3D Touch Brings Trackpad Shortcut to iPhone 6s Keyboard

[Synthetic]

This wont change the way I use my phone at all, pointless, I can just as easily do this with normal


Isn't the ugly case you presumably use alone enough to stop this happening? I mean these screens are really hard to mark, they only break if you drop them from height face down and really, the enjoyability of not having an ugly screen protector with its disgusting lines around the home button and its changing of the way a beautiful piece of glass and screen have engineered far out weigh the unlikely risk of that happening

I've done it with my old iPhone... There's a person crossed the table from me with a cracked screen right now. And I'm not kidding. I guess these things happen...

 

[Glassed Silver]

You're basically advocating for a MacBook.

No I'm not.
I have an iPad, not a Macbook and I don't want to lug around two devices when I have one that can fulfill both purposes.
I need my iPad for handwriting and various other things over the course of the day.
I would only need a Macbook on very select days in college, but I need to write regularly in Pages. Why would I lug around a Macbook AND the iPad I need anyways if the issue could be fixed with one software fix: integrating mouse drivers in iOS.

I know an iPad with a mouse and keyboard hooked up to it looks like a Macbook from the distance and the Macbook is "more powerful", but that's just looking at it very superficially.

Glassed Silver:mac

 

[oldmacs]

This is cr*ppy. It worked fine on older phones, so it should be returned.

 

[oldmacs]

This wont change the way I use my phone at all, pointless, I can just as easily do this with normal


Isn't the ugly case you presumably use alone enough to stop this happening? I mean these screens are really hard to mark, they only break if you drop them from height face down and really, the enjoyability of not having an ugly screen protector with its disgusting lines around the home button and its changing of the way a beautiful piece of glass and screen have engineered far out weigh the unlikely risk of that happening

I've cracked 2 iPads and an iPod, and out of the 10 friends I caught up on friday night with, 4 of them have cracked iPhones. I see them ALL the time. The fact that there are so many businesses that have popped up around replacing cracked phone glass would also tell you something.

I love my screen protector, its great for reducing the glare and stopping fingerprints from being on the screen. Not to mention the benefits in stopping the screen from getting scratched senseless. I was upgrading a family friend's iPad Air to iOS 8 and she never uses screen protectors and there was an annoyingly long scratch up the centre of the display.

That doesn't mean that everyone is the same of course, some are very lucky, some are very unlucky.

 

[WilliamG]

I've been running the beta all summer on my iPad Air 2 and I still feel like an idiot when it comes to this text selection capability. Is it just single tap with two fingers to move the cursor, and double tap two fingers to select? I feel like I should be able to lift one finger up and then set it back down and slide across to make a selection. Doesn't seem very intuitive. I wonder if the 3D Touch version will stay locked down until you press hard on it again. I also wonder how easily it will activate. I assume it would be a pop and not just a peek level of pressure.

1.) So let's say you want to move the cursor somewhere (say in a reply to an email). Jut put two fingers on the display and move the cursor around immediately (don't HOLD two fingers down). Just put two fingers on the display and move them immediately. Done.

2.) To highlight text, I found you have to do the above first to place the cursor where you want it. Then come off the screen, and then press down with two fingers again and hold a second, and voila, now you can select text. If you don't do the first part (i.e. you just tap with one finger to move the cursor), for some reason just pressing and holding two fingers on the screen moves the cursor elsewhere. So be sure to do 1.) before doing 2.). Works every time, and is very handy.

 

[borgqueenx]

I'm in the "home button is going away on iPhone 7" camp.

I think Apple are preparing us for the home button removal, or certainly massively reduced bezels and a different kind of home button.

Apple refer to it as the "Touch ID sensor" on the diagram on their 6s tech specs page now. They call it a "home/Touch ID sensor" on the 6.
Small thing, but potentially significant.

Multitasking can be activated using 3D Touch now. One less use for a home button.

I can't think of a non-home button solution for reachability right now, but I'm sure Apple will.

It's like how they gave us Touch ID on the 5s, to prepare us for Apple Pay on the 6.
They gave us swipe to go back, to prepare us for bigger screens.

