How the Wubi Chinese character input method came to be and why it is not more popular

Radiolab released a podcast that is a backgrounder on how China created an input method to type thousands of Chinese characters in early computers with western keyboards called Wubi. It explains how the input method still helps the writer remember the essence of the written characters while currently the dominant (and slower) input method of Pinyin results in even native Chinese speakers forgetting how to write the characters. The podcast reminded me how I’ve been using predictive input two decades before it became common for gmail to suggest how to write my emails.