Petition to Enable/Disable Auto-Correction – 14,000+ Signatures
by Jody Mitoma on September 18, 2008 at 7:27 am
What we as American’s (and Canadians) take for advantage, actually gets in the way of those who don’t speak our native tongue. According to The Register UK, those who speak languages other than English are having very difficult times using Apple’s iPhone to send text messages and e-mails with auto-correct enabled. Reason being, the iPhone and iPhone 3G only have auto-correct functionality for the English language.
There is in fact a way to disable auto-correction, but it is hidden by default. To see how to disable auto-correction, see here.
If you would like to sign the online petition, feel free to do so by clicking here.
The petition reads:
Hi Steve Jobs. We now updated to the newiPhone Firmware 2.1 and it definitely made things go much smoother! But we all still miss one feature: We’d like to be able to disable the annoying autocorrection! At the time it is really not Apple-like. Please let your developers make a simple switch button to turn autocorrection off (they probably will do that in 20 seconds, right?). Thank you very much!
As of this post, the petition has just over 10,100 votes.
This isn’t like Apple. I’d expect that they would have auto-correction for all supported languages, especially seeing as they’ve released the iPhone 3G internationally, to nearly every country in the world.
Update (Sept. 19th, 9:06AM EST): The petition now has over 14,000 votes, including my own. I am vote # 13,907. Go on and vote, even if it is just to help out others whom speak other languages than our own.
(via The Register UK)
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Posted in Miscellaneous, Recognition
September 18th, 2008 at 8:02 am
You can disable/enable it in bossprefs or off your springboard with a jailbroken device!
It’s in cydia. Just search for auto correct.
September 18th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Not everyone has, or even wants cydia, though. Apple needs to make auto-correction removal easier and, well, official.
September 18th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
whar is this bullshit! When autocorrect is off you make at least 2 errors per word!! It works like a charm. I don’t know what they are complaining about. Moreover the system learns what words you type so if you just keep canceling the correction by clickin the x it will be intgrated.
Typed on iPod touch.
September 18th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Forgot to sign up for follow up comments
September 18th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Christopher, what’s being said here is that anyone that does not use the English language as their primary tongue will have difficulty typing SMS and e-mail with the iPhone because Apple has apparently not slapped in support for auto-correction for any other language except for English. This makes it hard for folks of any other language to type in full words because the iPhone auto-corrector keeps kicking in and interfering with their words, which are of different language, thus the iPhone thinks the word is spelled incorrectly, when really it is spelled correctly in the users language. Y’know?
September 18th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
like I said this is crap. I use English, Dutch, French and german and it work exactly the same way.
September 18th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Christopher-
I’m guessing you disagree on having the ability to turn auto correct ‘off’ (I’m honestly not sure, though…)
But judging by your posts, (which you said you’ve typed on your iPod) the auto correct feature doesn’t seem like it’s doing a very good job.
But regardless, not all people, like you, necessarily WANT (or for that matter need) the feature, so why NOT have the option at least?
-MJ
September 18th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
it’s true I found 2 spelling errors. My bad.
And of course an option would be nice but in the end everyone will realize that autocorrect is acctually pretty usefull.
No need for a petition really.
September 18th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Two more errors in your last post, Christopher: ‘acctually’ instead of ‘actually’ and’ usefull’ instead of ‘useful’
September 18th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Christopher-
I find it very ironic that you support the auto correct feature but at the same time you continue to mispell a handful of words. (while using your iPod)
The whole purpose of this feature is to prevent those spelling errors but somehow you STILL manage to mispell words.
Are you using the feature at all? If not, why exactly are you complaining about the petition?
Yours truly,
-MJ
September 19th, 2008 at 12:56 am
The errors that I made are my fault. I’m French so my English isn’t perfect.
Also if the iPod let’s those errors pass I don’t know why some people have to complain!
September 19th, 2008 at 1:11 am
Christopher-
I understand, hell I even misspelled ‘mispell’ and I’m American.
It’s pretty weird, though, non-English speakers are the ones who are hurt most by the auto correct but you seem to embrace it.
I, just like the majority on here, am just annoyed with the nuisances that come with the obviously flawed feature. It’s not doing a very good job in ‘correcting’, either.
September 19th, 2008 at 8:04 am
yeah. well i hope for you that apple builds in a switch but i don’t have much hope
September 19th, 2008 at 8:47 am
I wish I knew why Apple disabled the ability to turn auto-correction on and off.
With a small hack within jailbroken iPhone’s, it is very possible to turn auto-correction on and off using a default iPhone UI slider.
So, the option is “there” in a sense, except really, it’s hidden to the average iPhone user.