[HN Gopher] My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live it...
___________________________________________________________________
My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar
replacement
Author : koinedad
Score : 390 points
Date : 2022-08-05 05:43 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (technicallychallenged.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (technicallychallenged.substack.com)
| chpmrc wrote:
| I've recently switched to iPhone and this thread is so
| comforting. My friends thought I was insane when I told them that
| typing on Android (Samsung or Google keyboard) is _much_ more
| accurate, fast and way less prone to errors (using autocorrect)
| than on an iPhone. And that 's not even counting swipe mode! The
| difference is huge.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| Nothing beats the flow keyboard on the old windows phone. That
| was was the peak of typing on a phone.
|
| I still much prefer any keyboard over Samsungs tho. The Samsung
| default keyboard is the worst I've used.
| 1ark wrote:
| Just checked a short video of Word Flow. Isn't it the same as
| Gboard or Microsoft Swiftkey?
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I don't know why, but with Word Flow you could train it,
| teach it words, including swear words.
|
| GBoard / Swiftkey does its darnest to ensure that it will
| never select a swear word and always pick 'duck' but give
| me an option for 'fuck'.
|
| Flow you didn't need to be accurate, you could be 'close
| enough' and it figured out the word you wanted based on
| what you were writing. GBoard/Swiftkey get it wrong more
| often than I like.
| [deleted]
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Slightly related but a feature that I miss is the short lived
| "Air View" in Samsung Galaxy S4 and S5. It allows you to trigger
| actions by hovering your finger above the screen.
|
| Samsung implementation was a bit gimmicky, gimmicks were the
| hallmark of Samsung during that time, but it is extremely useful
| for one thing: hover targets on web pages. It actually makes
| sites that are completely unusable on other phones usable again,
| and not only that, it is very intuitive.
|
| And the best part is that it costs next to nothing to make and it
| doesn't take any space or make anything more fragile, if I am not
| mistaken it is just a few tweaks on the way the capacitive
| touchscreen sensor is driven. So why not keep it? UI wise Samsung
| was a bit clunky but it doesn't mean it doesn't have potential.
|
| 3D touch on the other hand is probably a bit more expensive as it
| requires extra components (pressure sensor). Also, pressure
| sensitive devices have a long history of being failures, but
| contactless tech is used all the time, the closest would be
| digitizers, they all support hovering and it is put to good use.
| I don't have anything against 3D touch, I think it is nice to
| have and cheap, the ability to use your phone as a scale is also
| a nice gimmick but between 3D touch and hovering, I would have
| bet on hovering. In the end, we have neither...
| sitkack wrote:
| Lol, I am that guy (the one that buys the products that die in
| the market). I like 3d touch. It was so seamless you don't
| realize it is an additional feature.
| RektBoy wrote:
| If you use anything from Apple you're living in a golden cage
| after all.
| rocbear wrote:
| I really miss the keyboard cursor as it was in it's previous
| state. The game Knotwords has a similar feature that's based only
| on drag movement over the keyboard, I find it to be really
| helpful for navigation.
| Kiro wrote:
| One of the worst things to deal with when building web
| apps/games. So many issues caused by people accidentally
| triggering force touch when holding down a button in a game.
| wruza wrote:
| My favorite keyboard feature: ^
| ctrl-< < > ctrl-> V shiftlock cut cpy
| pst srch shr ...
|
| That's all I need to edit/select text instead of these glamour
| gestures. Assuming ctrl-likes use \b word boundaries.
|
| I'd also like to turn off input focus zooming in safari.
|
| Related, I'd also like to jumps 5s in videos rather than 15s. Not
| very useful to rewatch 15s when you missed a word or a visual.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Apple, and Steve Jobs in particular, doggedly rejected having a
| second button on the mouse [1]. Why? Discoverability or rather
| the lack thereof.
|
| Personally I believe Apple was wrong here and basically lost the
| argument. The right-click standardized around a context menu.
| People generally understand this.
|
| So imagine my surprise when Apple introduced Force Touch on the
| iPhone. This added weight and cost to the iPhone for a feature
| with no discoverability or consistency. The closest we got was
| "preview". The author says:
|
| > My guess is that people had no idea it was there.
|
| But that's only half the problem. It might be there or it might
| not depending on the app and who knows what behaviour you'd get
| if it was there.
|
| Force/3D Touch I always considered a mistake along with:
|
| - Removing the orientation lock button from the iPad
|
| - Face ID (seriously, just give me a phone with Touch ID; put it
| on the back if you have to)
|
| - Zooming out in Safari takes you to the list of "tabs" and
| there's no way not to do this
|
| [1]: https://www.cultofmac.com/269222/steve-jobs-hated-idea-
| multi...
| scoot wrote:
| While playing with the (inferior) "long-press space bar for
| trackpad" feature, I discovered that OCR is now built into the
| text field (as if iOS 15 apparently).
|
| Tap the text field (twice if not already selected) and you'll
| have tooltip with "Scan Text". Selecting that turns on the
| camera, replacing the keyboard, and text under the camera is
| temporarily inserted, with an "insert text" button. Nice!
| dash2 wrote:
| It was a feature with 1% of users who knew about it and who were
| its passionate defenders. This is exactly the sort of feature you
| should RUTHLESSLY kill off. If you do not, the end state of your
| software is that it is a collection of features, all of them
| known to 1% of your users, all passionately defended.
|
| Kudos to Apple.
| grapeskin wrote:
| Only 1% of computer users do programming. Command lines,
| compilers, and any method of editing code should be ruthlessly
| killed off otherwise we risk having a collection of features.
|
| Just give me a phone with a bunch of pictures and mandatory
| like buttons. That's 90% of computing's use case and all we
| need.
| dash2 wrote:
| You're being satirical, but doing just this has helped make
| the smartphone a huge success. You still have your computer
| to write code, nobody is taking it away from you. There are
| even numerous coding apps for smartphones, to cater to the
| 1%.
| thih9 wrote:
| Long press is in many ways an inferior (slower, less precise,
| easier to fire accidentally), its benefit is better
| discoverability. Why not work on making 3D Touch more
| discoverable?
|
| Sometimes the 1% of power users are right and not listening to
| them leads to bland and less useful products.
| [deleted]
| baxtr wrote:
| I tend to agree. Then again you could argue that iOS is a
| mature platform to allow for 1% functionalities, which are
| discovered step-by-step. I still discover awesome settings
| options through those Tik Tok movies.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Most of the improvements that I can think of for the iPhone
| (and iOS apps in general) would involve removing features. An
| example, there is a gesture that will open the camera app, I
| don't know what it is, but it triggers in my pocket all the
| time, draining the battery. I get why it's there, but most of
| the time it just makes things worse.
|
| I haven't used Android enough to know if it's the same issue,
| but the main problem is discoverability. iOS, and many apps,
| have a ton of features, but there isn't enough screen space to
| do hint to how to use them. There also isn't enough space to
| add more buttons. So we end up with these weird swiping
| motions, long press, 3D Touch or hard to hit icons.
|
| Maybe it's just me being old, but I'd recommend stripping a ton
| of features from phones and their apps. If you need to do
| anything more complicated, push people to use a device that's
| designed for higher levels of interaction.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| There's two ways the camera can open from the Lock Screen,
| pressing the on screen button, or by swiping from the right
| of the screen.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule
|
| Which bucket does that 1% fall into though? It's not as simple
| as saying only a few people use it, trash it.
| baisq wrote:
| I was happy that they removed 3D Touch because some stuff was
| simply inaccessible to iPhone SE users.
| js-fella wrote:
| I really liked this 3D touch. Especially the 3D touch trackpad
| feature, but I loved the 3D touch on the left side of the screen
| and gesturing to the right to trigger multitasking window. It was
| like the gesturing interactions the iPhone X brought but before
| the iPhone X. Pretty sweet feature and I liked it much more than
| using the home button
| john_the_writer wrote:
| Was it earphones. I used to love my iPhone for music. I've a
| really nice set of noise cancelling headphones. Now I have a
| dongle (that always goes missing). I almost never listen to music
| with my iPhone anymore.
| koinedad wrote:
| No but that's a good one as well! It was 3D Touch, where the
| screen actually had pressure sensitivity built into it.
| astrange wrote:
| I didn't know anyone made noise cancelling headphones that
| weren't wireless. What's the point? You need a bunch of
| electronics in there anyway.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Tape your dongle to your headphone cable?
| thih9 wrote:
| What if you use multiple devices, e.g. a laptop too?
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/never-lose-your-
| ipho...
| matsemann wrote:
| > _My guess is that people had no idea it was there._
|
| Most users don't know how to use half the iPhone's navigation
| features. And the problem here isn't the users, but that they are
| completely undiscoverable. At some point, I think the home-button
| had like 11 different functions based on how you pressed it and
| in what context.
|
| Everything to make things look "sleek".
| IncandescentGas wrote:
| I wonder if reliability was a factor in ending this feature.
|
| 3D touch malfunctions badly with a slightly swelling battery
| pressing against the lcd backplate inside the phone. Or a bend in
| the phone chassis. The 6s case was bent for every person who
| carried it in their back pocket. I saw malfunctioning 3d touch
| several times every week back when I was in phone repair.
| Especially with carrier insurance refurbs, where the replacement
| parts were of especially poor quality. Carrier refurbs often had
| the cheapest batteries, screen assemblies and sometimes non
| original chassis.
| josu wrote:
| 3D touch added 14g (+10.8%) and 2mm (+3%) to the iPhone 6s vs
| the 6.
| Reason077 wrote:
| My daily phone is a beat-up iPhone X that I bought new on
| release, making it almost 5 years old.
|
| It has a cracked screen (dead OLED is slowly spreading out from
| the top-right corner), shattered back glass, battery at 81%
| health, and the earpiece speaker doesn't work properly so to
| make a call I have to use a headset or speaker mode.
|
| But 3D Touch still works perfectly!
