A newly revealed patent application suggests that Apple wants to lay bare your atrocious spelling.
As anyone with sausage fingers or appalling grammar will attest, autocorrect is a beautiful thing – particularly with the small screen of the new iPhone SE. It seems Apple wants to crack that finely honed system wide open, though.
Apple Insider has spotted a patent application from Apple for a system that highlights any words in a message that have been autocorrected.
As the report points out, Apple’s iOS already kind of does this for the sender in dictated messages, in order to highlight the words it isn’t too sure about. Under this new system, the same method would be applied at the other end.
So why would Apple want to apply such a feature? It’s not to humiliate the sender. Quite the opposite, in fact.
By highlighting words that have been chosen by the OS rather than the sender, it should avoid – or at least mitigate – those calamitous miscommunications that seem to happen with text messages written hastily on tiny screens.
Related: WWDC 2016: What to expect
It’s worth noting that the original faulty text wouldn’t be on display to the receiver, only the corrected word. By highlighting it, however, the hope is that the receiver will be able to extrapolate what was really meant – or at least be prompted to ask for clarification.
We’re not sure if this feature will make its way into iOS 10, but we’ll find out on June 13 at WWDC.
Next, take a look at our iPhone 6S Plus review video:
What’s been your biggest autocorrect fail? Let us know in the comments.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
