Now that BSI has been improved for iOS 10, I was wondering whether people still find MBraille useful. Is it worth paying for the full version? Does it still have advantages over BSI?
especially for writing anything longer than a sentence. It's much easier to review/edit large blocks of text; I find the spellchecker easier to use; and, for whatever reason, I'm much more accurate with MBraille than BSI. I don't use most of the dot commands or the extra documents/aliases features.
I had been using MBraille for several years, I even helped to beta test it and translated it into Czech. Yet, I no longer ever use it any more, and that is still on a 4S running iOS 9.3. I'm just about to get a 7 Plus in about a month or so, by the way.
The app used to work wonderfully for me. I never really got the hang of the various editing gestures, unlike the previous poster, so that's one feature where just reverting from BSI to the needed option on the VO rotor and editing that way works better for me, but I especially appreciated the handy shortcut commands and aliases and Dropbox syncing.
As for accuracy, I do not notice any real difference between MBraille and BSI on my 4S. If BSI ever acts strangely sometimes, you can just handily recalibrate the dot positions, which is an excellent and powerful feature in my opinion. On the other hand, both my girlfriend and I fail miserably with MBraille on her 5C running the latest iOS 10 all the time. It's not uncommon at all for us to have to retype a single, easy and pretty regular word more than three times. She has no issues typing with either BSI or MBraille on my phone, and BsI does not tend to do this for her on the 5C.
I love the ability to fill out passwords or the passcode to unlock the phone with BSI, something that just is not as readily and comfortably doable with MBraille yet.
I would still keep on using MBraille because of its commands and even because of the keyboard. However, the thing is terribly buggy when sending an SMS or an e-mail, or when you write a piece of text successfully with it and then leave it running in the background, do something else on the phone and then return back to the app to type something more. On my phone, the app is laggy and unstable in general, and even crashes sometimes.
So, to sum it up, the app, although wonderful in concept, has lost any and all of its appeal to me long ago. I can't wait to get the new phone capable of running the latest iOS with the BSI improvements.
An afterthought - changing the typing language and thus the Braille table on the fly seems to work much better and faster for me with BSI (i.e. switching to something other on the rotor and then tapping the next keyboard button) rather than with MBraille.
Hi. I use an iPhone 7 with the latest version of iOS. I still really like MBraille. Of course everyone has different preferences, but I like the review and edit abilities MBraille offers, and I still find that I can type faster on MBraille than I can with BSI. I very rarely utilize the actual mBraille app anymore, but I did buy the full version before the third party keyboard was introduced. If I could do it again, I would probably just shell out for the third party keyboard. At this point in time MBraille simply works better for me.
I still use it. I actually use both MBraille and BSI. However, BSI for me is a lot slower and causes more problems due to reverting to the standard keyboard when you try to backspace or occasionally just exiting for no apparent reason. MBraille is more stable. I do wish that MBraille had the dot calibration. That is one feature that I have to hand to BSI.
Comments
I do
especially for writing anything longer than a sentence. It's much easier to review/edit large blocks of text; I find the spellchecker easier to use; and, for whatever reason, I'm much more accurate with MBraille than BSI. I don't use most of the dot commands or the extra documents/aliases features.
Not any more
I had been using MBraille for several years, I even helped to beta test it and translated it into Czech. Yet, I no longer ever use it any more, and that is still on a 4S running iOS 9.3. I'm just about to get a 7 Plus in about a month or so, by the way.
The app used to work wonderfully for me. I never really got the hang of the various editing gestures, unlike the previous poster, so that's one feature where just reverting from BSI to the needed option on the VO rotor and editing that way works better for me, but I especially appreciated the handy shortcut commands and aliases and Dropbox syncing.
As for accuracy, I do not notice any real difference between MBraille and BSI on my 4S. If BSI ever acts strangely sometimes, you can just handily recalibrate the dot positions, which is an excellent and powerful feature in my opinion. On the other hand, both my girlfriend and I fail miserably with MBraille on her 5C running the latest iOS 10 all the time. It's not uncommon at all for us to have to retype a single, easy and pretty regular word more than three times. She has no issues typing with either BSI or MBraille on my phone, and BsI does not tend to do this for her on the 5C.
I love the ability to fill out passwords or the passcode to unlock the phone with BSI, something that just is not as readily and comfortably doable with MBraille yet.
I would still keep on using MBraille because of its commands and even because of the keyboard. However, the thing is terribly buggy when sending an SMS or an e-mail, or when you write a piece of text successfully with it and then leave it running in the background, do something else on the phone and then return back to the app to type something more. On my phone, the app is laggy and unstable in general, and even crashes sometimes.
So, to sum it up, the app, although wonderful in concept, has lost any and all of its appeal to me long ago. I can't wait to get the new phone capable of running the latest iOS with the BSI improvements.
An afterthought - changing the typing language and thus the Braille table on the fly seems to work much better and faster for me with BSI (i.e. switching to something other on the rotor and then tapping the next keyboard button) rather than with MBraille.
Lukas
I Still Use MBraille
Hi. I use an iPhone 7 with the latest version of iOS. I still really like MBraille. Of course everyone has different preferences, but I like the review and edit abilities MBraille offers, and I still find that I can type faster on MBraille than I can with BSI. I very rarely utilize the actual mBraille app anymore, but I did buy the full version before the third party keyboard was introduced. If I could do it again, I would probably just shell out for the third party keyboard. At this point in time MBraille simply works better for me.
Still use it
I still use it. I actually use both MBraille and BSI. However, BSI for me is a lot slower and causes more problems due to reverting to the standard keyboard when you try to backspace or occasionally just exiting for no apparent reason. MBraille is more stable. I do wish that MBraille had the dot calibration. That is one feature that I have to hand to BSI.