Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

applebigmac

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 10, 2015
8
1
So, apple is telling us that for that extra context menu, 3D touch hardware is needed..can't they make that context menu appear even on old devices if they change the touch behavior to come up with that menu if someone holds it up for few seconds?
 
What about that action you describe currently used to move icons around on the home screen? It's far easier to simply tell consumers to buy the new phone.
 
What about that action you describe currently used to move icons around on the home screen? It's far easier to simply tell consumers to buy the new phone.

exactly!!

as much as I love apple products, I hate the way they market it. can't they be honest and still score customers?

I will skip upgrading my 6 to 6s and wait for model 7 to arrive - what do you think?
 
exactly!!

as much as I love apple products, I hate the way they market it. can't they be honest and still score customers?

I will skip upgrading my 6 to 6s and wait for model 7 to arrive - what do you think?

To be fair, my friend helped develop the 3D touch technology and he was taking about how complicated it was to implement in the phone. They aren't being entirely dishonest here, think about this: 3D touch is an experience. If they watered it down to make it work on the 6, by holding down on the screen, it would come off as a sub par user experience, and work against Apple two fold: by dissuading customers from buying the latest, and by endorsing a second rate user experience.
 
To be fair, my friend helped develop the 3D touch technology and he was taking about how complicated it was to implement in the phone. They aren't being entirely dishonest here, think about this: 3D touch is an experience. If they watered it down to make it work on the 6, by holding down on the screen, it would come off as a sub par user experience, and work against Apple two fold: by dissuading customers from buying the latest, and by endorsing a second rate user experience.

that's a positive way to look at it - I agree now. I think I have enough patience to wait for another 8 to 12 months for the new revision to come in. its not like a radical 5 to 5S upgrade. thanks.
 
So, apple is telling us that for that extra context menu, 3D touch hardware is needed..can't they make that context menu appear even on old devices if they change the touch behavior to come up with that menu if someone holds it up for few seconds?
I believe the new screen detects how hard you are pressing too, and offers different context menus based on this.
 
  • Like
Reactions: applebigmac
exactly!!

as much as I love apple products, I hate the way they market it. can't they be honest and still score customers?

I will skip upgrading my 6 to 6s and wait for model 7 to arrive - what do you think?

Apple stated that the used technique was hard and expensive to develop, read here. So you think that Apple develops a layer under the screen just to make people update their phone? They could easily introduced a software gimmick that required CPU/RAM and forced people to update.

It's easy to realize that force touch is the future of IOS. Especially in gaming etc.
You don't want to press a long time in a game to "3D touch". Apple wanted to implement it to open up new features, not to get some extra menus.
 
  • Like
Reactions: applebigmac
Apple stated that the used technique was hard and expensive to develop, read here. So you think that Apple develops a layer under the screen just to make people update their phone? They could easily introduced a software gimmick that required CPU/RAM and forced people to update.

It's easy to realize that force touch is the future of IOS. Especially in gaming etc.
You don't want to press a long time in a game to "3D touch". Apple wanted to implement it to open up new features, not to get some extra menus.
Yup. Only thing missing force touch/3D is the iPad. The preview feature and app switching gesture alone make it worthwhile for me. Force touching on the icon is just the cherry on top.
 
sammich - you started off this without any reason. please don't look down upon people. using check check and check is not something encouraging for a new user. you can politely tell if I made a mistake. but saying it aloud and shaming is not right thing. and if my tone was inflammatory, I apologize. I hope to put this to rest as I want to be polite and nice here on this forum. its my new experience with mac stuff and I want to learn and develop. please let me...

Fair enough, but you should know, since you seem honest, that walking into a room throwing about accusations is...unfortunately about par for the course as far the internet goes. Ugh, I feel like an old person now.

Let me offer my apologies as well.

On topic, though - this is definitely a hardware feature. My first reaction to seeing this feature was that it was like what the 'right-click' does. Can you imagine how (let's disregard users with accessibility issues for now) difficult to emulate a right-click with a left-click button only (and no other buttons, like ctrl). Click-and-hold triggers events like drag-start.

The poster above me is probably thinking of an API where developers can get the area of a touch (say, a finger that's pressing harder would increase the touch area), but that is at best a rough guess, and would definitely not work with hard surfaces like stylii.
 
I am pretty sure that with proper software, any iPhone could do what this 3D touch does on the 6S. I can not see it being only hardware.

Read my post above. If you want it just to open menus etc, then yes. But to change deeper inside the OS, like in apps and games I think a hardware for this is needed.

My old HTC have long press, but it's a pain to use. And I would dream of using a long press in a game to "force touch".
I think Apple have bigger plans for 3d touch, they don't invest that much in a technology when they could implement a long touch. Just like TouchID.
 
Read my post above. If you want it just to open menus etc, then yes. But to change deeper inside the OS, like in apps and games I think a hardware for this is needed.

My old HTC have long press, but it's a pain to use. And I would dream of using a long press in a game to "force touch".
I think Apple have bigger plans for 3d touch, they don't invest that much in a technology when they could implement a long touch. Just like TouchID.

Your post does not change the facts. No way Apple could not make my 6+ notice when I pushed harder as my finger point of contact would increase in size also due to the extra pressure. Nope, it is not magic it is mostly software and slick marketing. I welcome it as I can see it will be handy in the future but it is not a "giant leap" that Apple is trying to make us all think it is.
 
  • Like
Reactions: applebigmac
How are so many people comparing 3D touch to long pressing? They are entirely different things and no software update can magically make a capacitive screen react differently based on amounts of pressure.

