Tell me what you think. Here's my rant:
For years now, Apple spellcheck has been alternated hilarious and ridiculous outcomes. Combined with Siri though, it is now an embarrassment. Furthermore, it is a weak link in my iPhone workflow because if it worked, my productivity would be so much better with Apple Intelligence. I realize now that the root cause is that Apple gives spellcheck license as if it were an LLM. It isn't -- and only has illusions of being one. The rewriting that Apple permits for text needs to be dialed back in some form of temperature setting. Basically, unlike LLM's, spellcheck has no sense of context (as LLM's do) and yet acts with great presumption, rewriting text to mean something completely different or inappropriate:
PS: My workaround is to dictate to voice memo and transcribe and edit it through ChatGPT. Works really well. I wish I could replace spellcheck with a simple "rewrite".
For years now, Apple spellcheck has been alternated hilarious and ridiculous outcomes. Combined with Siri though, it is now an embarrassment. Furthermore, it is a weak link in my iPhone workflow because if it worked, my productivity would be so much better with Apple Intelligence. I realize now that the root cause is that Apple gives spellcheck license as if it were an LLM. It isn't -- and only has illusions of being one. The rewriting that Apple permits for text needs to be dialed back in some form of temperature setting. Basically, unlike LLM's, spellcheck has no sense of context (as LLM's do) and yet acts with great presumption, rewriting text to mean something completely different or inappropriate:
- It has started treating my contacts as an alternate, and sometimes primary, dictionary. If I say "small", it capitalizes it as "Small" -- presumably because I have a John Small in my contact list.
- Sometimes it capitalizes whole words. So it might turn Jennifer into JENNIFER.
- It inserts commas where none is required. Where does the system get that confidence?
- If I insert a space in a word by mistake (I have stubby thumbs), god forbid, it often concocts something completely fantastical. I would rather it just gave up rather than map it to random words.
- For some time, it replaced the number 20 with 2.0 for a year. Who spellchecks numbers?
- If I say Asia, it sometimes transcribes it right and then turns it to "Asha" -- presumably because I know an Asha.
- For sometime, it refused to recognize my wife's name. The problem appeared one day and then vanished. It appeared again a few weeks later and went away. And no, I did not have mouth spams to cause that.
- With Asian names, pronunciation is an issue. If I pronounce the name right, Apple murders it.
PS: My workaround is to dictate to voice memo and transcribe and edit it through ChatGPT. Works really well. I wish I could replace spellcheck with a simple "rewrite".