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| My iPhone 12 mini is a bit over 1.5yrs old and has a 86%
| battery health. I hope this trend does not continue as fast
| or I guess I'll have to replace it sooner than later.
| skoskie wrote:
| Just adding my +1 to this issue. iPhone 12 mini at 83%
| health is really low after such a short period of time.
| mathieuh wrote:
| That sounds pretty fast, my 12 Pro Max is roughly the same
| age and at 96%
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| What's usually missing from these comparisons is how long
| people are actually using the phone and how they handle
| the battery.
|
| Mine is an iPhone 7 I bought refurbished back in February
| 2017. This phone is likely to have seen less use than a
| friend of mine's phone bought at the end of 2021. It
| spends 95% of its life connected to a power source (even
| when I actively use it), so I expect the battery to last
| quite some time.
| elondaits wrote:
| Being constantly charging is actually bad for the battery
| life. Being around 100% stresses it... so that's why some
| Apple devices now try to determine how much charge is
| needed and keep it at 80% if possible
| ElFitz wrote:
| 1.5 years old 12 Pro, 83% battery health.
|
| But I mostly do iOS software engineering, so the device
| spends most of it's time plugged in.
|
| In a few months, it won't even need to try to stay under
| 80% anymore. It just will.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| It does. But does it stress it more than charging to 100%
| then draining it to, say, 10%, then charging it again?
| Hence, racking up cycles at a faster rate?
|
| I know it's anecdotal, but I mostly keep my battery-
| powered electronics plugged-in when possible, and their
| batteries tend to degrade much less over the years
| compared to a friend's, who tends to unplug them and
| charge them when needed. And the electronics in question
| are fairly similar: iPhones and same-gen Macbooks.
|
| Same for my work laptop (hp) which, after 4 years, still
| has around 80% of its original battery life, when my
| colleagues', who use them much more often on battery,
| only last around 50% of their new condition, if they
| weren't changed because of swelling.
|
| The one kind of battery among mine that seem to have
| shorter lives are camera batteries. Which, of course,
| tend to get drained more since I don't have an outlet
| handy when out in the woods.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > What's usually missing from these comparisons is how
| long people are actually using the phone and how they
| handle the battery
|
| According to my phone, over the last 10 days I had an
| average screen time of 3h34m per day. I use it to
| communicate and to consume media while commuting. I
| charge it whenever it needs some juice, it does get to
| down to 10%-20% sometimes.
|
| But honestly I don't see how my usage can hurt it so
| much. And if my usage is indeed what damages the battery
| so much, then that seems to be Apples issue, considering
| how I'm really not a poweruser or whatever.
|
| What battery health does your phone have? I can't imagine
| that having a phone connected to a power source 95% of
| its lifetime can be especially good for the battery.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Letting it go down to 20% before charging it back up
| means the battery has to cycle, and as I understand,
| that's what "ages" it. And managing that is on you, it's
| not Apple's fault that you won't (or can't) plug it in.
|
| What can be Apple's fault is the battery going to 10%
| after using it for 3h, but I don't think that's the point
| here.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| I'm sorry, but how can it be my fault for using a device
| until it's battery is low-ish?
|
| > Letting it go down to 20% before charging it back up
| means the battery has to cycle
|
| Apple actually says themselves, that "You complete one
| charge cycle when you've used (discharged) an amount that
| equals 100% of your battery's capacity -- but not
| necessarily all from one charge." [1]
|
| The iPhone 12 mini has a 2,227mAh battery. Its battery
| health is at 86%, so effectively I have 1915mAh. But now
| you're also telling me that I can't use it past 20%,
| which leaves me with 1530mAh, or 68% of the original
| capacity.
|
| I can totally agree that with long-term usage it's up to
| the user to optimize their battery usage for health. But
| my device was at 92% battery health after not even a full
| year and I simply won't accept that this is on me.
| Especially if we consider how expensive and complicated
| Apple makes it to replace a battery. Apple also tells me
| that I can charge my battery whenever I want.
|
| To give more insight, GPS is fully disabled 99% of the
| time, it runs in dark mode, auto-brightness is disabled
| and I usually set it to a pretty low brightness, 5G is
| disabled and generally I remember disabling lots of
| things like "double tap to wake screen", "lift phone to
| wake screen" etc.
|
| [1] https://www.apple.com/batteries/why-lithium-ion/
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| That's not at all my point.
|
| Whatever time it spends unplugged, is time spent draining
| the battery. Down to 90% or down to 0%, it's just a
| difference of amount.
|
| If you keep it plugged most of the time, and only drain
| it to, say, 90% (and this is an arbitrary number), you
| only used 10% of one cycle. If you let it unplugged until
| it's down to 0%, you use 100% of one cycle.
|
| If every day you let it go down to 0% and then charge it
| back up, in 10 days you've used 10 cycles.
|
| If every day it only loses 10% (total) and charge it back
| up, in 10 days, you've used 1 cycle.
|
| I'm not saying "it's your fault" or that "you shouldn't
| do it", I'm talking about objective use of the battery.
|
| Yeah, I know it's a _mobile_ phone, so one of the reasons
| for buying that is to use while out and about.
|
| But the point is that not everyone uses it that way,
| which can explain why some people see the battery health
| going down faster than others, on the same device.
|
| And that's not Apple's fault. Sure, you could argue that
| the battery life is ridiculously short, that the
| battery's health shouldn't degrade as fast, and so on.
| And I'd agree with that. But still, it's a different
| issue.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| I both agree and disagree with the first part of your
| comment, but you summarized my thoughts on your own with
| "it's a mobile phone, so one of the reasons for buying
| that is to use while out and about".
|
| > not everyone uses it that way, which can explain why
| some people see the battery health going down faster than
| others
|
| True, yes. However, and feel free to disagree, but from
| my experience the minority of people keep their phones
| plugged in as much as they can, at least in my social
| circle and work environment.
|
| I knew that I would have to live with shorter battery
| life when buying a small phone with a small battery and I
| also know that batteries just loose health and that this
| is normal. The drop on my device just makes me think that
| maybe my device has some kind of issue, or received a
| battery which would be placed on the left side of a bell
| curve.
|
| Wanted to check the exact stats - So, I bought it in the
| end of April 2021. That's 16 months ago. If a 14% loss of
| battery health during that time is normal, then maybe I
| had wrong expectations. It just seems excessive when
| comparing with other people/devices.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I understand your questioning, and I think it's fair to
| want to know that. But my whole point was that care
| should be taken when making comparisons, because the
| actual use of different people can have an effect on the
| metric of battery health.
|
| I'd agree with your point that people keeping the phone
| plugged in all the time are a minority. But even so, I
| wonder if screen time is enough of a metric to gauge
| "similar use patterns".
|
| For example, my phone absolutely drains the battery when
| using Google Maps, whereas browsing HN on a basic text-
| only app doesn't seem to make a dent.
| rez9x wrote:
| I bought my 12 Mini at launch and it's at 84% capacity. If
| I'm remembering correctly, it was at around 86% at the
| start of this year.
|
| There were some battery drain issues in different versions
| of iOS 14 and I believe there was some unnecessary wear in
| there, as well as a couple 'recalibrations' of battery
| health in iOS. Maybe the phone was falsely reporting 100%
| at release and was corrected to a lower percentage.
|
| I'd be curious to see if anyone with a fall 2020 still has
| over 90% battery health.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > The 6s case was bent for every person who carried it in their
| back pocket
|
| Baloney - it was the 6 Plus, not the 6S, and it was far more
| rare than twitter would have had you believe.
| IncandescentGas wrote:
| You're probably thinking of the bend gate controversy, where
| the bend in the case in the plus model was severe enough to
| damage the logic board. That, also, was not rare. We saw it
| constantly in the shop. Nearly every iphone 6, 6s or 6p that
| entered the shop had a bent case to some degree.
| danieldk wrote:
| _I wonder if reliability was a factor in ending this feature._
|
| I think the issue is more that it was not very discoverable. A
| bet the vast majority of non-tech users didn't even know it
| existed and perhaps accidentally activated 3D touch much to
| their confusion.
|
| Removing it simplifies the hardware, avoids accidental
| activations and is less maintenance work.
|
| I still miss 3D Touch :(. I am happy that Macs still have Force
| Touch, even though Force Touch and haptic feedback are
| criminally underused. There are so many useful applications,
| e.g. OmniGraffle gives subtle haptic feedback when dragging an
| object and it aligns with another object. It's such a nice
| feature that other apps could learn from.
| code_runner wrote:
| I'm a tech user and barely knew this feature existed. I
| noticed it wasn't there yesterday because I didn't
| accidentally engage it like I normally do.
|
| It's tough to sell a feature that has no interface. A little
| too minority report arm flailing for me :)
| mdrachuk wrote:
| I miss 3D Touch. It cut 300ms from many UI actions making you
| feel like a power user.
