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I didn’t hate catching up with people over AIM nearly as much as I do over text. Once you were off AIM, you were off. SMS/iMessage/etc. are an open-ended conversation that spans hours or days with ambiguous expectations of responsiveness. In the past you were unequivocally sitting at your computer, looking to chat. Now you could be out working in the yard, running errands, trying to watch a movie, or generally doing something in real life that is interrupted by the constant stream of incoming messages from unknowing friends.



> I didn’t hate catching up with people over AIM nearly as much as I do over text.

You had a keyboard for that, too. Nothing is quite so annoying as trying to have a conversation with someone when one party is on a keyboard and the other is on a phone.

I'm just... "not online" a lot of the time now. Stuff will get to me when it gets to me, and if I've gone a couple days without being really on the various messengers, that's fine. Expectation is that if you need something critical, call, otherwise I'll get back to you eventually.


It was a boon for me when I discovered voice recognition on my phone keyboard actually works well. I haven't been typing any messages since then. And my messages are also more clear since I'm not frustrated I'm wasting my time struggling with my large fingers on a little string doing something that could be done an order of magnitude faster with speech[0].

[0] Well, some of my friends are too lazy and actually leave me a voice message. I let them all know I prefer text messages and they can use the little microphone icon next to space for that. The only one who can communicate with me in this way is my partner, I actually like listening to their voice.


It's pure vanity I guess - but I feel really stupid talking to my phone to transcribe a text message. I also feel like it's a huge invasion of privacy even if I would be saying "off to the store."


I've decided voicemail is a dead and obsolete technology and haven't had it set up in over a decade, but I do agree that hearing the voice of a loved one is nice, especially one that is no longer with us


If your phone isn't too old, there's probably a setting where voice mails can be transcribed to text messages.


It's actually dependant on the carrier. In Canada most carriers will make you pay extra every month for visual voice mail, without that you don't get any kind of transcription. Some low cost carriers, like mine, don't even offer it.


Google voice does this for free (aside from what Google normally does with your data). Could forward voicemail there.


What does a keyboard help? With swiping and aggressive prediction and completion my wpm on my phone is basically on par with a keyboard. Hell on the average day I probably write 2x as much by phone as I do with a physical keyboard.


Oh god no. My keyboard doesn't have autocorrect and therefore doesn't fuck up my messages where I'm correcting the damn phone's keyboard mistakes 25% of the time, especially when you're multilingual and have to slip in local language words into a largely English conversation (common situation here in India).

I tweeted in jest about this and this is not even hyperbole. This literally happened while trying to swipe on my phone keyboard for "yesterday" - https://twitter.com/madmanweb/status/1513786589230493696

I've been using PC keyboards for 30+ years so it's just faster for me. I use Whatsapp (like most of my country) and prefer to have the desktop client open on my PC so I can type much faster and see everything on a larger screen.


i'm bilingual too, i just deactivated autocorrect. it's too frustrating


Weird, I use three languages on my phone for typing messages and the autocorrect manages that quite well (to my surprise, at first).

Even mixing languages works quite well in my experience. I use "Gboard" which I think is the default keyboard app? simply with all three languages enabled, and I don't switch keyboard (using always the same disposition, the one of my native language which isn't the language I type most on my phone).


I use three languages as well and GBoard is the only one that works flawlessly.

IPhone is unusable in this regard. Switching from one language to the other is just not cutting it. That's simply not how polyglot people communicate.


Unfortunately, Gboard doesn't seem to support multiple languages enabled at the same time if they use different scripts - you still have to switch languages.

I can kind of understand why, but I don't think it would be impossible to design a way for it to work.


Can you elaborate on this? I have three languages enabled on Android GBoard and it'll offer up completions and suggestions across all three languages even though I'm usually on English.


I'm talking about languages using different scripts/alphabet, e.g. Latin, Cyrillic, Greek etc. The feature you are describing ("Multilingual typing") is not supported in that case.

So for example, you can enable it for English and Spanish, but not for English and Russian. In fact, it doesn't even seem to be supported for different languages that use Cyrillic.


Ah, yep, all three languages I'm using are latin scripts, that explains it. Thanks!


iOS has support for mixed simultaneous languages but only in a certain small number of combinations.


If you avoid Google than you don't get access to their teams of ML data analysis.


> This literally happened while trying to swipe on my phone keyboard for "yesterday" - https://twitter.com/madmanweb/status/1513786589230493696

I used to frequently type "habe" instead of "have" (since V and B are right next to each other), and autocorrect would change it to "haberdashery"

Not sure how that happens.


…good for you?

Like, I absolutely empathize with GP. I’m typing this comment on an iPad, and in the previous sentence I hit the letter ‘m’ while reaching for the spacebar and didn’t realize until 3 characters later. I finished that sentence and realized it contained “thus” where I meant to write “this”. Then in that sentence I fucked up while typing “contained”. When I tried to do the swipe-down gesture to put stars around “that” I missed and hit the number 5.

