but yet they won't suffer in term of sales or brand reputations ....this isn't first time they keep removing great features
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watchOS 7 Removes Force Touch Support From Your Apple Watch, Here's Everything That's Changed
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I’m not ready to give up force touch on my S4, so I may keep it on 6.2.8 even after I preorder the 12 Pro Max. It’s been very useful for me on the S4. When I upgrade to the S7 next year, then I’ll deal with it then.
Stupid decision? Yes. Forcing people to buy new products? Not really. It's not like they removed access to force touch on older devices and only let it work on newer ones.
True. That's the problem. Don't understand why they remove it by updating software when hardware supports and it did work great before watchOS 7.
What I mean by "forcing" people to buy new products is, they are trying to make you get used to having no force touch function, so when you switch to newer products you won't notice that. And this is the reason why I'm still using XS lol
if you do, don’t choose Google/Android. The stunts they pull are way worse. The way they killed off the entire third party integration around their Nest lineup is more than stupid.
The odd thing is, with the XS and older iPhones they didn't pull this stunt, 3D Touch is still well and alive and even got better (significantly faster and more responsive in many places) with iOS 13. Why couldn't they do the same with Force Touch on the Watch and just keep it around as an alternate on older models that have the hardware?
Probably the reason is that on the Watch they changed the interaction model more severely, not just simply moving to a long-press ("Haptic Touch") like on iOS, but rather substituting Force Touch via additional menus or swipes. Still they could've left Force Touch in there as an alternate way of interaction.
Good thing my "Series 0" is stuck on watchOS 4 anyway.. And on the Series 6 I'm getting it won't matter, since it doesn't have the force sensing hardware. I'll miss Force Touch though, I feel it has been an integral part of the watchOS experience right from the start, hope they don't remove the Digital Crown next..
I remember buying an Apple Watch when I got back into iPhone last year, and basing that on the first Apple Watch presentation back in 2015, and being quite miffed that Glances was removed (either that or I have no clue how to bring them up) along with the removal of 'touch gestures' (the drawing a heart would send your heartbeat to someone or something to that effect). I used to work around the missing Glances by setting up watch faces to force-touch to, which kinda made up for it, but now they remove force touch, guess I'm glad I got a wannabe Apple Watch on my Android device, which has glances, gestures similar, and actual working workout detection. Might not be as premium but still, closer than what I was getting.
Personally I hated the digital crown. It was kinda useless. an extra button offset ruining the symmetry of the classic watch design. It couldn't even bring up the control center, or act as a button to intract with an app. I'd have control center open and expect winding it down would close it, but nope. The side button was getting far more use that I wish it just followed the Samsung Gear 2 design and had the 'navi key' that had one button doing any function it needed, such as turning the watch on or off, going to the home screen, activating Siri, etc. I also worried about the crown snagging something at work and popping off to God knows where.
Personally I hated the digital crown. It was kinda useless. an extra button offset ruining the symmetry of the classic watch design. It couldn't even bring up the control center, or act as a button to intract with an app. I'd have control center open and expect winding it down would close it, but nope. The side button was getting far more use that I wish it just followed the Samsung Gear 2 design and had the 'navi key' that had one button doing any function it needed, such as turning the watch on or off, going to the home screen, activating Siri, etc. I also worried about the crown snagging something at work and popping off to God knows where.
Personally, the digital crown is super useful, in addition to being watch-like. I can scroll faster using it than I could ever hope to swiping on as small of a screen as watches have.
Glances wasn’t that helpful of a feature, to be honest. You’d have to wait for the app to wake up and refresh the glance, they were completely non-interactive, and the functionality pretty much still exists using the Dock. My usual interaction with glances were 1) raise wrist, 2) swipe up, 3) swipe to right glance, 4) wait 10 seconds for it to update. Honestly, launching a native application took about the same time, so complications that were right on the watch face and opened the application directly made more sense in the long run. Additionally, the dock, with its previews, is accessible in every application, while glances likely would cause negative performance issues with today’s Control Center/Notification Center gesture.
Additionally, the “touch gestures” as you call them weren’t removed, they were just integrated into the Messages app instead of being in that friends view that used the side button before Apple introduced the Dock.
The Dock feels more like a wannabe Android Recent Apps drawer. Plus if you got enough apps in there, it's hard to see most of the info, given it often got overlapped by another app in the list. Also it seemed a lot of info wouldn't update. I just felt jipped as again, I based it on the keynote and it was not there. The other feature was called Digital Touch. It's gone as well. Or at least well hidden. There were apparently a lot of (unnecessary) changes to the UI while most other things were unchanged (such as most of the watch faces, sigh). The Series 5 added tons of bugs to the list as well, compared with my far more stable Series 3 on the same OS version (was version 6 last I used them). My Series 5 had the infamous bluetooth/wifi handoff bug, where if it left Bluetooth and latched onto wifi, it refused to reconnect to bluetooth on its own once your phone was close to it. It also totally had awful exercise detection. I'd be walking and my heart rate was in the proper area, and the exercise ring would fill, but it wouldn't detect the workout. Maybe half the time, about 30 minutes in, long after I got the award for filling the ring, but oh well. I just worked around it by asking Siri to start an outdoor walk workout.