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| > _press and hold on safari address bar for voice search_
|
| > _press and hold tab icon in safari for closing tabs and
| creating new private tab_
|
| > _press and release on the navigation dots at the bottom of Home
| Screen to get an overview of all screens and you get to show or
| hide the screens_
| tardismechanic wrote:
| Genuine TIL: long press spacebar in iOS for precise text
| selection
|
| Well what do you know...
| alister wrote:
| What's missing from the article is a list of iPhones that had the
| feature:
|
| These devices support 3D Touch: iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone
| 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X, iPhone XS,
| and iPhone XS Max.
|
| -- https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205056
| [deleted]
| asciimov wrote:
| I am surprised that neither Apple nor Google have spent much time
| trying to address the discoverability of the features in their
| touch devices.
|
| On the one hand, I guess it's nice, I don't have to field calls
| from my family asking how to do something on the phone, or how to
| turn off a feature. (Well except for that time my mom
| accidentally turned on emergency sos mode and couldn't figure out
| how to turn it off for an hour.)
|
| On the other hand, sometimes I would do something unexpected that
| seems cool, but now I don't know what that feature is called or
| how to purposely do it again. Was it triple back tap or long tap-
| short tap- long tap the volume button or maybe it was septuple
| swipe across the home screen... I'll never know.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| Long touch/force touch etc are all terrible for anyone who has
| lost fine motor control in their hands. I guess because the
| people who design these interface are all young and dexterous
| they don't realize a single tap can take over a second, and
| modulating the amount of pressure on the screen can be
| impossible.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Accessibility is never a priority in the software world.
| Longhanks wrote:
| Then don't use it? Why restrict products to a subset of
| features just because some people are unable to use them? Apple
| has always provided accessibility settings to disable 3D Touch
| if people had issues with accidentally triggering the feature.
| NonNefarious wrote:
| They're also a dereliction of the job of DESIGN. These are a
| lazy, undiscoverable, and ineffective attempt to avoid doing
| the necessary work to make a GUI: a GRAPHICAL user interface.
| tomp wrote:
| TL;DR: his favourite feature (hard click on keyboard to move
| cursor) was not removed (just relegated to "hard click on
| spacebar")
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Spacebar cursor selection is INCREDIBLY glitchy and frustrating
| and I use it daily...
| joshstrange wrote:
| Something related that drives me batty is you can't long press
| notifications on the iPad. Like let's say you get a Reminders
| notification and you want to snooze it for 1 hour (don't get me
| started on how stupidly limited your snooze options are or the
| many other failings of Reminders). On the phone you just press
| and hold (used to be 3D touch) and the context menu comes up but
| this doesn't work on the iPad for no good reason. Neither device
| has 3D touch anymore, it's just a tap and hold but on the iPad
| the only way to bring up that menu is to swipe the notification
| down slightly and then the menu opens.
|
| It makes me angry every single time I try to take an action on a
| notification on my iPad.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > Neither device has 3D touch anymore
|
| The iPad never had 3D Touch.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Right but I'm saying they could implement force touch, or
| whatever they are calling "press and hold", on the iPad since
| it's not 3D touch dependant but for some reason they don't
| and it's maddening.
| dwighttk wrote:
| For me cursor placement fails like 40% of the time. I guess
| because I didn't get the vertical position correct? I have the
| insertion point in the place I want it, release, and the cursor
| flies back to its original position. It is pretty irritating.
| Especially the second time in a row.
| wingerlang wrote:
| I actually had to go check the keyboard cursor thing, I have
| fully switched to using the long press on the spacebar. Works
| totally fine to me. I wonder if having the extra space below on
| the iPhone X (etc) helps to alleviate the issues on other phones,
| where there is less/no room to select downwards without hitting
| the actual phone bezel.
|
| One thing that no one mentions for 3D touch is gaming. Being able
| to aim and just "click" with the same finger is really amazing.
| Makes FPS games on the phone feel way better.
| needle0 wrote:
| The replacement of "force touch on keyboard to move cursor" is
| "long-touch on space bar to move cursor".
|
| This works fine for western languages where the key to input a
| space is large and centered, but some keyboards like the Japanese
| flick input keyboard look more like phone numpads where the
| middle of the keyboard is taken by the "number keys" (each key
| represents a consonant). The space key is located on the right
| hand edge of the screen, and while the "long-press to move
| cursor" shortcut still works, it's only useful for moving the
| cursor leftwards since your finger is already at the righthand
| edge of the screen when the shortcut triggers.
|
| It's quite an unfortunate casualty caught in the crossfire
| between i18n, feature discoverability, and hardware cost-cutting.
| busymom0 wrote:
| Why doesn't Apple use the empty space below the keyboard on the
| iPhones? Long press there could do the same as long press
| spacebar.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| It's definitely a solvable problem.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I really do miss force touch.
|
| I long felt like once all iPhones (that supported the most recent
| iOS) had the feature than they could really take it and run with
| it in iOS. But this never happened.
|
| But the usability improvements of it were great. In music ALL the
| time I would hold down on a song to pull up the menu, keep my
| finger down and scroll down to add to next, and lift up to select
| it. One swipe and I did what I wanted. I could do that quicker
| than it takes it to register that I am holding down in the first
| place now. It worked the same was as anything on the Menu on a
| Mac (holding down and releasing doing the command) and it just
| felt super intuitive.
|
| I won't deny that it had a discoverability issue, but that feels
| like the wrong reason to remove the technology.
|
| I am glad this technology still exists on the watch, which has an
| OS that was always designed with this in mind. So I think it
| works well there.
|
| I long hope this comes back. But I have to imagine there is a
| reason this never came to the iPad so maybe that was a major
| contributor to it being cut.
| chrisandchris wrote:
| > What really blew my mind was that if you pushed harder anywhere
| on the keypad it would go into trackpad mode and you could move
| the cursor in the text you were typing and quickly edit, delete,
| and fix things.
|
| One thing that annoyed me quite much when I received my6S Plus
| was that fixing typos felt clunky (couldn't move the cursor not
| that easy as before).
|
| If I just would have known that 2 years earlier, I would still
| have a lot more colorized hair... I love that feature!
| totetsu wrote:
| Oh dear I just crashed my iphone UI by trying to press the
| language world icon while in the 'trackpad mode' moving the
| cursor as described at the end of this article. (in the notes
| tool. )
| Uupis wrote:
| Same here. I wanted to upgrade from Xs to the 13 mini while mini
| is in the lineup, but found myself missing 3D Touch too much.
| Probably gonna hold on to the Xs until its EOL unless something
| _really_ compelling gets added before then.
| Daedren wrote:
| 3D Touch was a big UX problem, there was never a way to show the
| user that you could do it and where you could.
|
| Apple has a problem with discoverability in quite a lot of
| features. There's many small little things in iOS that users
| don't know about and likely will never find out about, perhaps
| because they want to keep the UI clean.
| timomax2 wrote:
| Why do they refuse to give you a manual? Why are there no
| instructions. Drives me crazy.
| null_object wrote:
| > Why do they refuse to give you a manual? Why are there no
| instructions.
|
| There's a whole Apple app - Tips - included with every iOS
| device, dedicated specifically to these small features.
|
| It's updated by Apple with new tips and tricks regularly, and
| you can choose to be notified each time a new 'episode' is
| released.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| Tips is actually a great example of how Apple fails at
| this/discoverability. The tips in there are novice and
| below level at best. With none of the advanced features
| even discussed, let alone more obscure or hidden ones.
| canarypilot wrote:
| There is a large user manual available in "Books" ;
| https://books.apple.com/gb/book/iphone-user-
| guide/id15159955...
|
| I imagine most iPhone users don't know it is there!
| samatman wrote:
| See, I didn't know that, and I've had iPhones since the 4
| (a grand total of four devices), and am the sort of person
| who reads the manual in general, and likes to know all the
| features of a device I spend time with.
|
| On the one hand, thanks for the tip! On the other hand,
| Apple has an enormous discoverability problem, it's getting
| worse, and they're responding by making the UX dumber
| instead of addressing it head on.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| They literally do not. https://support.apple.com/en-
| gb/guide/iphone/welcome/ios
| hericium wrote:
| I didn't even knew that my favorite iPhone feature was listening
| to the music I want until Apple introduced forced shuffling,
| playing titles alphabetically and started disturbing built-in
| music player UX in order to push their online offering.
|
| It's a typical Cook's Apple experience to listen to 10 tracks
| from different albums, all called "Outro", after album chosen by
| me finishes playing with a track called "Outro" and is set to
| repeat.
| tester89 wrote:
| > It's a typical Cook's Apple experience to listen to 10 tracks
| from different albums, all called "Outro", after album chosen
| by me finishes playing with a track called "Outro" and is set
| to repeat.
|
| There's a "infinity" toggle on the song list, which if you turn
| off stops that behaviour
| wodenokoto wrote:
| You can turn it off in settings somewhere. I really do enjoy
| albums ending, and think it is a poor UX choice to go to radio
| mode when an album is complete.
|
| However, for playlists, I think it is nifty, but afaik you
| can't have it both ways.
|
| It really should be a per playlist toggle at the bottom
| "continue on radio when all songs in this playlist have
| finished playing."
| lancesells wrote:
| You can turn it off with the infinity symbol. As far as UX
| choice I find radio mode helpful as I'm a painter and my
| hands are occupied and I'm usually in a focused mode.
| WelcomeShorty wrote:
| For me the complete opposite: I LOVE the shuffling with their
| library.
|
| Pick one song I shazamed and poof, I get to listen to "random"
| "identical" songs for hours. A gem.
| hericium wrote:
| To each their own. I would only like to have control over
| shuffling, like not being forced to turn it off several times
| a day.
|
| I have different kinds of music. When at the gym, classical
| music is the last genre from my library I'd like to listen.
| When listening to ambient during work I don't want to
| suddenly get hard rock or rap. Preferably no vocals at all.
|
| The iTunes.app was capable of playing the music I wanted.
