run all over the Apple keypad on iPhone/iPad like a bull in a china shop, and Apple’s spellcheck in messages, emails, etc. would just fix your sloppiness and create the correct spelling/phrases like magic. Fast forward to now, and it’s almost like the spellcheck learning algorithm has descended into a total degenerate state.

As an example, innumerable times, I type in “for” incorrectly (fat fingers, whatever). Apple fixes it by assuming I’m spelling “fir,” like the tree. Friends, I don’t have a green thumb and have never deliberately typed “fir” except for this post. Why should the Apple spell check algorithm default to a word like “fir,” which certainly has an infinitesimal use frequency compared to “for,” which is a word used in the English language several orders of magnitude more often?

Is it possible that the algorithm was at peak accuracy a few years back, but that ironically, with increased user inputs and “learning,” the algorithm has degenerated into a less accurate state as each incremental input serves to further confuse, and not refine, the word choice of the algo?

My college buddy once spelled “are room” instead of “our room” (yeah, when pronounced, they sound somewhat similar). In addition to these kinds of slight retardations and the prevalence of mixing up even basic grammar such as “their”, “they’re” and “there”, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Apple algo just stopped giving a f***.

My favorite one is the “ducking”

1 Like

I get that incorrect autocorrect all the time. It’s like, Apple, for chrissakes, learn from my previous texting patterns that the most likely one is the one that begins with F! It’s pretty much every other word I type! Figure it out!

2 Likes