Worthy of an iOS HoF Innovation Award – MessagEase Keyboard Review

If there were such a possibility, I would nominate MessagEase to the iOS Hall of Fame for Innovative User Interface. For a company that's cultivated it's reputation for innovation so effectively, Apple's text interface is remarkably pedestrian. Occasionally in past years, I've searched & found only a handful of projects that have stepped up to fill in this gap. Among that handful, MessagEase is unquestionably the leader, and perhaps the only practical survivor today. Nowadays, as the iOS keyboard provides predictive completion with autocorrection (PC/AC), and because MessagEase seems unavailable to take advantage of this native facility, I truthfully find it harder to favor MessagEase over iOS' built-in keyboard. If the decision was between MessagEase & iOS keyboard, either both with or both *without* PC/AC, I would go with MessagEase any day of the week. As it is, though, I usually use the keyboard to take advantage of PC/AC (while longing for the MessagEase interface.) I still prefer MessagEase in situations where I have only 1 hand available to hold the phone & type. As MessagEase requires a certain level of familiarity to use effectively, I keep my skills up by using it for text entry that will not be too lengthy. Should the MessagEase developer(s) become able either to tie in iOS' PC/AC facility (Why should you hold back here, Cupertino?), or develop their own version of it (ugh! Why reinvent that wheel?) then I would happily use MessagEase nearly 100% of the time. Lesser Notes, in no particular order: • For all fanatic outliners & indenters out there: MessagEase seems to be the *only* way to enter a tab character in iOS. Also, a proper bullet (and many other symbols) is only 1 stroke away; so much better than 3 keyboard taps! • For those english writers who have frequent need to write foreign or special characters, MessagEase' support for extended characters is very extensive & fairly intuitive, once you've gotten familiarized with the scheme. • MessagEase' built-in training game is very effective teacher. (since I trained, they've added 2 more games, for a total of 3 now.) • Be aware that by installing MessagEase, the iOS user adds it as a new "keyboard" that can be dynamically switched in & out in (nearly?) every text input situation. Meaning, it's fast & easy to change between any MessagEase' keypads & the iOS built-in keyboards you've installed. (I don't know if iOS ever commits the user to 1 input mode without giving the opportunity to change to another. • Also provides cursor motion via the keypad, by character and by word, singly & repeatedly. • Southpaws: MessagEase is adaptable to those who thumb leftly. It doesn't provide a mirror-image stroke map (which -- from a purity standpoint -- I think it really ought to, to provide left-handers the same advantages in efficiency developed for right-handers) but it does permit the user to shift its keypad to the right or left side of the screen, which is much more than other interfaces afford.
Review by TunaFish#5 on MessagEase Keyboard.