| Things went sideways when it was renamed to Music.app.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's so much worse on macOS Music. The "previous track" button
| is disabled in "infinity play mode". Not just for going to the
| previous track but even for replaying the current track. When
| it's not disabled, its behavior seems to depend on how you
| started playing the music - sometimes skipping back multiple
| tracks in an album instead of one at a time. Finally, the
| "infinite play" toggle is only visible if you play an album or
| playlist because otherwise the "up next" menu is hidden. Oh
| yeah, and the whole thing crashes every time I try to search my
| library - I suspect because of foreign language UTF8 characters
| in some track titles.
|
| The whole app seems to have been designed by a madman. I miss
| the bloated, yet functional, iTunes.
| peanut_worm wrote:
| I have an extremely outdated version of iOS and I still have this
| feature lol
| justusthane wrote:
| It hasn't been removed from newer versions of iOS (yet), it's
| just not supported by newer hardware. An iPhone XS or older
| with the most up-to-date iOS still has 3D touch.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| Can't you just keep the version of the hardware that has this
| feature? Surely one does not need to use the very last iPhone
| model.
| mmustapic wrote:
| > I can't push anywhere on the keyboard anymore to activate it. I
| now have to move all the way to the spacebar to activate it.
|
| "All the way" is just moving the finger a couple of cm. The main
| difference is that 3d touch instantly activated the touchpad, now
| there is a small delay of 0.25s. Not a bad compromise if it means
| removing some hardware.
| boopmaster wrote:
| I sometimes try to use this feature on newer "long press" models.
| Like trying to "push/pop" an image out larger because it is so
| tiny in the screen... and nothing happens... I'm just mashing
| real hard on the screen.
| nottorp wrote:
| I'm glad you understood how to activate 3d touch as opposed to
| normal touch and long touch. I've had this iphone XS since it was
| a new model and I still haven't figured it out.
|
| This trackpad mode sounds interesting though, I'll try it :)
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I think the feature got more confusing as Apple started to
| phase it out. They dropped the feature where you could force-
| touch to select text (on e.g. a web page rather than typing)
| and press harder again to select eg sentences/paragraphs. They
| also made force touch and long press do the same thing in many
| cases. I think about the only place it works well is in the
| keyboard but sadly there are now a bunch of bugs there with
| replacements/corrections not interacting with the text
| suggestions properly (and they deleted the feature where
| pressing shift while replacing will capitalise/uppercase the
| suggested replacement)
| nottorp wrote:
| The one thing I remember was buying the phone when the model
| was like 6 months since launch, pressing on an app icon on
| the desktop and randomly getting either the 'move the apps'
| state or the context menu with apparently no logic to it.
|
| And nothing's changed since then. Sorry. It's too confusing.
| boopmaster wrote:
| but what you are describing here exists on newer models as
| well, sans force touch.. long press.
| geuis wrote:
| > The screen actually had pressure sensitivity built into the
| physical screen and it would respond to a more forceful push into
| the screen.
|
| I am soooo happy this physical feature is gone. Personally, I
| hated it.
|
| I'm still a fan of the SE (give me touchID or death). I still
| want a touchID phone with more advanced camera capabilities.
|
| This feature caused no end of confusion, even as an experienced
| iOS user. Completely fucked up any software trying to do long
| press detection. But even after adapting for that, the pressure
| differential for touching just didn't work.
| asplake wrote:
| The replacement for 3D Touch: "If you long press (aka hold down)
| on the spacebar of your touch screen keyboard (which works on
| iPad too) you can get into trackpad mode."
|
| I did not know that. Thank you!
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| The most annoying thing about the spacebar thing is that it needs
| a space bar. So when an app forces a number only keyboard there
| is no way any more to move the cursor.
| Wistar wrote:
| I never knew about the force touch version of the trackpad
| feature but I use the heck out of the current version. I guess
| I'm glad to be spared the pain of missing the earlier version.
| thom wrote:
| I've only ever used 3D Touch accidentally and been annoyed by it.
| I still make accidental long touches in all sorts of apps and
| they do weird things.
|
| I do use the keyboard cursor thing but to be honest text entry on
| a touchscreen has never really been good for me. I don't think
| I've ever typed a sentence correctly in 15 years of iPhones. Even
| with autocorrect I'm often having to go back. Selection, cut,
| paste are all terrible. Tap somewhere and hope it offers to
| select a word but sometimes it doesn't. Try to copy some text on
| a web page oops it's a link. Tap elsewhere and try to paste but
| sometimes it doesn't. Try to extend a selection and get weird
| multiline behaviour I can't explain. Maybe I have the world's
| biggest thumbs but it's constant aggro that you just end up
| internalising.
| dimman wrote:
| As someone who used this feature every single day, for every
| single text input on the phone: I 100% agree.
|
| The replacement method works, but it is indeed subpar. It annoys
| me that my 3 generation newer phone is a downgrade in this
| regard, but I can live with it.
| Twisell wrote:
| > But the ease of use and selection capability has been greatly
| reduced. You can still select text but it takes two hands (or
| fingers?) and I can't seem to figure out how it delineates its
| boundaries so I end up never using it.
|
| Only now thanks to the OP I understand how to achieve this
| without 3D touch. Poor discoverability on this feature never
| ends.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Same! I only just upgraded phones a couple weeks ago and the
| lack of 3D Touch was confounding when I made text errors! I
| didn't know I could activate it with the spacebar but that
| works pretty well!
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| It took me forever to learn how to select text again. I feel
| like Apple really kind of damaged itself by hiding things,
| not telling anyone properly, and then removing things because
| no one was using it because they had no idea it was there.
| It's such a typical asinine corporate/communist/top
| down/command structure problem. problem
| vosper wrote:
| Could you explain further how to do it? I still don't get it :(
| I always just double-tap a word to select it and then drag the
| selection tabs to expand to what I want. If there's another way
| I'm interested to hear it.
| wingerlang wrote:
| Hold spacebar to start the cursor. Use 2nd finger tap on the
| keyboard, the selection markers will show up. Now use the
| first finger again to move left/right to select stuff.
|
| First time trying it for me but it seems.. odd, maybe need to
| get used to it.
| vosper wrote:
| Ahh, thanks. Selecting that way is so janky for me that I
| wonder if it's not actually a bug. I tried a number of
| times and it behaves really weirdly / unpredictably.
| graftak wrote:
| The thing that trips me is that I need my initial finger to
| move about, I instinctively moved my second finger to move
| the second (selection) cursor.
| tomtom1337 wrote:
| Seconded. I don't understand what they meant by two
| hands/fingers.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| When you have activated the cursor move function by long-
| pressing the space bar, while still pressing the screen,
| tap another finger on the screen to move into selection
| mode.
|
| The prior mention of defining the start and end points of
| the selection is a bit more tricky and may not even be an
| actual feature, which involves moving the cursor around in
| a kind of handoff between start and stop point. That's
| trickier to describe because it fellas like it may just be
| a quirky behavior that can be manipulated.
| aquanext wrote:
| I agree both about the keyboard feature and 3D Touch in general.
| Just because some people can't figure out how to use right-click
| or force touch, doesn't mean it shouldn't be there for the people
| who _can_ figure it out. I feel like it shouldn 't have been
| removed and that the experience of editing text is objectively
| worse now than it used be. I used that keyboard feature the exact
| same way all the time.
| lolsal wrote:
| > I agree both about the keyboard feature and 3D Touch in
| general. Just because some people can't figure out how to use
| right-click or force touch, doesn't mean it shouldn't be there
| for the people who can figure it out. I feel like it shouldn't
| have been removed and that the experience of editing text is
| objectively worse now than it used be. I used that keyboard
| feature the exact same way all the time.
|
| As a developer, it'd be nice if I didn't have to support a
| minority. I appreciate that iOS streamlines the experience that
| I have to develop for.
| mrehler wrote:
| I agree that removing 3D Touch makes text editing worse
| (presumably -- my XS Max still has it and I'll discover this
| fall), but if you step back, hopefully you can _understand_ its
| removal. Adding an entire extra layer to the display was far
| from 'free' from a design perspective. That extra layer really
| limited design options and its removal saw immediate jumps in
| battery life attributable to the space its removal saved.
|
| There are all sorts of things out there a lot of people don't
| figure out, or old features that new users never discover, but
| they require maintenance of code -- this required a component,
| and saw poor adoption amongst many, many devs. Apple surely
| deserves some blame for it never taking off, primarily for a
| lack of discoverability. They added this new interaction after
| 7 years of a well-established and simple model, and didn't give
| any visual indications for where you should be trying to use
| it. Plus, it was never on iPads, and only made it to iPhone
| models for four generations (6S, 7, 8/X, and XS -- and it
| wasn't on the XR).
|
| It was a great idea, and I still wish they doubled down on it,
| but it makes perfect sense for them to have let it go for other
| advantages that ultimately will be used by more people and sell
| more phones.
| xt00 wrote:
| Maybe I'm in the minority here but I really did not like the
| feature and many people I tried to explain the feature to were
| confused that it existed.. "no no don't tap the screen, you need
| to PUSH on the screen to make it do the action".. and I would get
| a look like "huh?? Push on the screen? Why what's that gonna
| do.." people saying pushing hard on the screen is intuitive
| seemed to live in a different bubble of people than I interacted
| with..
| giobox wrote:
| I did sort of like the press slightly to move the text carat,
| but my biggest complaint is the level of pressure needed to
| activate never felt really consistent to me - there is a sort
| of range of pressures it worked across, I could never get
| reliable muscle memory for activating it with 100% success
| rate. I think people arguing this was intuitive are extremely
| misguided; it has almost zero discoverability unless you read
| about it or are shown.
|
| I always assumed the bigger issue is that because this is
| strain based, extrapolating the feature to an iPad sized screen
| was possibly too challenging without resorting to something
| like an array of strain gauges to measure across the display.
