Back in 2014, Microsoft Garage came to life to test out experimental applications on Android and iOS and other platforms. If that experimental app was deemed pointless to continue, it would be shut down, no longer to be worked on. Then in 2016 Microsoft Garage came out with Word Flow for iOS. Though it was originally a feature for Windows Phones, it enjoyed a new life on iOS only to be killed off. Microsoft is now recommending everyone use SwiftKey (who was bought last year by MS) for Android and iOS.
Coming into March 2017, Microsoft decided that it would work more on SwiftKey, thus leading to the death of Word Flow. There were plans to “integrate SwiftKey technology with our Guinness World Record Word Flow technology for Windows” but ended up bringing Word Flow features into SwiftKey instead. The Word Flow application on the Apple app store has already been removed by MS and the direct link to the app in the app store no longer works. If you do end up finding Word Flow, you’ll be welcomed to this message:
The Word Flow experiment is now complete! We encourage you to download the SwiftKey Keyboard from the App Store. The SwiftKey product team is frequently building and evaluating new features for SwiftKey and shipping updates. We encourage feedback at https://support.swiftkey.com.
SwiftKey itself has been downloaded over 100 million times in the Play Store and possibly around the same for the Apple app store though numbers of how many installs don’t show. The keyboard is going to be Microsoft’s go to for anyone that is looking for a new keyboard layout.
Did anyone on iOS devices use Word Flow when it was in the app store? Do you think Microsoft should have killed off its experimental keyboard? Let us know by leaving your comments down below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
[button link=”https://venturebeat.com/2017/07/31/microsoft-kills-word-flow-keyboard-for-ios-recommends-swiftkey-instead/” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: VentureBeat[/button]