Touch keyboards are a menace. Just because I can easily recover from errors doesn’t make them less annoying.


* I hit the letter ‘m’ while reaching for the spacebar and didn’t realize until 3 characters later*

Indonthisntonfuckingnmuchnandninreallynhatentryingntoncleannitnup. Exceptnitnisnalwaysn”n”ninsteadnofn”m”nfornsomenreason.


I just switched to an iPhone a few months ago, and it literally _always_ autocorrects “well” to “we’ll”. Why would it correct one correct word to another???


I never understood all those autocorrect errors until I tried sending a text on my wife's iPhone a few years ago. The last word in the text was a word it really wanted to correct, and it corrected it when I hit send! I didn't realize what was going on at first and sent the same wrong message 3 times in a row.


Well … sometimes you’re trying to blast through typing and can’t be bothered to stop to type an apostrophe (try other contractions without apostrophe and you’ll see what I mean). In that case the auto expansion is helpful. But I agree it’s as likely to get it wrong as not :) which is annoying.


just turn off autocorrect - it's a bug not a feature


Not same for many. Not for me. I hate iPhone keyboard and it is neither accurate nor easy compared to a physical keyboard.


I’m actually quite adept at my iPhone keyboard — one of many reasons I prefer the larger-sized phones. But I’m both actually faster (a solid 30 extra wpm) and feel less constrained when I’m typing on a full-size keyboard. There have been times I’ve been engaged in an active enough conversation by iMessage or by text that it motivates me to get out my Mac or my iPad for the benefit of the keyboard.


If you write in English then yes for most people (peckers), if your write in any of the world's minor languages then hard no. Just no comparison.


Swiping and prediction don’t personally get me to 100 wpm - a keyboard does.


Jay Leno had a funny segment on the Late Show where he pitted the Guinness World Record holder for texting against a morse code operator to send a message. It's on YouTube. Morse code was faster:

https://www.rfcafe.com/miscellany/cool-videos/jay-leno-tonig...


That seems to be a T9 layout on the texting one.

Which seems like an unfair comparison to todays phone keyboards. Still, I HIGHLY doubt that even todays phone keyboards come close.


I kind of love the idea that T9, which was created to improve texting speed, is slower than Morse which was more than 150 years old at that time.

Makes me wonder if there's a Morse code key with a USB or lightning cable. How annoying would it be trying to work in a Starbucks and the guy the next table over is tapping out a message via Morse? :)


Modern electric iambic keyers aren't that loud. You could probably also emulate with a touch screen.


It works nice 95% of the time, but the remaining 5%, you want to throw the damn thing at a wall in frustration for not reading your mind. I hate all forms of dictionary-based input and at this point I doubt it could ever get nearly as good as a real keyboard.


how I envy you. I commonly write in 3 languages with a seldom used fourth and my swipe keyboard prediction is all over the place.


I don't have those and I don't feel like screwing around with the software setup for them.


It seems like you should be able to make the call on what people should expect wrt your responsiveness.

I definitely know for most of my friends how they are responsive in what situation and I'm fine with their different rules. I expect them the same for me. Never told them but I have not had issues so far.

Just answer however you feel like doing this and people will have no choice to catch up anyway. It's probably fine to take hours or even wait the next day to answer a text. If someone asks you can tell them. If you feel pressure from message (notifications) to answer, that's probably something you can learn to manage and let go.

I know few people who actually expect others to be able to answer fast any time. I'm quite responsive myself usually but I fully expect most of my friends to answer in a few hours or even the next day, and if they answer fast, that's neat but not expected. Some friends take days to answer, I adapt. If they miss something, their loss at the end, but usually I think they see the message quite fast so that does not happen. If I propose something to a friend who usually answers the last minute and something else come up, I consider I can cancel with this last minute friend so I don't let their rules eat me neither.

Don't let the phone or the computer control you. That should be the reverse. If you are spending time with someone or watching a movie, just don't check out your phone. Put it away. It's going to be fine. If anything urgent happens they will call. Tell them if it's not clear for them. I do not answer non urgent stuff when I'm actually with other people in real life. They have priority. That allows me to enjoy and focus on them better. Messaging stays asynchronous and that's how it's designed. Life is so enjoyable this way.


I have progressed to a point where I essentially have do not disturb on all day with my partner and mother allowed through as well as two apps for work and the rest receiving a DND response. I also have it set so repeated calls come though from my favorites in the case of an emergency.


I to do this. phone permanent DNB. Even during working hours, although then its in eye shot to the side of my monitor. So i can see stuff there, but can choose whether to answer or not. Its been immense in combating the constant 24x7 messages i get from work. Its been pretty useful as well in just telling people drop your message to my teams, it won't wake me up and i'll get to it when i get a chance. Only a few limited number of people on my favourites (which bypasses this)


I do the exact same thing. DnD is permanently on and I allow "favorite" contacts to come through as well as one or two apps.

My phone almost never vibrates or makes sound.

