3D Touch in iPhone 6s is a 'Breakthrough,' Was 'Really Hard' to Make

[LordBeelzebub]

Wait, better battery life is a progression.....

3D Touch is a brand new feature. I get not seeing the utility in your own life just yet, but give me a break. It's a completely new way to interact with your device.

It's just a different way to accomplish and perform the same thing. You can wash your car for 5 years with a rag until someone gives you a sponge. It's a new way to wash your car, but your still just washing your car, the end result is the same. Two roads to get to the same place.

Maybe app developers will implement it differently, but from the Demo from the keynote, not that big a deal and not something I can't live without.

 

[MaSx]

4K video recording on 16GB. LOL. 2GB RAM or milking until iPhone 7 lol.

 

[Dorje Sylas]

The "Peek" and "Pop" are not exciting. Sorry but those kinds of functions have been around in the form of "Press & Hold" actions for a while. Now we just have "Hard Press" and "Light Press" added to that list. Which could be an issue considering the size of 6s and 6s Plus, not exactly one-hand friendly phones so leverage and miss-presses may be an issue for some users (especially those of us with tiny hands).

The only thing that will be remotely exciting is what the "Taptic Engine" will be capable of. Haptics and "texturing" of UI will be the real game changer. Especially if you can build a "blind" UI based on force feedback alone.

And Apple didn't show off anything along those lines. Well it's kinda hard to show off, but you should get the point. There are no reports of demos that just blank the screen and make the user navigate totally by "Taptic" feedback.

Frankly Apple is just begging Samsung to steal the rug out from under them by including something like Senseg's E-Sense screen.

 

[shiseiryu1]

I've been replying to android fanboys all day that this is not like a long-hold press on their samsung phone.

Haha! Dumb Droidbot lovers. I really think this is one of those features that you'll just have to try out to really appreciate.

 

[Keirasplace]

The "Peek" and "Pop" are not exciting. Sorry but those kinds of functions have been around in the form of "Press & Hold" actions for a while. Now we just have "Hard Press" and "Light Press" added to that list. Which could be an issue considering the size of 6s and 6s Plus, not exactly one-hand friendly phones so leverage and miss-presses may be an issue for some users (especially those of us with tiny hands).

The only thing that will be remotely exciting is what the "Taptic Engine" will be capable of. Haptics and "texturing" of UI will be the real game changer. Especially if you can build a "blind" UI based on force feedback alone.

And Apple didn't show off anything along those lines. Well it's kinda hard to show off, but you should get the point. There are no reports of demos that just blank the screen and make the user navigate totally by "Taptic" feedback.

Frankly Apple is just begging Samsung to steal the rug out from under them by including something like Senseg's E-Sense screen.

No ,buddy, they have not. Seriously, this is getting tiresome.

 

[Keirasplace]

I totally agree with you. Considering the price, the new features are not worth it. They are not improvements, they are just progressions. Valuable features would have been better battery life and more storage space.

Right... One message and on ignore. That's a record.

 

[Keirasplace]

3D touch sounds interesting, but I feel like my Note 3 and Shield Tablet already function the same way by pressing and holding on messages, links, screens, etc. (One of my favorite Android features.) Am I wrong for thinking this is apples first gimmick?

Before you go saying I'm an android fan, note that I have an iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 for my personal phones and I also use an iPad mini and I only own Mac computers. My android devices are for work.

NO, It is NOT THE SAME. Good grief.

Time pressed, vs force.... (Time and force are hell of a lot different)
Instant feedback and welll, not instant feedback (or even no feedback at all)...
You could play the piano with different attack speeds (like a real piano) with this, you can't do that with the long press... The long press ALREADY EXISTS IN IOS.

It's like people saying these comments over and over and over are playing dumb on purpose!

 

[lincolntran]

It never ceases to amaze me. Apple "borrowed" designs from Microsoft, Samsung, Amazon, Roku and even Nintendo today, and you guys keep bitching that Samsung will copy the one thing that was even somewhat original today. And I still am not sure how it will function any differently than a long touch.

Really? 3D Touch (never mind the name), is not original? Care to share something like that?

You can say that long press can perform the same, but the "user experience" is completely different. With long press, it takes a little longer and that defeat the whe purpose of quickly accessing something.

What happen if you can to use both handsome press and 3d touch?

 

[lincolntran]

Right - like the Apple Pencil. Oh wait....

What does Apple Pencil have to do with 3D touch? I'm not talking about Apple Pencil. More over, it's not like Samsung invented the stylus.