| IIRC, no iPad ever got this feature. Given how it worked on an
| iPhone sized display, I can imagine challenge increases with
| screen size of measuring this accurately.
|
| One also has to imagine that when Apple reviewed their usage
| metrics, was this feature even worth the cost to ship?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I kinda agree, but also... NOTHING about modern phones is
| "intuitive". Every time I have to introduce a modern phone to a
| 70yo+ family member, I come to that realization promptly.
|
| Swipe from bottom to switch programs? Swipe from top left and
| top right to get different (IMPORTANT!) panels? Why are three
| lines a "Menu"? But sometimes it's dots, or a gear icon, and
| they're never in the same place. On iPhone, there's no real
| unified "Back" button - chase it down from application to
| application with different context and result every time. On
| Android, unified buttons (including reliable and predictable
| "back") exist but their location and icons are not intuitive
| either.
|
| I also encountered opposite problem than described - when I
| tell people to hold-press, they exert force. It's a natural,
| intuitive thing for most of them - they're trying to press
| _hard_. But the mere notion you need to hold-press anything?
| Completely unintuitive. Like everything else on a modern phone
| :- /
| kaba0 wrote:
| IOS's swipe from the bottom (and left-right for basically
| alt-tab) is genius in my opinion. Not sure how true is it,
| but the designers of the then new iphone caught themselves
| multiple times trying to swipe gesture on their older, home-
| buttoned devices.
|
| While I don't believe a sufficiently complex UX could be
| totally intuitive (it can at most depend on existing
| knowledge of similar devices), it does extend the app as a
| physical rectangle idea very well, the animation strengthens
| the memory, and the movement becomes second-nature in no
| time.
|
| (Also, credit where it's due, I believe this feature was
| first introduced by Palm?)
| avhon1 wrote:
| Was definitely a feature on Blackberry's BB10 OS
| pessimizer wrote:
| "Intuitive" usually just means "what I'm used to and I can't
| remember when it was confusing anymore."
| chihuahua wrote:
| Thank you, I didn't know about "swipe from top left" until I
| read your comment. I've been using an employer-provided
| iPhone for about a year and never knew about this.
| trebbble wrote:
| > Swipe from bottom to switch programs? Swipe from top left
| and top right to get different (IMPORTANT!) panels? Why are
| three lines a "Menu"? But sometimes it's dots, or a gear
| icon, and they're never in the same place. On iPhone, there's
| no real unified "Back" button - chase it down from
| application to application with different context and result
| every time. On Android, unified buttons (including reliable
| and predictable "back") exist but their location and icons
| are not intuitive either.
|
| The single, physical home button was fucking _genius_ and
| iOS6 and earlier were the only operating systems I 've ever
| seen that my very-old-and-with-significant-mental-decline
| grandmother _might_ have been able to use regularly without a
| ton of help.
|
| Then iOS7 came out, and later they got rid of the home
| button. So much for that.
|
| > On Android, unified buttons (including reliable and
| predictable "back")
|
| If the back button's reliable, that's a recent development.
| It spent at least a decade being the "YOLO" button that might
| do any damn thing. Absolutely terrible, and complete
| usability poison for non-nerd users. Or maybe this was
| sarcasm and I'm missing it.
| nfriedly wrote:
| FWIW, the iPhone SE still has the home button -
| https://www.apple.com/iphone-se/
|
| Although, they've overloaded it's use - single press for
| home, double press for app switcher, fingerprint sensor,
| etc. (Or maybe that's what you were referring to with iOS
| 6/7?)
|
| Agree with you in general, though: the single, physical
| home button that always did what you expected was great.
|
| Android's back button usually takes you back to wherever
| you were before, although apps can break this (instagram,
| for example: if you open a message from a notification, you
| have to press back 3-4 times to get out of the damn app.)
| acka wrote:
| The need to press back multiple times to get back to
| where you were before entering an app seems to be
| becoming the norm in many apps of late. I'm pretty sure
| it is yet another 'engagement trap': the app makers don't
| want you to leave so they can show you more ads, collect
| more data about you to sell on, etcetera.
| nfriedly wrote:
| Yeah, I usually uninstall that shit. I keep Instagram
| around specifically because my wife likes to send me
| things and is disappointed if I don't notice them. But I
| ignore basically everything else in the app aside from
| what my wife sends me.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Basically couldn't disagree more. The swipe up makes it
| faster to switch between programs and saves space for the
| screen. I guess I just don't have much sympathy for old
| people. Everyone in family, including the 90 year olds
| figure out the new gestures easily enough.
| kube-system wrote:
| I bought the iPhone SE partly because I find the swipes from
| the bottom confusing to use too.
| [deleted]
| hinkley wrote:
| I think we definitely transitioned into frog boiling a long
| time ago, but that has played out in other industries too.
| You just only get to see it first hand when you're working
| with an absolute beginner.
|
| There are so many more buttons in cars now than when I first
| started driving. I've mostly adapted to them, except when I
| have to drive a friends car and everything is in the wrong
| fucking place. WE DO NOT NEED TO MOVE CRUISE CONTROL THANK
| YOU. And don't get me started about breaking the gear shift
| lever. There are hidden features in the old design that
| apparently the new designers didn't know about, but anyone
| who drives for a living or just cosplays at being an advanced
| driver knows about slapping an automatic transmission from
| reverse into drive...
|
| Anyway, point is that I don't envy children trying to figure
| out all of the stalks and buttons on a modern car, and then
| immediately trying to figure out how to merge into highway
| traffic. It's no wonder everyone is waiting until they're
| older to drive. Smartphones feel categorically similar in
| their evolution.
| skerit wrote:
| That's basically me using my husband's iPad or iPhone. So
| many different gestures, it's so confusing.
| roywiggins wrote:
| My first encounter with a computer was somewhat unsuccessful
| until I was introduced to the concept of the double-click.
| You mean I have to click icons _twice_ - and not too slowly-
| to make them do anything useful?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Trying to teach people how to double click, fast enough,
| and without moving the mouse was not easy back in the day.
| What I had already done millions of times without thinking
| was and extremely difficult task for some people.
|
| There are times I want to set the 250k+ per year
| developers, and the board room committees arguing if 30 or
| 40 ms is the appropriate touch time down with one of these
| users and see if they can succeed in teaching them the
| interface.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| Newer versions of android default to the gesture based app
| switching, back button, and home, but I dislike it.
|
| Thankfully I'm able to change settings to bring back the
| dedicated bottom navigation "buttons" (they are virtual, on
| screen)
|
| Not perfect but I'm glad that it's an option
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I'm not sure there is such a thing as an 'intuitive'
| interface beyond those where the physical action of the
| control is visible and obvious (turning the wheel rotates the
| gear that raises the gate type interface)
|
| I think just about everything else requires context, which is
| just a fancy way of saying that someone taught them how it
| worked at some point or they played with it long enough to
| guess their way to enough breadcrumbs that they built up that
| context themselves.
| ptero wrote:
| Intuitive might not be the perfect term; clear,
| unambiguous, predictable behavior might describe it better.
| There was a lot of research into such interfaces and
| improving functionality decades ago. But when users stopped
| being the customers it was quickly discarded.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| Yes, but you can reduce the number of gestures required to
| use an interface. It wasn't that long ago when the only
| required gesture was tap, and it was quite easy for novices
| to figure it all out from there.
|
| But then they added long press, so now one icon does two or
| more things depending on how long your finger is touching
| it.
|
| Then they decided some things don't do anything at all if
| you tap them, only if you long press them.
|
| Then they decided it should matter how hard you long press.
|
| Then they decided you should memorize which quadrant of the
| screen you need to swipe to do something.
|
| "intuitive" is a spectrum, and we are steadily moving to
| the less intuitive side. I think just giving users a bash
| prompt and a cheat sheet might be more intuitive at this
| point.
| failTide wrote:
| so I'm relatively anti-phone and have been for a while. There
| was a period of time where I didn't have a smartphone for a few
| years. When I started using an iPhone again, I realized I
| couldn't figure out how the heck to delete apps. It was kind of
| infuriating. I eventually had to look it up online, but the
| answer wasn't the top one. After reading enough answers I
| realized the 3d touch was the reason, and that I was touching
| too lightly or too hard or whatever.
|
| I was so out of the loop that I had no idea the feature
| existed. When I eventually looked it up, all I could think was
| "how the hell was I supposed to figure that out?".... maybe
| they explained it during one of those apple conferences
| everyone watches?
| wowokay wrote:
| This is interesting, it was always intuitive for me, like
| most VR controls. It's interesting to hear that it wasn't
| intuitive for others.
| mokus wrote:
| I've been using iPhone 6S since it was the flagship and I
| still don't know any 3D Touch operations or shortcuts. I
| actually had to look up just now to double-check that this
| phone even has it and it isn't disabled. I'm sure I could
| find a cheat sheet if I cared but generally I think of
| "intuitive" as being something you'd discover naturally at
| least once in nearly 7 years of daily use.
| failTide wrote:
| I'd been using iPhones without that feature since 2008, and
| there was really no reason for me to assume there was a
| fundamental change. Everything else was basically the same
| until I tried to delete some apps.
|
| I suppose if my first iPhone was one that had this
| functionality, maybe I would have figured it out.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| You never needed to Force Touch an icon to delete. It has
| been long press since the first iPhone.
|
| But your confusion is an example of the main problem. It's
| hard to discover and easily confused with long press (if you
| try to Force Touch and don't apply enough pressure eventually
| you're going to leave your finger there long enough to
| activate long press)
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Or they never got a long push because they pressed slightly
| too hard.
