Semantic Auto-Correct

The interesting developments that led to Siri on the iPhone 4s got me thinking – wouldn’t it be great if we had an auto-correct on iOS that was just a little more semantic?

I often type “ate” instead of “are”. If I write “Where ate you?” into a text message, iOS should really know that I mean “are” and not “ate”. It’s not a difficult substitution to make. Who on earth would ever mean to say “Where ate you?”

Then before the upgrade to iOS5, my iPhone insisted on changing “thr” to “Thr” instead of “the”. No matter how many times I dismissed the change, I always got bloody “Thr” as a substitute, whether I liked it or not. And all because I once allowed Thr to stand as a valid correction. It reminds me of Original Sin – the idea that we are still paying for the sins of Adam. A little harsh.

Let’s have better error correction please, because otherwise the iPhone’s only weak point remains that on-screen keyboard on the tiny screen.