Another issue was the new ECG feature. It never worked. I have an oddly high resting heart rate of ~90 bpm which doctors evaluated when I was a teen and later as an adult, and said it's normal for me (I also have hyperthyroidism so my metabolism is super fast) but it somehow broke ECG. It'd always say 'inconclusive' so that's sad I upgraded for that and fall detection. Let's discuss how awfully innaccurate fall detection is, shall we? clapping your hands? yup. thinks I fell. Using hammer at work, again, thought I fell. I hoped telling it 'I'm OK' and later 'I did not fall!' would 'train it' but it seemed to constantly falsely trigger. So I went back to my Series 3 a short time before SMS totally died on both the watch and my iPhone, later forcing me back to Android.
I actually wanted the Series 4, since I thought incorrectly the Series 3 had the infograph face since the demo of it at Best Buy was placed in front of a big graphic (apparently of the Series 4) showing that face. But by that time they had totally stopped carrying the 4, and only had the 3 and 5. They told me Apple said to dispose of all remaining stock of Series 4 watches so I thought perhaps a recall had happened or something. Seemed an odd move. The 4 was only out a couple months.
I felt like adding two buttons vs one just felt off. It'd be nice to have either the crown (and make it possible for it to bring up/dismiss control center or notification center as well) or the side button, not both.
Another issue was the new ECG feature. It never worked. I have an oddly high resting heart rate of ~90 bpm which doctors evaluated when I was a teen and later as an adult, and said it's normal for me (I also have hyperthyroidism so my metabolism is super fast) but it somehow broke ECG. It'd always say 'inconclusive' so that's sad I upgraded for that and fall detection. Let's discuss how awfully innaccurate fall detection is, shall we? clapping your hands? yup. thinks I fell. Using hammer at work, again, thought I fell. I hoped telling it 'I'm OK' and later 'I did not fall!' would 'train it' but it seemed to constantly falsely trigger. So I went back to my Series 3 a short time before SMS totally died on both the watch and my iPhone, later forcing me back to Android.
I actually wanted the Series 4, since I thought incorrectly the Series 3 had the infograph face since the demo of it at Best Buy was placed in front of a big graphic (apparently of the Series 4) showing that face. But by that time they had totally stopped carrying the 4, and only had the 3 and 5. They told me Apple said to dispose of all remaining stock of Series 4 watches so I thought perhaps a recall had happened or something. Seemed an odd move. The 4 was only out a couple months.
I felt like adding two buttons vs one just felt off. It'd be nice to have either the crown (and make it possible for it to bring up/dismiss control center or notification center as well) or the side button, not both.
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I loved the newly introduced Dock with watchOS 3, it was the perfect replacement (and more!) for Glances, or should I say evolution thereof. It also made my "Series 0" watch that much more useful, since it allowed me to choose which apps it would permanently keep in memory for instant launch, which would also be perfectly "glanceable" with just a press of the side button. This is how it looked like, it was perfect, showed the apps side by side without obstructing each other, just like what we had with Glances before:
...it was great while it lasted. Then came around watchOS 4 and broke it. No more "glanceability", instead the Dock was degraded to just a basic vertically-scrolling app switcher interface where the apps overlap each other in a stacked card view:
At the time I hoped we'd eventually get an option to choose between the new and the old Dock layout (like how we can choose to show either Favorites or Recents in the Dock) but unfortunately that never came true.
^^ that's the problem. I'd have loved to experience either Glances or the OS 3 Dock over what I actually got.
It's kinda sad Apple never gives us a Classic option anymore. They did it with OS X, with Classic 9. I'd have loved Classic 6 for iOS 7's update, or a Classic Glances/Dock for WatchOS.
I'd also have loved to use Digital Touch, but the closest remnamt I could find in WatchOS 6 was the way you drew letters. It used the same UI, but trying to type that way was a total lesson in frustration most of the time. Draw a 'L' it'd draw a 1, or draw a '@' symbol, good luck. It didn't work for emoji either.
It's kinda sad Apple never gives us a Classic option anymore. They did it with OS X, with Classic 9. I'd have loved Classic 6 for iOS 7's update, or a Classic Glances/Dock for WatchOS.
I'd also have loved to use Digital Touch, but the closest remnamt I could find in WatchOS 6 was the way you drew letters. It used the same UI, but trying to type that way was a total lesson in frustration most of the time. Draw a 'L' it'd draw a 1, or draw a '@' symbol, good luck. It didn't work for emoji either.
I can't stand force touch. I'm glad they got rid of it. It is hit or miss during daily use. I had the SE and opted for an s5 SS model for $300 off the $750 retail price from Best Buy ($449+tax). The S5 is super hit or miss on force touch as to where the long press is reliable and predictable. After getting the latest update, it is no longer a concern on the S5!