 

[AleXXXa]

Waiting for Samsung S Force, a blatant ripoff of 3D touch.

You're joking, right?
I think you mean Apple's 3d touch, a blatant ripoff of Huawei's Force Touch.
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/135...-touch-display-explored-a-new-way-to-interact

 

[TheRealCBONE]

Did anyone expect any apple employees to undersell the magic/technical wizardry/man-years that go into every aspect of every apple product every year. Even the stuff they brought from a company they acquired or sourced or straight-up steal is a miracle of science and design. Only apple could revolutionize engineering 3-4 times a year. Every year.

 

[LordBeelzebub]

Let's go back to Apple's demo of 3D touch in terms of checking your mail. When you go into your Inbox currently, what do you see? You see who the mail message is from, when you received it, the Subject of the message, and the first two lines of the body of the message. You can go into Settings and change it to see up to 5 lines of the body of the message. But technically that IS you're preview of the mail message you got.

Now with 3D touch you press on that preview to see yet another bigger preview of your mail message, then press harder to actually open it up. Where as now it's a two step process of seeing the preview and tapping on it to open it, with 3D Touch it's now a 3 step process of two previews then seeing the actual message.

That's not efficiency, that's Apples illusion of efficiency wrapped around a shiny piece of candy and our eyes glaze over totally oblivious to the obvious that's it's the total opposite of simplicity and ease of use.

What we have now is simplistic and is all that is necessary to accomplish what we need to and see at a glance what we need to. If you need to see all that was shown in the bigger preview via 3D Touch, you might as well just open the message and read it.

 

[ArmCortexA8]

What a gimmicky feature - copied from the Apple watch but improved. If you cannot navigate and use your iDevice fluidly without this function you have issues. I hate gestures as I have no need for them as the direct method is quicker and more direct. If it takes longer to use a new feature than directly as previous, this "feature" will be relegated very fast. Plus imagine the cost of replacing the screen.

 

[LordBeelzebub]

Did anyone expect any apple employees to undersell the magic/technical wizardry/man-years that go into every aspect of every apple product every year. Even the stuff they brought from a company they acquired or sourced or straight-up steal is a miracle of science and design. Only apple could revolutionize engineering 3-4 times a year. Every year.

"Next best thing", doesn't Samsung do the exact same thing just worded differently?

 

[Dorje Sylas]

NO, It is NOT THE SAME. Good grief.

Time pressed, vs force.... (Time and force are hell of a lot different)
Instant feedback and welll, not instant feedback (or even no feedback at all)...
You could play the piano with different attack speeds (like a real piano) with this, you can't do that with the long press... The long press ALREADY EXISTS IN IOS.

It's like people saying these comments over and over and over are playing dumb on purpose!

And yet Apple isn't showing this. The information access part is the most boring boneheaded way they could have demonstrated the possibilities of 3D Touch and the Taptic Engine. Its UI aspects that have been accessed in another way for a while.

All they are showing is accessing functions that already exist, all be it a bit faster if you don't mess up the "pressure".

Out of everything shown on stage the only one that even remotely makes it an "ah ha, thats how its different" moment was the on-rails Warhammer 40k game with "switching to a heavier gun". And even that was a throw away moment.

Apple isn't selling this feature well. You can ride around like a White Knight telling us all how wrong we are, but that isn't going to change the poor presentation.

Show me someone using a "blind" UI of force feedback only. Show me someone playing a game or using an app that simulates deformable surfaces where the "pressure" nature of feedback will be very clear and distinct from "Press & Hold".

Get with Autodesk and work with them to update 123d Sculpt (http://www.123dapp.com/sculptplus) and show that off.

Showing GUI elements and interaction that have been achieved with Press & Hold for a few years now... that is not how you sell this.

 

[MartiNZ]

That's not efficiency, that's Apples illusion of efficiency wrapped around a shiny piece of candy and our eyes glaze over totally oblivious to the obvious that's it's the total opposite of simplicity and ease of use.

What we have now is simplistic and is all that is necessary to accomplish what we need to and see at a glance what we need to. If you need to see all that was shown in the bigger preview via 3D Touch, you might as well just open the message and read it.

Kind of agree with you there, and love your turn of phrase lol. When QuickLook came to OS X it was useful because it supported formats that one might not have had software installed to view otherwise. This phone implementation really looks unpredictable and not an efficiency drive at all, with the possible exception of the home screen uses, where it really is just a right-click with jump lists that -might- save a step or two, if you really wanted to take a selfie....

