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Future Apple Watch to Adopt Solid State Buttons With Haptic Feedback
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How deep have you dived with your watch before? I stopped at 3m but took it off when I was doing proper diving.Sounds promising! So, greater depth water resistance? It will be time for me to update my Series 2
No, I've thought myself that the 'digital crown' is a pointless gimmick, just like the touch bar.
To Me, this is a very believable rumor and I could see the buttons interacting with the haptic engine with the Apple Watch. Although I do prefer the click of a button, I really did find that the haptic home button with the iPhone 7 was very responsive and I like the initial feedback with the vibration from the taptic engine. Overall, I welcome this change and I think it also will improve the water resistance.
Why wouldn't you? Force touch works with any gloves, what doesn't work is TouchID or the screen tap.
[doublepost=1528534615][/doublepost]
I think that the crown will spin, it will be the pressure that will be virtual. But we'll see…
I use the crown for scrolling all the time. The current design of the watch doesn't bother me at all, in fact it's one of the main reasons I purchased one. But change in tech is inevitable and I guess the watch will continue to evolve.
I scroll just with the crown. I want to see the content on the small screen, and I can't if my finger covers it to scroll it.
Yeah just like that dated 1963 Rolex Daytona! /s
That’s why you going to feel the click through the Taptic Engine.
Trust me.
There is no need for this to spin.
All it needs is the surface to detect your skin/fingerprint is moving across it's surface, in exactly the same way your finger would if it was spinning, and it can electronically replicate the spin to the cpu/etc inside.
Think of it like a microscopic touch-pad on a laptop
you just slide your fingertip/thumbtip forwards and backwards on a static surface and the computer acts as if you were physically moving something.
There is zero need for the wheel to physically rotate.
Actually, it could just be a block/lump sticking out the side and not wheel/dial shaped. But they might just keep the look of a crown wheel for aesthetic reasons.
There is no need for this to spin.
All it needs is the surface to detect your skin/fingerprint is moving across it's surface, in exactly the same way your finger would if it was spinning, and it can electronically replicate the spin to the cpu/etc inside.
Think of it like a microscopic touch-pad on a laptop
you just slide your fingertip/thumbtip forwards and backwards on a static surface and the computer acts as if you were physically moving something.
There is zero need for the wheel to physically rotate.
Actually, it could just be a block/lump sticking out the side and not wheel/dial shaped. But they might just keep the look of a crown wheel for aesthetic reasons.
Doesn't work.
A touch surface needs to be bigger than your fingers to recognize movement.
Your fingers cover the whole crown.
If they move, the electrical field doesn't change in a meaningful way.
Force touch button and push crown with Taptic feedback.
Crown turns and clicks with Taptic feedback.
Gloves work. Works under water. No Touch ID needed. It’s already on your wrist!
What’s wrong with that?
Crown turns and clicks with Taptic feedback.
Gloves work. Works under water. No Touch ID needed. It’s already on your wrist!
What’s wrong with that?
Does it? I was drunk when I read it
[doublepost=1528542682][/doublepost]Presumably they’ll do the side buttons on iPhones and iPads as well.
Absolutely!
I wonder if force touch will disappear too? It doesn’t feel especially intuitive to use, even though it’s a smart solution.
I hope that the new watch gets a reworked interface to bring up app options, too.
And following from what you said (and the article), I think the Watch will have a combination of haptics from the iPhone 7 onwards - for the button/click of the crown - and the solid state clickwheel from the iPod (2004) onwards - for the crown of course.
If it helps the watch with waterproofing, that’s great.
Also I think we’re all ready to move to devices that acknowledge that they are purely digital and are not trying to fake mechanical feedback.
A crown on a mechanical watch is satisfying as you can feel that you’re manipulating the movement inside.
Replicating a similar input on a purely digital device seems a bit odd now - especially after 3 years of what obviously a successful product ie we all understand what it’s trying to do.
So it’s time for a change (geddit?).
I still happily wear my original stainless steel watch (gen 0) with no reason I can see to upgrade. Something like this may finally be a reason though, as it would look physically different, and I assume nicer.
Tbh I wouldn’t be bothered if the Digital Crown was removed to all the AW to be thinner. I only ever actually use it for volume control when listening to music (although a lot of the time I am using the DC to re-adjust the volume after my arm has turned the volume up itself).
Haptic feedback buttons will be cool if they reduce internal space and increase water resistance.
Haptic feedback buttons will be cool if they reduce internal space and increase water resistance.
Have you tried one of the recent macbook touchpads? It absolutely feels like a physical button. Of course, the linear motor driving the force feedback there is much more powerful than the piddly thing in apple watch (or even iphone 7 or onwards.)
The engineering difficulties behind making something like that work and still retain all-day battery life are far from trivial, for a number of reasons. Idle power draw would probably go up by several hundred percent. I wouldn't expect it, honestly. Also, OLED displays work poorly with static graphics elements; you'd get noticeable burn-in on the display within a week tops, and I can only imagine how much people would scream their heads off on forums over that...
Mine isn't audible unless I put it right up next to my ear. Is your skin metallic, perhaps...?
The button functionality would be solid state, not the rotation functionality...
Oh gods please no. How would you fit it? There's not enough room on either the bezel or in the case to put one there, and image quality would be absolutely abysmal. You could only squeeze in the worst kind of miniature pinhole webcam sensors, and aiming it in any sort of steady fashion would be a nightmare, especially for anyone on the other end watching you through it.
Force touch is wonky because Apple in their pigheadedness refuses to visually indicate which screen elements can be force touched. There could be an accessibility option to flip on which puts a colored frame around stuff which is force touchable for example. But, no. This cannot be allowed, because Apple designers are tunnel-visioning on everything being minimalistic to the extreme...
Don't particularly care either way. Just a button. They could keep the same design for years in my eyes. Speed, software improvements, and battery life are all that matters to me at this point.
I guess your options are to get gloves that support touchscreens, take your gloves off, or don't get the upcoming watch.