With the release of watchOS 7, Apple has added several new features to compatible Apple Watch models, such as new watch faces and sleep tracking, but it also drops support for the Force Touch gesture that some users may have come to think of as a second nature interaction on their wrist.
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When users firmly pressed their Apple Watch screen, Force Touch technology would sense the extra pressure exertion and display additional content and controls depending on the context. But in watchOS 7, Apple has removed all Force Touch interactions from the UI, making the Force Touch sensor gasket in Apple Watch Series 5 and earlier models effectively superfluous.
Below, we've collected 10 new functions in watchOS 7 that replace our favorite Force Touch features on Apple's digital timepiece. Some are more well known than others, but hopefully you'll learn at least one thing about what a firm press on your Apple Watch screen used to do, and what you need to do now that it's gone.
1. Clear All Notifications
The Apple Watch's notifications dropdown can get busy pretty fast, especially if you often forget to dismiss an incoming alert after reading it. Rather than deleting notifications one by one, a Force Touch gesture let you clear them all with a tap.
Now you have to swipe down to scroll to the top of your notifications and then tap the Clear All button.
2. Create and Remove Watch Faces
To create a custom watch face with a background picture, you still open the Apple Watch Photos app and select a photo.
Instead of pressing firmly on the display like you used to, tap the Create Watch Face icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen instead, and then select Kaleidoscope or Photos.
3. Compose a New Message
On opening the Mail and Messages apps, you used to be able to reveal the option to compose a new message with a Force Touch gesture.
Now that's gone, you need to swipe down to reveal the New Message button at the top of your messages list.
4. Change Move Goal and Get a Weekly Activity Summary
Using Force Touch on the Activity app's main screen used to reveal a Weekly Summary showing how many times you've beaten your daily move goal so far this week. Pressing down on this screen again revealed a Change Move Goal button to adjust the amount of calories you're aiming to burn.
Both of these options have been replaced by individual buttons that you'll find right at the bottom of the Activity app's main screen, below today's activity stats.
5. Share Your Location With a Contact
When viewing a message in the Messages app, using Force Touch allowed you to quickly share your location with the message sender or view more details about the contact.
These options can now be found at the very bottom of the message screen, directly below the Instant Replies.
6. Switch Between App Grid View and List View
Force Touch in the App View would switch between the default honeycomb-style Grid layout and the alternative List View.
In watchOS 7, you can find both options in the Settings app under App View.
7. Hourly Temperature Forecast and Chance of Rain
The standard forecast display on the Apple Watch's stock Weather app shows the general weather conditions for the day ahead. Prior to watchOS 7, using Force Touch in the app displayed buttons for switching between weather conditions, chance of rain, and temperature.
Fortunately, you can still access these views just as easily by tapping the 12-hour forecast to cycle through them.
8. Control Camera Settings Remotely
With the Apple Watch Camera app open, Force Touch would reveal a hidden submenu offering access to your iPhone's HDR, Flash, Live Photo, and Flip controls.
In watchOS 7, all of these controls are accessed by tapping the three dots in the bottom-right of the screen, which reveal a vertical scrolling menu.
9. Switch Calendar View
Prior to watchOS 7, changing view options within the Calendar app could be done using Force Touch.
These options are now found in the Settings app under Calendar -> View Options.
10. Switch and Edit Watch Faces
Out of all the changes following the removal of Force Touch, this is almost certainly the least abrasive, and involves an almost identical gesture.
To switch between watch faces or customize the currently selected one, simply long press on the watch screen to invoke the watch face selector.
Final Thoughts
Force Touch was one of those Apple Watch features that was so discreet and unassuming that this arguably worked against it in the long run. Apple hasn't said why it removed the firm-press gesture in watchOS 7, but it could be that not enough users were aware of it for it to be genuinely useful.
That's a shame, because just like 3D Touch on iPhone, Apple implemented the haptic feedback technology across the entire watchOS interface, putting additional functionality right at your fingertips. Of course, 3D Touch went the same way as Force Touch on Apple Watch when the iPhone XR was launched, which some would argue suffered from the same lack of discoverability.
The iPhone XR introduced Haptic Touch to replace 3D Touch. While Haptic Touch (aka long press) is essentially a feedback mechanism, 3D Touch offered genuine input options like Peek and Pop. This change has since expanded to the entire iPhone lineup, which has allowed Apple to remove the capacitive layer integrated into the iPhone display.
Will you miss Force Touch after updating your Apple Watch to watchOS 7? Are there any other Force Touch gestures we missed? Let us know in the comments.
Article Link: watchOS 7 Removes Force Touch Support From Your Apple Watch, Here's Everything That's Changed
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I hope that you guys know that you can still long press on the home screen to change the layout from the grid view to the list view. Do I miss force touch? No, I didn’t even have an Apple Watch before watchOS 7 came out.
Forgot about this but you are 100% right. The vertical stacked apps is awful and I forgot we had that layout in version 3.0. Wonder we don’t get the option to choose given I don’t think vertical works very well.
I hope you know you just revived a year and a half untouched thread to vaguely reply to nobody in particular about something that doesn't seem relevant to the last many posts.