Apple Is Autocorrecting the Names of Medications Now

Megalith

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Users on Twitter are reporting that Apple’s spellcheck is changing the names of medications, which, they say, could have deadly consequences: [Dear apple - your OS has a global spellcheck that autocorrects names of medications to names of different medications, eg "duloxetine" to "fluoxetine", without telling the user. Some clinics inexplicably continue to use MacBooks. Please fix this before someone gets hurt.]
 
I suppose it's too much trouble to review what you're typing before emailing, texting, etc. especially when involved with very serious matters.

Not sure what good that does in this thread ? Let's blame people for not checking what has been auto corrected ? The problem isn't here... They're simply pointing the issue... err sorry feature.
That's the main reason why I disable auto correct on any platform and ask for the SW to propose a correction instead.

Anyway, as pointed out, this could lead to disastrous result if used carelessly (without double checking ;) )

EDIT: "without telling the users" ... again Apple decides what's best !
 
I suppose it's too much trouble to review what you're typing before emailing, texting, etc. especially when involved with very serious matters.

Apple goes a bit further than just underlining words not found in the program's dictionary, which is the problem.

It's not like this is anything new, as it has been happening for years.

example:
apple-damn-autocorrect.png
 
This isn't an article it's a tweet. It's the largest generalization with one example one could create. All it does is acknowledge that spellcheck is attempting to, well, spellcheck. We could literally come up with thousands of words that don't quite make it to where we're heading with autocorrect enabled. As mentioned above, if you have any responsibility regarding the subject matter you are typing, what your finished version is, regardless how you got there, gives you ownership of said document. If you fail to review your work, especially the vital information like spellings of medications or other life and death related subjects. I'm only participating in this topic because I thought the article was going to actually go into some significant detail instead of being a picture of a tweet.
 
Who the hell uses autocorrection anyway? It's annoying.

People who do not know how to disable it. And I agree, it is annoying feature. When you mistype words, skip a letter or such, it is not a big deal. People can still understand what you wrote. But whenever auto correct screws up it causes nothing but confusion. Grandma panties example above is a good one. XD

It is a useless feature that should not be on by default, and should have a huge disclaimer saying always double check what it has changed.
 
This just in MacOS users incapable of disabling simple feature.

Not surprising.
 
This just in MacOS users incapable of disabling simple feature.

Not surprising.

This just in a troll making anti-Apple trolls as usual. The control menus of the OSX make these kinds of things extremely simple unlike in, say, windows.
 
Holy shit this whole thing is just about someone making up an issue in a Tweet. Next up, Megalith is going to link an Amazon review about someone not liking their iPad. Then another 15 of you will jump in like “They deserve it for buying Apple herp derp. Hurr hurr PCs rule”.
 
Spell-checks are nice, they will point out your mistakes and allow you to easily fix them, at worst they will underline a valid word they don't know. But auto-correct on a desktop/laptop switched on by default is CRAZY. In my case, it was noticed immediately on the first OS X iteration that had it enabled - I blind-type so I was looking at the screen when it started changing my perfectly fine words to whatever it felt like. So I had to hunt-down the option and disable it. But people who look at their keyboard while typing would be in more trouble... And it is in general indicative of the Apple mentality - they always know better than the user. Very unfortunate, as MacOS is the most polished unix-based OS, which makes it ideal for power users/devs/etc, and it is annoying that each new version seems to go backwards (personally I'd estimate the trend started around or after Snow Leopard).
 
Spell-checks are nice, they will point out your mistakes and allow you to easily fix them, at worst they will underline a valid word they don't know. But auto-correct on a desktop/laptop switched on by default is CRAZY.
It's only "CRAZY" if the software you're using is trying too hard. The example given is beyond autocorrect and into "I don't have that word in my dictionary so I'll substitute a wildly different word." Apple's autocorrect is notorious for this, making it significantly less useful for non-tweet/text situations.

I've let MS Word autocorrect for me and it never goes crazy like that, and I type medication names all the time...of course, I also have a proper medical dictionary installed, which would probably fix the problem on an Apple computer as well. :D
 
It's only "CRAZY" if the software you're using is trying too hard. The example given is beyond autocorrect and into "I don't have that word in my dictionary so I'll substitute a wildly different word." Apple's autocorrect is notorious for this, making it significantly less useful for non-tweet/text situations.

I've let MS Word autocorrect for me and it never goes crazy like that, and I type medication names all the time...of course, I also have a proper medical dictionary installed, which would probably fix the problem on an Apple computer as well. :D

You are saying the same thing, it is just that autocorrect means two different things. It is "CRAZY" to have smartphone-style autocorrect, the kind that assumes you may have hit wildly incorrect buttons on a touchscreen, enabled by default (system wide no less) on a device with a regular keyboard. MS Word has a completely different kind of "autocorrect" (unless I missed changed in the last versions), which fixes specific rules and common mistypes and only applies to a specific text editor. It can still be annoying - e.g. I disable the auto-capitalize rule as when I don't capitalize the first letter I really mean it - but it is a completely different concept...
 
there are a number of features on a mac that should be disabled by default. one is of course the spell checker and another one i ran into once was if you hit the space bar twice too rapidly, it instead types a . (period)

spell checking i can understand, but I have never been able to figure out WHY a quick double spacebar puts in a (period)
 
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