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

[veggiedude]

I don't understand why they didn't just stick with Force Touch - they already established a brand name used in Apple Watch and MacBooks, it makes no sense to change it.

Basically 3D touch added another layer of complexity. It isn't found in Force Touch, which is used on the Apple Watch and new MacBooks.

This article explains the difference:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/09/10/force-touch-gets-redefined-in-the-iphone-6s-with-3d-touch

 

[kdarling]

Please....all most of this forum is is bashing a feature none of us have even used yet.

True, although that's partly what forums are for... letting people hash out the new and unknown ahead of time.

I find it funny that when Samsung releases their slew of gimmicky shortcuts, people hail them for "trying new things".

I thought people called that "throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks." At least when Samsung does it.

Apple's been working on this for years as a way to quicken interactions and add another dimension to interacting with your phone and "ya but we can already call folks, who needs to be able to 3D Touch for shortcuts".

Watching the video reminded me a bit of the Blackberry Storm with its clickable screen, only implemented in a much smoother way.

The only thing I wonder about, is if it's easy to accidentally press too hard and cause an irreversible action to take place. However, I'm sure Apple has taken that into account with menu choices.

I suspect that, just as with multi-finger gestures, some will use it a lot, and some never will.

 

[nutjob]

Recent performance meaning iOS has never been stronger and continues to grow in the US and China?

Please....all most of this forum is is bashing a feature none of us have even used yet. I find it funny that when Samsung releases their slew of gimmicky shortcuts, people hail them for "trying new things". Apple's been working on this for years as a way to quicken interactions and add another dimension to interacting with your phone and "ya but we can already call folks, who needs to be able to 3D Touch for shortcuts".

"Widgets are amazing on Android - I can make calls directly frothe home screen and access info without opening the app."

"Psh, 3D Touch is a gimmick - I can just open the app the get to what I need."

The amount of hyperbole, ignorant bashing and hypocritical nonsense here is astounding. Although, I shouldn't be astounded.....seems like this forum has continued its downward trajectory since I left.

Whatever Huawei announced earlier this year is nonsense - being a Chinese company, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they found out about Apple's plans and tried to jump them by ripping it off. Unfortunately for them, Apple has the implementation and quality to make this a truly transformative feature, whereas Huawei added it seemingly as an "ehh, you can use this or not".

At the end of the day, no one has used it. We're constantly on here crying about Apple not innovating, simply catching up. Where are the features we didn't know we needed until Apple showed us we did? And now that a feature is here that has that potential, we'e dismissing it before trying it?

Congratulations. You've spend endless text extolling an ad-hominem argument against everyone except Apple, but you haven't explained how this feature will actually benefit people, except for vague claims that are no better than Apple's marketing nonsense.

On that subject, I love how you parrot Apple's marketing nonsense, saying that they have been working on it for years. That makes people think it was difficult and this is some sort of breakthrough, but of course how long you spend on something means nothing when discussing what it actually is and how it actually benefits users.

Jobs famously insisted on a single mouse button but now Apple are staking their future on a complicated and counterintuitive "hard press." That tells you a lot.

As I said, it's more of a gimmick and it's more evidence of Tim's (and his team's) lack of vision and lack of a deep understanding of computing. It's evidence that Apple is on a slow glidepath down as their dominant position stops them from having to dig deep and take risks with real transformative technologies.

 

[moderately]

<snip>

Jobs famously insisted on a single mouse button but now Apple are staking their future on a complicated and counterintuitive "hard press." That tells you a lot.

As I said, it's more of a gimmick and it's more evidence of Tim's (and his team's) lack of vision and lack of a deep understanding of computing. It's evidence that Apple is on a slow glidepath down as their dominant position stops them from having to dig deep and take risks with real transformative technologies.

I think you are off on this. The 3d touch seems very intuitive- push harder to go deeper. Apple's brilliance is in making objects that are fun to hold and use. I bet this will make sense on a visceral level once we hold it in our hands.

 

[Luis Ortega]

This is incredible. The engineering behind it. Wow.

Lol...A new technology....very hard to do...I suspect that we'll be hearing a lot about touchgate soon.
We'll probably have to wait til iphone 8 for them to get the touch technology working.

 

[Made In Machines]

I guess we have to wait for this tech to roll out to the ipads. Shame it's not on the ipad pro.

 

[samcraig]

A larger iPad is just like a hybrid 2-in-1 device?

Or maybe you mean the Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil are blatant rip offs of the Surface accessories.....to which I would say, Microsoft didn't invent the stylus or the Bluetooth/external keyboard. And people have been begging Apple to make their own accessories like this because 3rd party ones just don't do.

No - But I think it's a bit hypocritical that when the surface came out, there was a lot of bashing based on the fact that they charged for the keyboard, if they had a stylus - they blew it, etc. Not everyone. But enough "noise" on here to make it a little amusing to see that once again, when Apple introduces something - it's better/makes sense/just what was needed. Granted, there are still several people here who have the same stance about Apple as they do their competitors about these two items too...