|
| Happened to me.
| failTide wrote:
| Oh jeez... that's gotta be exactly what happened to me,
| and why turning off the 3d touch setting fixed it.
| failTide wrote:
| I had the very first iphone and several after that before
| the touch thing... Long press was always the way to do
| that, and I never had a problem deleting hundreds of apps -
| I'd even released a few of my own iphone apps at that
| point.
|
| Then I couldn't delete apps at all, but turning off 3d
| touch fixed it. Perhaps a coincidence, or some other bug.
| Terrible UX though.
| eddd-ddde wrote:
| I remember when they shipped me a mac book pro for work, I
| literally was unable to click on stuff, I had to ask in a
| discord server for help until someone mentioned pushing, turns
| out you don't tap to click, you push, which was so weird at
| first.
|
| Eventually however, the track pad was the one thing I really
| enjoyed about using an apple product.
| meatmanek wrote:
| You can absolutely tap to click on a Mac trackpad. I don't
| know what the default is, but this behavior is configurable
| in system preferences.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Yep, I also never loved it. I didn't find it to be very
| precise, and it took so long to kick in that the replacement
| system (long touch) is just about as fast for me.
| drclau wrote:
| I initially liked it, but gradually grew to dislike it. Having
| to press hard on the screen of a hand-held device that would be
| quite expensive to repair if dropped is just not a good idea.
|
| I ended up reducing the force setting to the minimum, and still
| felt it wasn't practical.
| glhaynes wrote:
| I don't think it was likely to damage the display (though,
| yeah, it feels iffy), but there's just something about having
| to exert force when you're used to lightly tapping that just
| feels ... burdensome. No less burdensome than its tap-and-
| hold replacement, so, I don't miss it.
| drclau wrote:
| I want to clarify, I was not saying the finger pushing on
| the screen can damage the display, but rather that doing so
| increases the risk of dropping an already thin and slippery
| device.
| PinguTS wrote:
| Yeah, missing this 3D Touch.
|
| The input experience (or AI supported typing) is getting worse
| and worse for me on the iPhone. Especially, if your are using
| different languages in parallel. For me it is my mother tongue
| German and my most second language English and sometimes using
| Spanish. In an (for me) unpredictable way, there are words
| replaced to "correct" typos. But, independent of the used
| keyboard language, which is completely ignored for this auto-
| correct, it replaces it with German word, when I write English
| and sometimes with English words when I type German. Then this
| forced touch was helpful to select the letters/word to re-write
| it correctly to make the sentence meaningful. But now, this whole
| selection process is completely broken (for me). Since the
| removal of force touch, when I try to go to a specific spot, it
| selects parts of the sentence in a completely (for me)
| unpredictable way. Then I have no chance to un-select anymore, so
| I have to replace the whole. The experience is getting worse and
| worse.
|
| I think peak iOS was in the past.
| nabeards wrote:
| For your autocorrect issue with other languages: in addition to
| having the keyboards activated, do you also have the languages
| activated in Settings / General / Language & Region? I had to
| have both the keyboard enabled and the language in here to stop
| the default-language only autocorrects.
| mft_ wrote:
| I've been experiencing something similar recently, and for a
| while even thought it was just me getting worse at typing on
| such a small keyboard.
|
| However, the points you make are absolutely right, and in
| addition it has recently developed the annoying trait of
| sometimes choosing to replace previous words that I have
| specifically typed and selected.
| asdff wrote:
| I disable autocorrect now. The occasional typos are more clear
| compared to replacing a word entirely for a wrong one.
| konschubert wrote:
| I don't disagree with you.
|
| But I think it's great that the keyboard language does not
| define the autocorrect language.
|
| The German keyboard has smaller-sized keys and it would drive
| me insane I think if I had to switch to the German keyboard in
| order to type German text.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| You can change the keyboard layout per language. I type
| mostly in French (on an otherwise English language phone) and
| use French in QWERTY layout.
|
| For the special characters (e, a, etc), I long-press and
| choose whatever I need.
|
| Since I hate typing on the phone, I quite like using the
| suggestions, especially for words with multiple special
| characters.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| I disagree. In my experience you just develop different
| muscle memories for different languages after enough time.
| The Zhuyin keyboard for Chinese has four rows and even
| smaller keys but basically works fine once you have some
| practice with it.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| Totally agree with the keyboard and predictive typing being a
| huge problem child that needs serious attention at this point.
| Some frustrations I have been dealing with:
|
| - The two word replacement pattern is immensely frustrating and
| leads to typos, e.g., where "AI" seems to think it knows better
| what I was trying to write and changes the previous correct
| word based on what it thinks I am trying to currently
| type/swipe. A good example just happened below; I tried typing
| "mid word" below, once I started swipe typing "word" iOS
| thought it would be a great idea to change "mid" to make it
| "miss words". Thanks for the unhelp Apple.
|
| - The random capitalizations for no apparent reason, sometimes
| even mid word, and no, not from accidentally hitting shift,
| even during swipe typing.
|
| - The infuriating overbearing and downright evil efforts at
| speech and thought control. For example you can't swipe type
| certain things Apple has clearly designated as wrongthink;
| assuming of course that the only possible reason someone would
| want to use the sequence of words Apple has designated as
| wrongthink is for purposes that violate their perspective of
| narrow utopian authoritarian society.
|
| - That for some reason sooner rather specific acronyms seem to
| be prioritized over the most common words in the English
| language through inaccuracy. One example; try swipe typing "is"
| with some inaccuracy and you get "OSS" instead, ab rather
| obscure acronym to replace "is", or OSS it?
|
| - The concatenation of "a" (I think there are others I can't
| recall) rather than automatically adding a space when there is
| a hyper (I think that's what it's going on), so e.g., "it's a"
| turns into "it'sa" ... "he's a" "what'sa"
|
| - I too have gotten the sense some of it may even have to do
| with or is exacerbated by using multiple keyboard languages. I
| love when the autocorrect "AI" substitutes words from a
| different language altogether, that'sa (that was organic, but
| left for sarcastic effect) really great feature! (Yes, that's
| more sarcasm)
| wyager wrote:
| Another one - you can't use the swipe keyboard to type
| phrases apple thinks are "naughty", such as "white woman" or
| "kill myself". iOS will _always_ change one of the two words,
| e.g. changing "white" to "while" or "kill" to "hill".
| notamy wrote:
| It's really fascinating -- on my phone (iOS 15.5), "white
| people" was correct to "white purple," "black people" was
| corrected to "blank people" (wtf Apple???), but "Asian
| people" went through just fine. I wonder if it has to do
| with something like specific ethnicity vs. broad
| categorisations used for bigotry. Dunno.
| TylerE wrote:
| Words starting with a capital are treated as names and
| not spellchecked by most systems.
| Izkata wrote:
| > The two word replacement pattern is immensely frustrating
| and leads to typos, e.g., where "AI" seems to think it knows
| better what I was trying to write and changes the previous
| correct word based on what it thinks I am trying to currently
| type/swipe. A good example just happened below; I tried
| typing "mid word" below, once I started swipe typing "word"
| iOS thought it would be a great idea to change "mid" to make
| it "miss words". Thanks for the unhelp Apple.
|
| SwiftKey on Android (Microsoft) does the same thing to me on
| occasion. It is indeed very annoying.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > The random capitalizations for no apparent reason,
| sometimes even mid word, and no, not from accidentally
| hitting shift, even during swipe typing.
|
| I've never had capitalization for no apparent reason (maybe I
| didn't pay enough attention), but I have a similar pet peeve,
| where the AI learns "a bit too much".
|
| I write a lot of French, and a fairly common phrase I type is
| "c'est chiant" (that sucks). At first, it would try to
| autocorrect this to something else, probably because it's
| "not nice" to write that.
|
| But after insisting on writing that for a while, it must have
| figured "ok, let him write that". Except that it learned the
| whole phrase, capitalized, because it's usually the first
| thing I type, so it automatically capitalizes the first
| letter (I always rely on automatic capitalization when
| writing informally).
|
| But now when I want to write that in the middle of a
| sentence, it will auto-capitalize the C.
| bitwize wrote:
| Autocorrect has a way of avoiding spicy language and
| replacing it with something unrelated. Me, I'm tired of
| this ducking shot.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| As I recall, there's a workaround somewhere for that. I
| too find it irritating that my phone manufacturer would
| decide they need to censor my language. If I want to use
| the F word, that's my business. Autocorrect used to just
| be mildly annoying and humorous. In the last few years it
| has evolved to infuriating. And it can be so persistent,
| too. Used to be just back up and retype and it would
| leave you alone, but much of the time now it just keeps
| on trying to 'correct' what I'm typing.
| soylentcola wrote:
| Is there a way to change it so autocorrections are shown
| as suggestions rather than done automatically? I haven't
| used iOS in a few years, but I recall being frustrated
| with the default autocorrect implementation.
|
| On other devices/keyboards (SwiftKey for example) I type
| a word and if it thinks I might mean something else, it
| shows up in a row of 3 suggestions above the keyboard. If
| it's correct, I tap the suggestion and it replaces
| whatever I'd actually typed.
|
| Makes for easy fixes and only adds an extra "tap" if I
| see a mistake that needs to be corrected. Either way,
| beats backing up and retyping or jumping through hoops to
| remove "ducking" from the dictionary.
| the-golden-one wrote:
| The only place 3D Touch remains active is on the flashlight
| button on the lock screen.
|
| If you have a phone that supports 3D Touch, give it a try. You'll
| find that simply long pressing on the button doesn't work, you
| have to apply a certain degree of pressure before it responds.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Any feature cut is going to be _someone 's_ pet feature. That
| doesn't mean one shouldn't be cutting features. Even if there is
| no replacement. Even if you lose that customer.
