Apple just filed a patent to improve autocorrect technology that will allow users to fix their typos even after they hit send. Anyone who has ever typed a message has made a typo, so needless to say, there are a lot of people out there that hope this patent becomes a reality.
After all, we've all been there.
You type a message to a friend on your iPhone and autocorrect wreaks havoc with your words, but you don't notice. You hit send and then you see it--a horrific typo. You quickly try to stop it, but it's too late. After such a terrible typo, you have two choices: ignore it and hope they don't notice, or send a new message with the correction.
Apple seems to understand that the terror a typo or bad autocorrect can inspire in some people is very real, hence the company's new patent for technology that will allow users to correct messages before they are completely sent. The patent also aims to improve the suggestions that autocorrect provides to users, in hopes of minimizing the number of typos and bad autocorrect suggestions.
The new technology doesn't allow users to correct a message that has already been sent to another user, but it does let you fix errors before the message is done sending. You just have to fast enough to catch your errors before your network sends the message. If you see "sending" on your device, then you still have a chance to redeem yourself. If the message has been sent already, you're back at the same fork in the road: To correct, or not to correct--That is the question.
"The opportunity is temporary, to avoid impeding the flow of communication, and the textual data is transmitted unmodified if the opportunity to modify it is not accepted," the patent reads. "Modifications made during the opportunity period may be used to adapt an autocorrect functionality of the programmable device."
Another part of the patent mentions a technology that would recognize the language used in a text message and automatically show that language's keyboard, so that you can respond in the correct language. This is particularly handy for multilingual and bilingual people, who constantly have to switch back and forth between keyboards depending on the person with whom they are texting.
A patent for this technology was first filed in 2012, but this seems to be an update.