 

[pithy]

The long touch vs. force touch debate is interesting. I will be intrigued to experience the subtle differences. There must be a reason Apple took so much effort to implement force touch, as they could have done long touch years ago. It is possible that because you can do a force "3d" touch in a shorter time that it will be more useful and more fluid than the long touch implementation. Anyway, maybe they should implement both and make it a preference "let the people decide!"

 

[smallcoffee]

Congratulations. You've spend endless text extolling an ad-hominem argument against everyone except Apple, but you haven't explained how this feature will actually benefit people, except for vague claims that are no better than Apple's marketing nonsense.

On that subject, I love how you parrot Apple's marketing nonsense, saying that they have been working on it for years. That makes people think it was difficult and this is some sort of breakthrough, but of course how long you spend on something means nothing when discussing what it actually is and how it actually benefits users.

Jobs famously insisted on a single mouse button but now Apple are staking their future on a complicated and counterintuitive "hard press." That tells you a lot.

As I said, it's more of a gimmick and it's more evidence of Tim's (and his team's) lack of vision and lack of a deep understanding of computing. It's evidence that Apple is on a slow glidepath down as their dominant position stops them from having to dig deep and take risks with real transformative technologies.

I'm not so sure about your point about the "marketing nonsense" about creating the force touch feature. Think about how difficult it is to manufacture a device that can actually perform that feature, and then make millions of them. I'm not really sure how long they've been working on it, but if it took them less than multiple years to create it, I'm all the more impressed, gimmick or not.

 

[prezasti]

Can anyone weigh in on why 3D touch technology is required in order to take and view Live Photo's? I'm running the 9.1 Beta and there are a few features turned off that requite 3D touch, however there is no reason these features couldn't be used with long press vs hard press.

Is apple really claiming the "Need to have iPhone 6" from last years camera and processor aren't capable of taking and processing Live Photos?

Also, as some have said in prior posts, I see an issue with someone using 3D touch on their phones and then going to an iPad or iPod and getting the wiggling icons thing a lot.

9.1 allows you to swipe from the left side of the screen to go back in an application, but it doesn't bring up the app viewer by swiping back further, which could be accomplished without pressing harder on a 3D touch device, if they just changed the software.

I still don't see why 3D touch is required to do any of the things long press could accomplish. At least for switching between non 3D touch devices.

 

[kdarling]

...Think about how difficult it is to manufacture a device that can actually perform that feature, and then make millions of them. I'm not really sure how long they've been working on it, but if it took them less than multiple years to create it, I'm all the more impressed, gimmick or not.

I think Apple's big into talking about "years of effort" now, because of all the prior art shown in recent patent trials. Now they want to act like they've worked on something for a long time, even if most of it was just spent thinking about an idea.

In any case, there are many patents on hardware to do force detection in combination with a touchscreen, so I think Apple wanted to own their own method without owing royalties to someone else.

The hardware is not the biggie though. It's getting the software to feel intuitive:

The long touch vs. force touch debate is interesting. I will be intrigued to experience the subtle differences. There must be a reason Apple took so much effort to implement force touch, as they could have done long touch years ago. It is possible that because you can do a force "3d" touch in a shorter time that it will be more useful and more fluid than the long touch implementation.

I think that's a real possibility.

It'll be interesting to see how well it works for everyone, though. I know some older users who don't have much finger strength or control.

That's one reason why I hope a feature like this works _in addition_ to other methods.

 

[UAV]

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

you do know that Samsung introduced the Galaxy S4 with the finger hover feature that activated a sub menu or gave you a preview of a text/email right?

 

[jrswizzle]

No - But I think it's a bit hypocritical that when the surface came out, there was a lot of bashing based on the fact that they charged for the keyboard, if they had a stylus - they blew it, etc. Not everyone. But enough "noise" on here to make it a little amusing to see that once again, when Apple introduces something - it's better/makes sense/just what was needed. Granted, there are still several people here who have the same stance about Apple as they do their competitors about these two items too...

In my opinion, the only time I bring up the "but they charge for the keyboard" thing is when someone claims the surface is a better option than a MacBook. I then factor in the cost of the keyboard because, if you want the same functionality, the keyboard is a must.

I'm still skeptical of such a large tablet, but it looks interesting enough for me to try. And my wife, who doesn't really care to use a laptop, but loves to draw and sketch both in her free time and for her job, loves the idea. It'll be a nice device for her - the person who can do everything they need to on a tablet, but would like to have a little extra flexibility with accessories made by a company we trust as far as quality goes.

Also, that stylus line is being thrown around a lot - I think it's being misused. Steve said the stylus as the primary source of input would make the tablet wrong. The Apple Pencil is really a drawing tool focused on dethroning the Wacoms and the like.