I don't quite understand the use cases demonstrated in the video, I guess, or even what they were achieving with zooming in pictures (?), but for mine, keeping it simple like clicking a link to a map just opens the map app, or a link opens the browser, and when it's dealt with, you return to the message ... well that already happens on my Windows Phone, without confusing me with overlays or different strengths of pressure. Just not sure they've got this one right, and I think it runs the risk of confusing people more than helping.

 

[Constable Odo]

Samsung should easily be able to reverse-engineer 3D Touch like they do the features on any other product. Besides, I'd heard Huawei already came out with a variation of 3D Touch when they weighed an orange on the smartphone screen using their Mate S smartphone. I suppose the technology isn't that hard to implement if it's already out there. Apple's making a big deal out of this but I'm sure every smartphone company on the planet will have it within a few months. The biggest problem Apple has is that it doesn't want to pay money to make things exclusive for them for six months.

 

[afsnyder]

This just looks so much better than the Apple Watch implementation.

I think the Apple Watch implementation is necessary to be the way it is. The interface for 3D touch, although force sensing as well, is definitely geared toward larger screens.

 

[MasterRyu2011]

Waiting for Samsung S Force, a blatant ripoff of 3D touch.

Samsung: Who needs touch when you can control the screen with your eyeballs. The force is with us.

 

[afsnyder]

I have an iPhone 5 and i'm not 100% convinced I want to drop the mega bucks for these new iPhones. 3D touch, almost sounds like a Samsung gimic feature, is it really something you can't live without? Does it really add that much more quality? Does it really improve the user experience that much more compared to how we use our iPhones today? Think about it, I'm not sure it does overall.

As far as RAM, I'm sure if the phone had more than one gig Apple would have been more than eager to boast about it in the keynote, which they didn't, so I'll assume it doesn't.

Since the iPhone 5 came out with the A6 chip, there's really no reason to upgrade to a new iPhone unless yours craps out since you get software updates to at least match some of the features. The new features and enhancements based on hardware are nice, I mean really nice to have but it's all first world bull and we don't really need it.

That being said I'm buying a Space Gray iPhone 6s to replace my iPhone 5 pretty soon because of my swelling battery and I'm a tech nerd reading a tech blog so I really gotta be up to date haha

 

[afsnyder]

Probably to highlight the aspect that it is not a simple force touch but several levels of force touch.

I think it's to market it more effectively since Force Touch can measure multiple levels of Force but it's all software based.

 

[kmanvan]

This is 100% marketing. I'm sure it took some work but it's been shoehorned into the Apple "innovation" narrative.

Yes, but as you can see from the comments, Apple's marketing BS works... at least on an Apple fan forum.

 

[prezasti]

NO, It is NOT THE SAME. Good grief.

Time pressed, vs force.... (Time and force are hell of a lot different)
Instant feedback and welll, not instant feedback (or even no feedback at all)...
You could play the piano with different attack speeds (like a real piano) with this, you can't do that with the long press... The long press ALREADY EXISTS IN IOS.

It's like people saying these comments over and over and over are playing dumb on purpose!

I don't think people are "playing dumb," as you put it, especially if they have been using a similar type of feature for a while now on Android. I just feel that 3D touch is a sales gimmick over functional productivity. You can do basically the same thing with just software. Maybe my opinion will be different when I get my hands on an iPhone 6S, but all the demo's I've seen thus far make the feature seem slow. Maybe the presenters are doing it wrong, but they all appear to be holding and holding and holding to work the 3D touch features, which seams like an exhausting task, when you need speed in your work day.

I don't see pressing harder as an advantage if it still takes the same amount of time to hold a spot on the screen to go deeper into an app than if they just programed the timing of holding onto a spot on the screen differently, as I pointed out my android devices already do.

 

[mrhick01]

Not to be a nag, but when I read about how hard it was to get right I'm almost expecting that they will have problems as well. I'm not only thinking about how the sensors will fare over the long term, but also how it will interact with a plethora of screen protectors and other aftermarket items.

That will feed into the yearly exchange program that Apple will be implementing.

Even if it is a technology that is not durable over time (and we do not know yet whether it is or is not), their recycle/exchange program allows you to have a new phone before parts consistently wear out and it is a way for them to rope in and keep customers (ahem, give them a compelling reason to remain Apple users).

 

[John.B]

And I still am not sure how it will function any differently than a long touch.

You know how the trackpad on the new Macbook feels like it has been clicked, even though it physically never moves? Oh, no, I guess you wouldn't know that, would you?

Let's try this... Long touch doesn't give you a physical sensation as confirmation of your action. 3D Touch has, at minimum, two levels and it's obvious which is which. Does that help?