You people fail to realize that a long press offers one different action based on pressing in the same area whereas 3D touch not only can do 3+ but also has long pressing at the different pressures which opens up so many different possibilities.

And not to mention that this is much more responsive than having to long press on everything.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pk7
[MOD NOTE]
Stop the bickering, I've removed some posts that had nothing to do with the topic. If you do not want to discuss this subject please move on, there's no need to accuse the OP, or reference his join date.
 
  • Like
Reactions: applebigmac
Your post does not change the facts. No way Apple could not make my 6+ notice when I pushed harder as my finger point of contact would increase in size also due to the extra pressure. Nope, it is not magic it is mostly software and slick marketing. I welcome it as I can see it will be handy in the future but it is not a "giant leap" that Apple is trying to make us all think it is.

The touch area API was available in iOS 8 for developers to take advantage of. Are there any applications that use touch area as a way to trigger additional functionality? I'm only aware of drawing apps taking advantage of this, and not for user interface element interaction.

There were likely reliability issues, and unintended 'hard/harder presses'. How could you tell the difference between someone pressing harder or rolling their finger slightly? In the demos on screen, Apple demonstrated medium-press to preview and then you can slide your fingers around to reveal different menus to the left, right and below. Your contact area will be varying wildly.

The force touch makes the whole interaction mechanical in nature. Rather than registering touch points and making guesses based on relative areas, if the user applies a level of physical pressure, they get EVENT A, if they press harder still, they get EVENT B.

How about hard-tip styli?
 
A basic understanding of how The digitiser works is required. Once you've realised that then you'd see it senses purely a touch. Holding your finger on the screen is a 'touch' still. It does not understand pressure. 3D Touch adds a sensor layer that reads the distance between the layers this is passed on to the OS.

We've gone from 'touch' which gives us 2 gestures (tap and hold) to 3D Touch which gives us a multitude (off the top of my head, tap, hold, press/hold and a deeper press/hold)

Apple stated that the used technique was hard and expensive to develop, read here. So you think that Apple develops a layer under the screen just to make people update their phone? They could easily introduced a software gimmick that required CPU/RAM and forced people to update.

It's easy to realize that force touch is the future of IOS. Especially in gaming etc.
You don't want to press a long time in a game to "3D touch". Apple wanted to implement it to open up new features, not to get some extra menus.

I am pretty sure that with proper software, any iPhone could do what this 3D touch does on the 6S. I can not see it being only hardware.
 
The touch area API was available in iOS 8 for developers to take advantage of. Are there any applications that use touch area as a way to trigger additional functionality? I'm only aware of drawing apps taking advantage of this, and not for user interface element interaction.

There were likely reliability issues, and unintended 'hard/harder presses'. How could you tell the difference between someone pressing harder or rolling their finger slightly? In the demos on screen, Apple demonstrated medium-press to preview and then you can slide your fingers around to reveal different menus to the left, right and below. Your contact area will be varying wildly.

The force touch makes the whole interaction mechanical in nature. Rather than registering touch points and making guesses based on relative areas, if the user applies a level of physical pressure, they get EVENT A, if they press harder still, they get EVENT B.

How about hard-tip styli?

What I am saying is that the screen could "notice" the "footprint" of a simple touch that turned into a hard touch by the increase in size with software. I agree that changes in the screen hardware might enhance this but it is not anything that could not be done mostly by software.
 
What if someone was using a soft tipped stylus or have soft finger tips or even tapped the screen with the pad of there finger rather than tip...?
What I am saying is that the screen could "notice" the "footprint" of a simple touch that turned into a hard touch by the increase in size with software. I agree that changes in the screen hardware might enhance this but it is not anything that could not be done mostly by software.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pk7
A basic understanding of how The digitiser works is required. Once you've realised that then you'd see it senses purely a touch. Holding your finger on the screen is a 'touch' still. It does not understand pressure. 3D Touch adds a sensor layer that reads the distance between the layers this is passed on to the OS.

We've gone from 'touch' which gives us 2 gestures (tap and hold) to 3D Touch which gives us a multitude (off the top of my head, tap, hold, press/hold and a deeper press/hold)

The screen would see a difference in a touch that then progressed into a harder touch by the increase in size of the touch on the digitizer.
 
It does not understand pressure. 3D Touch adds a sensor layer that reads the distance between the layers this is passed on to the OS.
This makes sense, but then couldn't it measure how long the touch was?
 
Holding your finger on the screen is a 'touch' still. It does not understand pressure. 3D Touch adds a sensor layer that reads the distance between the layers this is passed on to the OS.

Reading the distance between the layers and understanding pressure is the basically the same thing.
 
This makes sense, but then couldn't it measure how long the touch was?

I think apple has a bigger idea to Force touch. I mean, you saw the game demo. Do you want a longer touch or an instant force touch?
As with touchID, which seemed a little bit useless when introduced there's an idea behind it. They wouldn't waste that much time and money on a technique that is not needed. The future will bring us the true benefits of force touch.

I think that they may integrate ways to interact with the OS that is bet used with force touch, and that a longer touch will not give the same experience.
 
I think apple has a bigger idea to Force touch. I mean, you saw the game demo. Do you want a longer touch or an instant force touch?

I won't disagree and its apple's MO to only have new features on new phones. They did similar things in the past, the details escape me.
 
It's a bigger idea than what they are telling us now. The importance here is that 3D Touch is hardware-based, in many aspects like a real button. It's the first step on the way to removing the Homebutton altogether.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.