| parski wrote:
| 3D Touch was supreme. I especially miss the keyboard thing and
| peek-and-pop.
| nprateem wrote:
| And samsung have replaced their previously excellent, immediate
| touch sensor for some under-screen bullshit that takes a few
| seconds and doesn't work half the time. I mean, it's not like
| anyone unlocks their phone about a hundred times a day...
| h1ms3lf wrote:
| I don't understand this post, the force touch is still there at
| least in the pro version of the latest iPhone, don't know about
| the other models.
|
| Also the feature to position your courser is still there, just
| press harder on the space key, Apple confined it to that key/area
| flutas wrote:
| > I don't understand this post, the force touch is still there
| at least in the pro version of the latest iPhone, don't know
| about the other models.
|
| Haptic Touch and 3D Touch are different things[0] and the
| feature was removed after the iPhone XS line. 3D touch could
| actually measure the amount of force you put into the screen,
| it wasn't simply a "long press" like Haptic Touch is.
|
| > Also the feature to position your courser is still there,
| just press harder on the space key, Apple confined it to that
| key/area
|
| Yeah, but it's neutered in 3 ways at least.
|
| 1. With 3D Touch you didn't have to confine it to the space
| bar.
|
| 2. With 3D Touch you could press harder after going into cursor
| mode, and it would start selecting text.
|
| 3. With 3D Touch you didn't have to wait for a long press to
| register to activate it.
|
| You can see an example of it in this video[1]
|
| [0]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205056
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/XlcCgiYF2Fs?t=26
| ec109685 wrote:
| It's not force touch, it's long touch now.
| snoopy_telex wrote:
| I also miss 3D Touch
| todd3834 wrote:
| I read this wondering if it was going to be my favorite removed
| feature 3D Touch as well. Specifically for selecting text on the
| keyboard. I actually held off on buying a new phone for an extra
| couple years not to lose it.
|
| However, I didn't know about the space bar alternative until
| after I upgraded. Honestly I don't even miss 3D touch after a
| little adjustment period. I forgot I don't have it. So the new
| alternative works great for me
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I think this was also when they added the menu to apps, so you
| could 3d press Safari icon and go straight to new tab, or Twitter
| and straight to compose etc. I imagine its long press equivalent
| now is a lot better known though!
| nobrains wrote:
| So Jesse's feature was moved, not removed (as he can still access
| the trackpad feature using a different mechanism), and he is
| complaining because his muscle memory keep using the previous
| method? I feel for him, but no company can design to cater to all
| users.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| They work very differently. One could be initiated instantly
| and had granular control. The other requires a wait time and a
| second finger to do the same thing.
| zabaki wrote:
| Not a day goes by, where I don't miss this feature. I was so sad
| to lose it when I updated to the newest iPhone.
| hnrodey wrote:
| I truly do not understand what the poster is mourning? I'm on
| iPhone 13 Pro Max using the latest iOS and this all seems to work
| as I expect...
| flutas wrote:
| > I truly do not understand what the poster is mourning? I'm on
| iPhone 13 Pro Max using the latest iOS and this all seems to
| work as I expect...
|
| Your iPhone 13 has Haptic Touch, not 3D Touch. Haptic Touch and
| 3D Touch are different things[0] and the feature was removed
| after the iPhone XS line. 3D Touch could actually measure the
| amount of force you put into the screen, it wasn't simply a
| "long press" like Haptic Touch is.
|
| The feature has also been made worse in at least 2 ways.
|
| 1. With 3D Touch you didn't have to confine it to the space
| bar.
|
| 2. With 3D Touch you could press harder after going into cursor
| mode, and it would start selecting text.
|
| 3. With 3D Touch you didn't have to wait for a long press to
| register to activate it.
|
| You can see an example of it in this video[1]
|
| [0]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205056
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/XlcCgiYF2Fs?t=26
| [deleted]
| wojcikstefan wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree with every single word in this post. I
| also mourn this feature's death daily. Being able to force-push
| on the spacebar is not good enough of a replacement.
| can16358p wrote:
| Same.
|
| I think myself as a power user for 3D Touch especially for using
| the keyboard to navigate within text. Not to mention previews
| (while I know most of these features still work to some extent by
| long press, it's more cumbersome).
|
| I also get it that many "normal" users didn't even know about the
| feature and added complexity to hardware, so it was right for
| Apple to remove it, but I really miss it.
| tarsiec wrote:
| I still use an iPhone XS and that's one of my favorite features
| that it has, I use it all the time and it's a shame it's not
| still there, kind of holding me back from upgrading
| nishs wrote:
| I use an iPhone XS too. I love this feature & did not know it
| was 3D touch-specific.
| nishs wrote:
| I was wrong about the last part of my comment. It isn't
| entirely 3D touch specific.
|
| From the original post:
|
| "Fast forward to today, the trackpad mode and selection
| feature technically still exist albeit in a lesser form. If
| you long press (aka hold down) on the spacebar of your touch
| screen keyboard (which works on iPad too) you can get into
| trackpad mode."
|
| Also confirmed by another commenter in this thread.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| I just wish they'd make it so holding delete only did character
| by character. It always jumps to word by word at the wrong point
| and eats up way too much text, heck it even jumps to lines after
| a handful of words.
|
| It boggles my mind how they put up with it when they can change
| it.
| ninedays wrote:
| There clearly was a discoverability issue with 3D Touch. When you
| knew which app supported the feature, it was awesome but there
| was no way of knowing in advance if there was support for it
| before using it. Long pressing an icon or anything just to see
| that nothing happens was just frustrating. Long term effect was
| that users probably felt this wasn't reliable/supported enough to
| use the feature at all or at least not in the scale Apple wanted.
|
| edit : fixed typos
| makeitdouble wrote:
| The interesting part to me is, replacements for 3D Touch aren't
| that much more discoverable: you'll need to be randomly long
| pressing icons, buttons, sometimes specific areas in apps to
| discover they have additional menus.
|
| Getting rid of 3DTouch feels to me more like a hardware cost
| reduction (+ harmonizing the system with the iPad) than
| anything.
| avnigo wrote:
| I had a feeling this was gonna be about 3D Touch just from seeing
| the title.
|
| It was definitely one of my favorite features, and Force Touch
| isn't a drop-in replacement.
|
| With 3D Touch anywhere on the keyboard, you could apply pressure
| to start moving the caret (text cursor) around, _but what was
| even more useful was being able to apply a little bit more
| pressure to start selecting text with incredible precision_.
|
| With Force Touch, you can long press on the space bar till you
| get haptic feedback, then you can move the caret around freely.
| However, if you want to select text, you need to use a second
| finger on the keyboard after you start moving the caret around,
| _but honestly it 's an absolute mess to use; try it out_, I can
| guarantee you won't be able to select what you were planning on.
|
| However, as much as I miss it every time I fail to accurately
| select text on iOS, I don't mourn its loss. Force Touch is
| adequate. It's just not a replacement, and seems a shame it was
| probably removed to reduce costs and hardware complexity, all at
| the cost of regression.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I didn't even realize this is why the feature didn't work
| anymore. I thought I was doing something wrong. It's terrible.
| I find text selection and cursor placement on the iPhone to be
| infuriatingly difficult. The trackpad feature made it sooo
| easy. It was world class. Now it is just... gone? With no
| alternative?
| andnand wrote:
| You just have to hold down on the spacebar and the trackpad
| will show up.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Still a far inferior replacement, and text selection still
| blows.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Wow, thanks! Not as good as it was, but not bad.
| ace2358 wrote:
| I've been so sad since upgrading my 6s about the loss of 3D
| Touch. I didn't know that you can hold on the space bar now!!!
| Thank you for making me love my 13 mini even more now :):)
| scoot wrote:
| It isn't the same though, since trying to move the cursor
| down moves your finger off the touch screen. You can only
| move it down one line at most, and not reliable.
| skoskie wrote:
| It's speed sensitive. I just tested in the notes app and
| was able to move down 6 lines moving slowly or 10 lines
| moving quickly.
| scoot wrote:
| You must have a device with 3D touch. That's physically
| impossible with a new iPhone using the space bar.
| skoskie wrote:
| No, it's a new iPhone 13 Pro.
| skoskie wrote:
| > Oh you like the mini? Well we're taking that away next.
|
| - Apple
| voqv wrote:
| I will probably soon add an old 3D Touch iphone to my small
| Human Machine Interface hall of fame along with the old click
| wheel iPod Classic.
|
| They probably removed it because nobody was using it and they
| couldn't figure out how to teach people, while spending extra $
| to add it into phones.
| yreg wrote:
| In addition to what you mentioned they were unable to bring
| it to the iPad.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| As if they put any effort whatsoever into teaching or UI
| discoverability these days. If there was a tutorial app I
| would have used it, but I have repeatedly had to use Google
| to find unrelated blog sites describing how to accomplish
| things in the iOS interface.
|
| Cynically, it feels like they think everyone should already
| "just know" how the various gestures work, which is obnoxious
| and user hostile.
| simonh wrote:
| >if there was a tutorial app I would have used it..
|
| Isn't that the Tips App? I'm pretty sure it gets
| recommended every time you set up a new phone. Mine has a
| tip on using Haptic Touch with the keyboard to move the
| insertion point.
| llaolleh wrote:
| One way to do discoverability here is to make a suggestion
| if you notice the user hoping around between texts during
| typing.
| torstenvl wrote:
| Absolutely not. Machines and software that interrupt
| users are Kafkaesque torture devices. Hell is full of
| Clippies and microwaves that repeatedly beep for
| eternity.