Along the lines of the thread, I personally see myself using the shortcuts all the time. But I really need to get my hands on it to figure out its utility for my personal use case.

 

[Tech198]

I just hope Apple isn't expecting something breathtaking out of all this 'unbelievably hard' thing to accomplish in a phone, and then it becomes a flop that unlike mult-touch, most won''t use to make it worthwhile.

 

[kdarling]

The Apple Pencil is really a drawing tool focused on dethroning the Wacoms and the like.

Yes, doing their own method is partly or mostly about Apple not having to pay royalties to Wacom.

In the early days of the Samsung Note tablet series, it was said that Wacom was getting as much as $100 per device in return for the use of their technology.

Apple likes their high profit margins way too much, to not figure out an alternative (and royalty free) pen method, even if not as good in some ways (e.g. the need for a pen charge).

Who can blame them?

 

[adoapplemac]

3D touch, especially the pop aspect, looks like it has a lot of lag in the experience. I can see people peeking, releasing, and tapping rather than waiting for the pop simply because time spent waiting is longer than time spend engaged in a behavior.

You've misunderstood the demonstrations. Peek and Pop, along with any other 3D Touch feature, work as fast as you can press down on the screen. In the demo videos, the person is deliberately taking their time to allow the narrator time to explain what's going on. There is no inherent delay with Pop.

 

[adoapplemac]

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

Oh look, it's yet another person who thinks Huawei invented Force Touch. Apple have already had it on the Apple Watch and MacBook for months, and it was obvious they were going to implement it into the iPhone. Huawei just wanted to beat Apple, so they rushed the feature out to market, whereas Apple have actually done their R&D.

Huawei's implementation is so bad it's not even worth mentioning. Don't even try to claim that Huawei came up with the idea.

 

[adoapplemac]

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.

I don't think the Peek and Pop features are useful in the Mail app either, but elsewhere, especially with the shortcuts on the home screen, it is very useful. You're picking one particular example and ignoring all the useful implementations in a desperate attempt to bash Apple.

 

[Abazigal]

Yes, doing their own method is partly or mostly about Apple not having to pay royalties to Wacom.

In the early days of the Samsung Note tablet series, it was said that Wacom was getting as much as $100 per device in return for the use of their technology.

Apple likes their high profit margins way too much, to not figure out an alternative (and royalty free) pen method, even if not as good in some ways (e.g. the need for a pen charge).

Who can blame them?

Not only that, but you don't want Wacom suddenly pulling stunts and start demanding more money or deliberately withholding their tech if the iPad Pro concept actually gets anywhere. Or Wacom could suddenly get bought over by Samsung or some other incident.

If the Maps saga has taught Apple anything, it's that it is always better to own as much of your own tech as possible. This way, you get more freedom in integrating the hardware with the software, get an additional avenue of differentiation (because the Apple stylus isn't available on non-Apple devices) and aren't vulnerable to outside factors.

 

[iapplelove]

I think Siri was more of a must have than this back when she first came out of an S version

 

[Abazigal]

I don't think the Peek and Pop features are useful in the Mail app either, but elsewhere, especially with the shortcuts on the home screen, it is very useful. You're picking one particular example and ignoring all the useful implementations in a desperate attempt to bash Apple.

I myself am looking forward to the ability to preview webpages and even open them directly. Way faster than opening a link in a new tab in the background, then switching to it.

 

[spacemnspiff]

My thoughts are that Apples hardware implementation with the software will be hard to match unless Google decides to integrate this at a low level in Android, just as touch interface is deeply embedded in the OS.

And the current iteration of software in iOS9 is just the beginning of uses for this interface, this interface has the potential of becoming big, as big the the touchscreen was on the smart phones. I am looking forward to seeing inventive uses for force coupled with touch input.

Android initially started out as a keyboard input based OS. But had to change its course after Apple popularized how intuitive touch input can be.

 

[grahamtriggs]

I don't care how much time and money they've invested into it - I still couldn't give a crap about it.

Seriously.

The biggest problem with iDevices is the amount of overloading of funcionality on a limited set of inputs. Too often, I end up getting the input slightly wrong, and then the phone does something else to what I want it to do.

 

[shanson27]

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.

Is not slow, but fast as hell

 

[uid15]

I think it may be hard for the non-techy to catch on to, but I may be wrong. I think it's a really neat idea, but I question its actual usefulness. Okay, peak into a text conversation. How hard is it to tap the conversation and then tap the back arrow?

But it has a lot of potential in third party apps.

It appears you do not understand the process of continuous simplification and the Ive philosophy of "reduce, reduce, reduce", seen here in respect to repetive actions by reducing the steps needed to execute them. Why take 4 steps when you can take 1?

"3D Touch" is a direct wormhole that cuts a hole through multiple layers of UI modality, and then drops you with great speed right on top of what you need to do, and then propels you back up again at light speed, when done. What's NOT to like?