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watchOS 7 Removes Force Touch Support From Your Apple Watch, Here's Everything That's Changed
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Why would anyone accept a vendor disabling a hardware-based feature that was working perfectly fine previously? There’s no reason previous models could not support both a long press and the new options. Not really impressed with apple on this one.
Thank god they decided not to kill it in ios14 - when they temp removed it from one of the betas it drove me nuts. Such a useful feature.
I'm going to miss this feature. It doesn't infuriate me as there are bigger issues going in this world that pisses me off more.
Force touch or 3D touch (aka the more PC naming convention) was too ahead of its time. But all i can say is people that I know who love their iphones and watches do not know anything about this and never use it.
Usually if apple has a good idea, others copy it by the dozen, and the big phone manufacturers never copied force touch when the long press sufficed.
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Force touch or 3D touch (aka the more PC naming convention) was too ahead of its time. But all i can say is people that I know who love their iphones and watches do not know anything about this and never use it.
Usually if apple has a good idea, others copy it by the dozen, and the big phone manufacturers never copied force touch when the long press sufficed.
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Oh wow its back? I remember it was killed off on my xs max. was it in ios 13 when they killed it?
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Well, doesn’t matter what model you get really... they disabled force Touch altogether across the board.
Honestly I think it was the right move.
Force touch was one of those Jony Ive ideas. It added another layer of interaction that no one else had, and sounded impressive in the marketing, particularly when delivered with a British accent. But when it came to using it in the UI, it fell short. The benefit didn't justify the cost and complexity.
It was hard to discover, and many of the force-touch functions seemed unnecessary (more easily and intuitively accomplished a different way, or not needed at all). Every time I had to use force touch to change the weather display on the watch, I found it slightly annoying. Why not just let me quickly tap?
Force touch also required another sensor layer on the display glass, more circuitry, more cost, a little more battery drain, and probably limits Apple's options for changing to more durable glass panels, because the glass needs to flex a certain way for force touch to work.
So I see this as Apple taking a layer of complexity out of the UI and simplifying display hardware requirements for future devices, which will hopefully make the form factors sleeker and maybe more durable.
Really the ONLY force touch interaction I will miss is the trackpad text selection. Haptic touch gets close but doesn't allow me to select words and paragraphs by varying finger pressure. But I can learn to work around that.
Force touch was one of those Jony Ive ideas. It added another layer of interaction that no one else had, and sounded impressive in the marketing, particularly when delivered with a British accent. But when it came to using it in the UI, it fell short. The benefit didn't justify the cost and complexity.
It was hard to discover, and many of the force-touch functions seemed unnecessary (more easily and intuitively accomplished a different way, or not needed at all). Every time I had to use force touch to change the weather display on the watch, I found it slightly annoying. Why not just let me quickly tap?
Force touch also required another sensor layer on the display glass, more circuitry, more cost, a little more battery drain, and probably limits Apple's options for changing to more durable glass panels, because the glass needs to flex a certain way for force touch to work.
So I see this as Apple taking a layer of complexity out of the UI and simplifying display hardware requirements for future devices, which will hopefully make the form factors sleeker and maybe more durable.
Really the ONLY force touch interaction I will miss is the trackpad text selection. Haptic touch gets close but doesn't allow me to select words and paragraphs by varying finger pressure. But I can learn to work around that.
I don't miss it at all. I always found it kind of awkward to use.
The only 2 I used were the notifications clearing and app view. Neither will be missed. I like the new way and overall WOS 7 feels snappier on my S4.
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I read this post in a British accent in my head...
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I read this post in a British accent in my head...
Deja vù. I'm still fuming over disabling 3D Touch on my X, and now this? 😡
Fair enough change it in the new model if you want, but to actively permanently disable it from prior models that had the hardware built-in, for no apparent good reason and without prior warning before an OS update, is a snake move. 🐍
Fair enough change it in the new model if you want, but to actively permanently disable it from prior models that had the hardware built-in, for no apparent good reason and without prior warning before an OS update, is a snake move. 🐍
It’s really unfortunate that Apple with all of their resources can’t continue to support the feature in OS updates on older devices, that were sold with said physical hardware feature.
Personally, I find it very infuriating that they have disabled a hardware feature of something they had promoted as a feature when they were selling the product. I understand if they remove it from newer models or if they just make the tap-and-hold work along with force touch with models that support it. They did the same on iOS with my iPhone X. It’s like if they were to remove the LED flash on the camera of newer iPhones and disabled it in software to all older models. 
I can't believe people seem OK with Apple disabling a hardware feature just to level the playing field with their new models?
I was upset about the removal of force touch but then read this article and realized I didn’t know half of this as possible as it was hidden behind force touch
You lot are such suckers. Hasn't Hollywood (and history) taught you anything? We're all bad guys and not to be trusted.
It's not force touch any more, it's just long press. A light, non-force-touch push activates the same change.
Yeah, which kind of explains why they got rid of it.
While Force Touch was a cool UI wrinkle that enabled faster access to features, there was no way of knowing if something could be force touched unless you tried it on everything. I know about the clearing notifications and didn't know about the camera settings, for instance.
While it stinks losing some shortcuts, the reality is Apple probably knows what dismal percentage of users were using the feature.
I’m passing on watchOS 7 because of force touch and the fact that the new features are extremely underwhelming. It’s one thing to not include a feature on a new model but to use software to disable hardware on existing hardware is indefensible.
Sounds to me like Mr. Moneybags decided the cost of licensing whatever patents they need to implement this isn’t worth reducing his net worth.
I think part of the problem was that many people wouldn’t use it because they felt they might break it somehow.
“Push the glass until it bends” just doesn’t compute for some people.
“Push the glass until it bends” just doesn’t compute for some people.
This change reminded me of a discussion when Graig Federighi commented on 'customer wishes.' When Apple decided to go exclusively with USB-C (or something else) on the MacBook series, he said something in effect; it's hard to go one way when we know there's a better way. I don't remember the exact context aside from 'customer input' is not as valued as it used to be.
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