Touch ID can be embedded in the screen, or in the bezel, or somewhere else.

I hope you are right. With 3d touch the home button removal comes closer but still: closing the app would be a pain and could only be done by gesture. Using the volume or standby is odd and not a good idea.

 

[attila]

I'm confused by all the states that one button can do without hinting the different options. It's too much to learn - a good interface should be straight-forward and not hide features.

I'm also confused by the language; is "press" a 'hard' touch and "tap" a 'soft' touch on the screen?

1.) So let's say you want to move the cursor somewhere (say in a reply to an email). Jut put two fingers on the display and move the cursor around immediately (don't HOLD two fingers down). Just put two fingers on the display and move them immediately. Done.

2.) To highlight text, I found you have to do the above first to place the cursor where you want it. Then come off the screen, and then press down with two fingers again and hold a second, and voila, now you can select text. If you don't do the first part (i.e. you just tap with one finger to move the cursor), for some reason just pressing and holding two fingers on the screen moves the cursor elsewhere. So be sure to do 1.) before doing 2.). Works every time, and is very handy.

This is even more confusing. I press hard with two fingers, then release one finger? And the other action is press with two fingers, then release... both? Why can't I just use one finger to use the keyboard as a trackpad?

 

[ErikGrim]

Android phones don't offer equally fast (if not faster) touchID-like homebuttons?

Nope.

Some other words.

 

[Roessnakhan]

Nope.

Some other words.

Erm... the S6, Note 5, some Huawei phones, and OnePlus 2 all have fingerprint readers just as good as the iPhone. Some have been faster than the iPhone 6, but I don't know how they compare to the 6s' purported faster TouchID.

 

[ErikGrim]

Tap hard and you get options, tap and hold gently and it will activate the option to move the icons.

I genuinely didn't know this was possible and I've had the watch since day dot. I've been using the watch app like a sucker all this time!

 

[ErikGrim]

Erm... the S6, Note 5, some Huawei phones, and OnePlus 2 all have fingerprint readers just as good as the iPhone. Some have been faster than the iPhone 6, but I don't know how they compare to the 6s' purported faster TouchID.

This isn't what comes to mind when someone says "just as good": http://www.bidnessetc.com/40877-samsung-galaxy-s6-can-be-hacked-via-fingerprint-technology/

 

[macduke]

1.) So let's say you want to move the cursor somewhere (say in a reply to an email). Jut put two fingers on the display and move the cursor around immediately (don't HOLD two fingers down). Just put two fingers on the display and move them immediately. Done.

2.) To highlight text, I found you have to do the above first to place the cursor where you want it. Then come off the screen, and then press down with two fingers again and hold a second, and voila, now you can select text. If you don't do the first part (i.e. you just tap with one finger to move the cursor), for some reason just pressing and holding two fingers on the screen moves the cursor elsewhere. So be sure to do 1.) before doing 2.). Works every time, and is very handy.

Well I feel like an idiot now. Thanks for letting me know how it actually works. I've somehow gone the whole summer with iOS 9 beta installed on my iPad and just now, thanks to you, figured out how the new keyboard cursor thing really works. Wow. This is actually pretty neat. Too bad that new keyboard for the iPad Pro isn't touch capable because it needs to be able to do this.

 

[eyeseeyou]

Can you still activate trackpad mode while a Bluetooth keyboard is connected?

If so I'm sure a thrift party will add a trackpad to activate "trackpad" mode.

 

[finferflu]

Guys!

Please don't overlook this!

Apple removed this from all iPhones in beta 3 in order to make it 6s exclusive.

It was working just fine but they took it away.

This is a move I cannot accept.

Care to elaborate? Do you mean 3D touch worked on the iPhone 6? Isn't this feature grounded in the way the hardware is built?

 

[C DM]

Care to elaborate? Do you mean 3D touch worked on the iPhone 6? Isn't this feature grounded in the way the hardware is built?

No, it worked without 3D Touch, similar to how it works on iPads even now.