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It's still not entirely clear why Apple got rid of 3D Touch, but it has been speculated that Apple eliminated it in order to bring gesture parity to the iPhone and the iPad.
It's still not entirely clear why???

Of course it's clear! The force touch compatible display was more expensive and thicker than a standard display panel. They removed the feature to reduce production costs and to free up internal space for other components. And they replaced the feature by another one who is not 99% but mostly the same. Win win. And yes, I miss 3D Touch.
 
In my opinion, Haptic Touch was already 99% the same thing as 3D Touch.
It's not even close, 3D touch was amazing and I used it heavily on a daily basis on the phone and watch haptic touch cannot replace the missing features. Removing it was one of the worst decisions they've made in a very long time.

3D touch was like a car accelerator, pressure sensitive now its just like tapping a button. It's complete crap.

There was games especially that made full use of it, hold the screen gently to accelerate and the harder you pressed the faster you went. Or waking, touch gently to walk and the harder you press the faster you ran. 3D touch worked exactly like an anoluge trigger which haptic can't do.
 
The flashlight and camera toggles on the lock screen and keyboard trackpad are probably where 3D Touch shines the most.

When it was available. The issue with 3D Touch was that developers didn’t embrace it and Apple was slow to implement cool uses for it. Evidently it also required an additional substrate on the screen that Apple ditched for (IIRC) aesthetic reasons. It made the screen thicker than they wanted.

Haptic Touch is a poor compromise, but at least it replicates some of 3D Touch’s functions.
 
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Love this! Force touching/3d touching has always seemed to be a little too slow, where you of course don't want it to actually trigger, but when you do want to trigger seems like its always slightly longer than one would expect or want. Enabling this setting makes a noticeable difference. Not short enough that you would accidentally trigger easily, but 100% more the speed I would expect for the interaction. Wonderful! Though of course other than MacRumors, probably no one will ever discover this quality of life enhancement unless they make it the default someday.
 
It's still not entirely clear why???

Of course it's clear! The force touch compatible display was more expensive and thicker than a standard display panel. They removed the feature to reduce production costs and to free up internal space for other components. And they replaced the feature by another one who is not 99% but mostly the same. Win win. And yes, I miss 3D Touch.

A weak reason IMO. The phone could be minimally thicker without issue and we don’t really know how much Apple saved by removing the feature. Haptic Touch isn’t “mostly the same.” It’s barely 50% of the functionality of 3D Touch.

It’s unusual for Apple to take back genuinely useful interface innovations. I think that’s why many of us continue to miss it.
 
A weak reason IMO. The phone could be minimally thicker without issue and we don’t really know how much Apple saved by removing the feature. Haptic Touch isn’t “mostly the same.” It’s barely 50% of the functionality of 3D Touch.

It’s unusual for Apple to take back genuinely useful interface innovations. I think that’s why many of us continue to miss it.

The big additional factor is it was not a widely used feature. I think Apple determined the cost for development and software support and maintenance in addition to hardware (parts, production, etc.) was not worth the relative low usage.
 
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It's not even close, 3D touch was amazing and I used it heavily on a daily basis on the phone and watch haptic touch cannot replace the missing features. Removing it was one of the worst decisions they've made in a very long time.

3D touch was like a car accelerator, pressure sensitive now its just like tapping a button. It's complete crap.

There was games especially that made full use of it, hold the screen gently to accelerate and the harder you pressed the faster you went. Or waking, touch gently to walk and the harder you press the faster you ran. 3D touch worked exactly like an anoluge trigger which haptic can't do.
Ok, I didn’t realize that the pressure sensitivity was used as much as it was. Thanks for the info.
 
No, it was noticeably slower — I toggled it on and off to see when I was ready to upgrade my XS. However this feature brings it closer to that 99%.
I am desparately holding onto my XS Max for it was the last 3D Touch iPhone. I know I need to upgrade because I want the nicer cameras, but I just can't get over how much I love 3DT.
 
I am desparately holding onto my XS Max for it was the last 3D Touch iPhone. I know I need to upgrade because I want the nicer cameras, but I just can't get over how much I love 3DT.
Yea, I held on to mine until I upgraded to a 13 Pro. When I found out they were phasing out 3D Touch I decided to see if I could live with it and disabled it for a couple of weeks — turned out it wasn't that bad, once I got used to it. Try it for a day ;)
 
The big additional factor is it was not a widely used feature. I think Apple determined the cost for development and software support and maintenance in addition to hardware (parts, production, etc.) was not worth the relative low usage.