My social circle is quite small so I could see how this may not work for everyone.

I think I could get the same behavior without DnD but it'd require a lot of fiddling to make sure every app/contact has the right notification settings and frankly that's too much busywork.


I do the exact same thing. The only drawbacks are that I occasionally miss calls that I would have wanted to answer. Here's an example why this became necessary. I was recently looking to pre-qualify for a mortgage, now I'm getting 6-8 calls a day at various hours and even multiple unsolicited texts. It's amazing how awful using a phone has become and incredibly distracting.


I only use DND at night. Throughout the day, my strategy is to mute notifications from e everyone on Whatsapp except family. If I start a conversation with someone, I turn their notification on temporarily. I also have a whatsapp widget on my home screen where I can quickly glance for new messages.

Yes, I spend the whole day turning notifications on and off for people but I am very happy with my system.


I do this but specifically for managing call spam. I let messaging through though. Do you ever make mistakes like missing food delivery calls? I haven't found a great solution besides trying to remember to disable DND for those. Maybe I need to give them a dedicated voip number that always punches through, but I think even that could get call spam.


I highly recommend Google Voice or similar VOIP for all commercial services. That may help reduce spam to your mobile and Google Voice has filtering of spam built in (unsure of quality).


Why does delivery use sms instead of proper app notifications?


I'm talking about calls, not sms. Like if I order a pizza without using an app so the restaurant doesn't have to give a huge cut away to an app.


I do the same. iOS 15 introduced Focus, which extends the DND functionality to an arbitrary number of configurable “focus” profiles. Each profile may have its own schedule and exclusions by app and contact. It’s fantastic.


Are you fully satisfied with your setup or are there gaps?


I am. However, there are times where I feel a slight guilt not responding right away and I still catch myself reaching for my phone thinking there has to be some notifications to check.


I am also. iPhone and Slack give me the tools to suppress the noise, but still catch the signal.

If I could ask for one thing, it’d be an easier way to toggle Silence Unknown Callers (which is in the anti-spam category, not quite what the article is focused on).

I’m old enough to have been a heavy AIM user back in the day. I don’t want to toggle on/off my “readiness for chat”, nor do I want to consider my recipient’s readiness for chat (aside from time of day sensitivity). I prefer today’s tools that put the onus on the recipient to configure their notifications suitably (hint: if in doubt, just turn the notifications off, and poll manually on an appropriate longish interval). If a human complains about your slowness to respond, that’s a social norms problem, not a problem with the tools.


iOS now has scheduled notification summaries that you can receive at specific times, while allowing critical notifications to appear immediately


Oh wow, I did not know - thank you.


interrupted by the constant stream of incoming messages from unknowing friends

You can probably edit, including disabling, notifications from the different messaging apps. Don't worry about your friends. They understand this is asynchronous communication.


In my experience the issue isn't usually friends. It's people you have to stay in contact with like family, or maybe coworkers, and they don't understand what asynchronous communication is and have unrealistic expectations that now that you have an alway-on device, you will be ready to respond to it immediately. If you don't have that in your life, you are lucky.


It was the same with ICQ. You could sent messages when someone was offline or away but it didn't showed up on their screens until they've switch to an Online status. It was much more useful and productive than today constant chatter.


There's definitely room to improve in the products (ie I think Slack's recent scheduled messages are a good improvement towards this), but personal discipline goes a long way here, especially when frequently the product/company goals (pumping engagement) are the inverse of your own.

You need to set your own boundaries, and not allow these devices/services to dictate so much of your attention (I say as I procrastinate on HN). Use app or OS features to mute notifications. Sign out. Wait before replying. Leave your phone behind.

99 times out of 100 you can definitely just wait before checking and replying.


I hate the opposite: I can't know when someone is free and ready to chat with me. I may send a message and wait 30 seconds or 3 hours until I can get a conversation going. Or get responses every 20 minutes instead of every 2 minutes.


Funny enough the prior end of this continuum was (free) local phone calls that you could leave open for hours to discuss with your neighbor friends while doing something else. Once you hang up you're off, and it's completely limited session in time and space.

I see some companies trying to replicate that with discord rooms, I don't know if it has much success for work organizations.


> SMS/iMessage/etc. are an open-ended conversation that spans hours or days with ambiguous expectations of responsiveness.

You can pretty easily set Apple ecosystem devices into various levels of Do Not Disturb, where for each level you decide which people and apps you will allow immediate notifications for and which you want to queue up until you mark yourself as available again.

Just like with AIM of yore, people who send you a message get an away notice if their message is queued.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIROaMUeOPE


Phone calls are underrated for this reason

Personally I also that aspect of text messages a huge plus - if someone calls me and I am super tired or busy or just do not want to engage in a full conversation I can reply to the texts at my leisure or not reply at all.

We have more options than ever - it comes down to the social aspects and expectations I think more than anything


I don't think we really can blame chat messengers for this - this is just a huge shift socially in general. Don't shoot the messenger :-)




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