I mean, wasn’t it? Look at how many people here report having used it regularly and continue to miss it to this day.

It strikes me as more in line with the removal of the headphone jack. A basically pointless choice meant to do the things you described and ending up degrading the usefulness of the device in the process. Apple will argue that people were abandoning the headphone jack already but that just isn’t true. Apple and others have foisted wireless audio on us in order to sell more and more earphones. But wired is still vastly superior and they know it.
 
I mean, wasn’t it? Look at how many people here report having used it regularly and continue to miss it to this day.

It strikes me as more in line with the removal of the headphone jack. A basically pointless choice meant to do the things you described and ending up degrading the usefulness of the device in the process. Apple will argue that people were abandoning the headphone jack already but that just isn’t true. Apple and others have foisted wireless audio on us in order to sell more and more earphones. But wired is still vastly superior and they know it.
People are coming out of the hole now to praise it, but I remember that when it was still supported, not many people talked about it here. Sure it had its range of fans (me included), but it wasn't widespread.

I agree with Euge. It wasn't wide used, lots of devs didn't implement support for it, and apart from during the keynote presentation of the iPhone 6s, Apple didn't made much advertising for 3D Touch.
At a point where mostly everyone who hadn't watch the keynote or wasn't a tech enthusiast simply didn't had a clue they had such a feature in their pocket. And Haptic Touch actually suffers from the same problem.
Fortunately, things might change for the better in the future since Apple introduced in iOS 17 a feature where little pop-ups with feature discovery appear when touching certain interface items.

Funny thing: today I had the chance to explain to a colleague that he could hold his finger on the spacebar to move the cursor around. Apart from tech enthusiasts and Apple fans, who the hell knows that's a thing?!
 
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I mean, wasn’t it? Look at how many people here report having used it regularly and continue to miss it to this day.

It strikes me as more in line with the removal of the headphone jack. A basically pointless choice meant to do the things you described and ending up degrading the usefulness of the device in the process. Apple will argue that people were abandoning the headphone jack already but that just isn’t true. Apple and others have foisted wireless audio on us in order to sell more and more earphones. But wired is still vastly superior and they know it.
I think MacRumors forum users is a specific demographic and not a good measure of the average iOS user. Anecdotally, the vast majority of my friends, family, and coworkers are iOS users, and I've yet to hear a single person mention 3D touch or complain of its demise.

Regarding the headphone jack, when Apple did that to the iPhone 7, they didn't just decide to drop it out of nowhere. They said they couldn't fit all the technology they wanted into the phone, so they decided to gamble on getting rid of old tech in favor of new, specifically the Haptic Engine which back then was huge. Later iPhone could possibly make space to reintroduce the headphone jack, but by then users had already proven they could get by without it, even if that meant many users having to grit their teeth and bear it, or buy AirPods :)
 
I think MacRumors forum users is a specific demographic and not a good measure of the average iOS user. Anecdotally, the vast majority of my friends, family, and coworkers are iOS users, and I've yet to hear a single person mention 3D touch or complain of its demise.

Regarding the headphone jack, when Apple did that to the iPhone 7, they didn't just decide to drop it out of nowhere. They said they couldn't fit all the technology they wanted into the phone, so they decided to gamble on getting rid of old tech in favor of new, specifically the Haptic Engine which back then was huge. Later iPhone could possibly make space to reintroduce the headphone jack, but by then users had already proven they could get by without it, even if that meant many users having to grit their teeth and bear it, or buy AirPods :)

What Apple says is not to be taken at face value every time. Wired is still superior and Apple removing the jack is why people use wireless now, not some pre-existing push towards wireless by consumers.
 
I used my 8+ for 3 years and loved Peek & Pop and 3D Touch!!! (and my 6s+ & 7+)

Proper haptics done well! I’ll gladly take refinements to make it mimic that tech.

Too bad the tech was too “x” for a trillion dollar company not to advance more. /rant 🫨

Edit : add more phones I used it on
 
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Sure, but the latest beta adds a host of other problems. They can’t wait two weeks to fix some of these.
 
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