| failTide wrote:
| There's got to be a tactful way to do this without
| interrupting users. If anyone's got some good examples
| I'd like to take a look.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The thing some email clients do where they say "did you
| mean to attach something" is the one I love.
|
| I'd like a Mark II version which also says "there is no
| such thing as Sunday 8th of August this year" so that I
| can fix my errors before they cause problems.
| homonculus1 wrote:
| It's just fundamentally a bad idea. Software should
| never, _ever_ bother the user during use about how it 's
| being used. That's what tutorials and documentation are
| for.
|
| No matter how clever and subtle you think you're being,
| you're still just redirecting the user's attention from
| the task at hand toward the UI itself. No matter how
| ignorable, dismissable, or optional it is, it's an
| abysmal UI failure and it shouldn't even happen once.
| Make the feature right in the first place and you won't
| have to resort to nagging.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| As I understand it 3D touch's functionality per app
| depended on the app author, so the discoverability problem
| is not that simple.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > If there was a tutorial app I would have used it
|
| There is/was - it's called Tips, and most people ignore or
| uninstall it.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| Its an interesting refutation and confirmation of my
| point.
| Elidrake42 wrote:
| Not only is there a tutorial app ("Tips") but you receive a
| notification pointing you towards it shortly after setting
| up a new iOS device. Also after major iOS updates. So...
| Yeah I suppose you're making their point for them, to an
| extent.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| Does this apply to iPads? I had mine set up by my
| employer and don't think I've seen a prompt. I also don't
| recall seeing this on an iPhone SE I had, so maybe
| discover ability would be better than popups for a tips
| app.
| everyone wrote:
| As someone who only occasionally has to use macOS and iOS
| for work. The gestures and key combos required to do even
| the most basic things are insane.. and there is (almost)
| _zero_ discoverability or affordances for them. On iOS
| gestures with multiple fingers, on macOS keyboard shortcuts
| with 3 or 4 keys.
|
| I also dont often use Linux, but I could try some new
| distro with a completely different windows manager I have
| never seen before and I can figure it out and be happily
| computing in no time.
|
| apple stuff always requiring searching on the internet to
| find out how how to do even most basic functions.
|
| Also, not relevant, but I gotta mention as it grinds my
| gears so bad.. The only reason I have to use macOS is that
| it's _required_ to build to iOS, which is just _uniquely_
| egregious. That sort of business should actually be
| illegal. Hopefully it will be in EU soon.
| gwright wrote:
| > there is zero discoverability
|
| The shortcuts associated with menu items are shown in the
| menu item. I realize that there other discovery problems
| with keyboard shortcuts (on all platforms) but there is
| non-zero discoverability for "the most basic things" on
| Mac OS.
|
| Gesture discoverability is much closer to zero, IMHO.
| everyone wrote:
| Yeah fair enough, I was being hyperbolic, edited my
| comment to be more accurate.
| egypturnash wrote:
| what you mean most people don't go explore every single
| page of the System Preferences when they get a new
| computer and look at all the helpful animations in the
| Gestures pane, I'm _shocked_
|
| (yeah this is the computing equivalent of a locked file
| cabinet in a disused toilet stall in a dark basement with
| a sign on the door that says "Beware The Leopard")
| kergonath wrote:
| > yeah this is the computing equivalent of a locked file
| cabinet in a disused toilet stall in a dark basement with
| a sign on the door that says "Beware The Leopard"
|
| OTOH it makes complete sense to have a look at the
| Trackpad pane to see how it works. It's not like it's
| hidden behind a defaults command line, and it even has
| movies. It's much worse on phones.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Mac OS Help menu search is spectacular for
| discoverability. Start typing what you want and it pops
| up the menu with an arrow and it shows you the shortcut.
|
| Everyone else does it worse, except maybe the VSCode
| command palette.
| robertoandred wrote:
| How do you discover key combos in Linux?
| OJFord wrote:
| You read the man page/documentation for the software you
| installed that they're for, or else you defined them
| yourself and don't need to discover them.
| conradev wrote:
| Features like that not only add cost, but also take away from
| available volume for other features
| bombcar wrote:
| These features really need _games_ added, where the only real
| requirement to play is learn the new feature.
|
| Some say it's why minesweeper et al were added to Windows, so
| people could learn how to use the mouse.
| failTide wrote:
| That game really does build up mouse skills. I remember
| playing it when I was 5 and having no idea what the rules
| were - I just liked to click all the fun little boxes with
| the cool numbers and bombs.
| xsmasher wrote:
| That's a great idea. Steam deck comes with a short game -
| Aperture desk job - that tests all of the controls. I
| didn't know it had a gyro until I played that game.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Way back in the day, Apple shipped several different "Mouse
| Practice" tutorials on their computers to teach new users
| how to use the mouse. Here's videos of two of them:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvcwFYPiKKA
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV-d5F-AdX8
| rasz wrote:
| >Human Machine Interface hall of fame along with the old
| click wheel iPod Classic
|
| Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA
|
| "just few hundred clicks away"
| cainxinth wrote:
| I read they removed it because it required space-consuming
| hardware to accomplish, and Haptic Touch approximates most of
| its features (most) with just software.
| kaba0 wrote:
| I believe it was removed in big part due to being a
| relatively big energy drain. With that in mind, I don't
| believe it was a bad decision, even though I liked the
| feature as well. (Though probably with additional R&D on the
| topic, it could have been improved)
| duskwuff wrote:
| And, IIRC, 3D Touch was also technologically infeasible to
| implement on iPad. That sharply limited what they could do
| with it, since it would never be available on all iOS
| devices.
| psychomugs wrote:
| I've never met anyone who was aware of the feature. Its
| removal kept me from upgrading my 6S until just this year.
| ghoulishly wrote:
| I'm curious to hear what else lives in that collection
| hinkley wrote:
| That feature is probably part of how I started having random
| bits of text just get deleted and typing start in the middle of
| a block of text.
|
| That behavior was very, very frustrating.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I don't know what you mean by force touch. Wasn't that just
| Apple's name for the action of pressing harder on 3D Touch
| devices?
| dan1234 wrote:
| IIRC:
|
| Force Touch is something supported by 2015+ MacBook trackpads
| (you can push harder to effectively middle-click something)
| and 3D Touch was the iPhone screen tech that did the same
| thing, which has been replaced with Haptic Touch (equivalent
| to Android's "long press").
| stefanfisk wrote:
| The screen was actually presssure sensitive with a fair
| amount of precision.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Touch
| DougBTX wrote:
| Interesting, so there was a patent claim settled at the
| start of 2018 over this, and the iPhones released at the
| end of 2018 had the feature removed. I wonder how much of
| an impact that had, versus usability / weight / cost
| considerations.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Yes, they meant to say Haptic Touch.
| [deleted]
| jiehong wrote:
| Oh wow, I never knew this existed.
|
| It seems the selection can only grow and on both sides, which
| is the main problem.
|
| If they showed the cursor with a different color than the
| selected text, and if they shrink and grow the selection as you
| move, I think it could be pretty nice: select the starting
| point of the selection, and select only what's in between the
| original cursor and the moving one.
|
| Alas it's more like painting a selection at the moment, with an
| invisible brush.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| > Oh wow, I never knew this existed.
|
| iOS UI in a nutshell.
| hobs wrote:
| When I worked at Apple training people about the first
| iPhone generations they always said stuff like "it SHOULD
| be intuitive, we dont WANT a tutorial" I chuckled then, but
| add 15 years of changes on something and I don't know how
| that was ever going to be possible.
| netsharc wrote:
| Huh, it's actually been 15 years since the iPhone came
| out. God damn it, now I feel old...
| SllX wrote:
| Tips is underrated. I think back then people just didn't
| want a thick manual (also available in the Apple Books
| store) just to get value out of their phones, but Tips
| fills the need of providing some guidance as changes
| occur.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| What is Tips?
| SllX wrote:
| It is an App installed on current iPhones, iPads, and
| Apple Watches. It just outlines features in the products,
| e.g. new iOS 15 features, "Essentials", What's new in
| watchOS 8, "Health", "Beyond Basics", "AirPods Max",
| "AirPods". I think various sections show up depending on
| what you buy or add to your Apple ID, and usually I'm
| able to learn a few things a year from it that I missed
| in the announcements or didn't see covered elsewhere.
| hbn wrote:
| I hear this complaint a lot, but what is the solution
| exactly? Cramming labeled buttons for every possible action
| onto every screen? There's not a lot of space to work with,
| and even less when the touch targets have to be large
| enough for a big fat thumb to press accurately/reliably.
|
| You can do most of the things that most users need to do
| just knowing how to tap icons and swipe up to go home. I
| don't think it's such a big issue that there are some power
| user features that you either discover by messing around or
| word of mouth.
| hbn wrote:
| > It seems the selection can only grow and on both sides,
| which is the main problem.
|
| I could have sworn it used to work like how you'd expect,
| where it's anchored from the place you started highlighting.
| I got my first iPhone, the 12 mini, when it came out. So end
| of 2020, and I thought that was how text selection worked
| when I first got it, then it seemed at some point, perhaps
| after an update it started working where it would only grow
| the selection and you couldn't unselect if you accidentally
| went too far. I thought they introduced a bug but it hasn't
| changed since then. I have no source for this, only my own
| memory, but maybe someone else can tell me I'm
| correct/incorrect about that?
|
| The current implementation is way too hard to use. Especially
| if, for example, you're selecting something starting on the
| far right side of a line to the far left side of the same
| line. You have to thread the needle of the above and below
| lines like a game of Operation, because if you go too high or
| too low, you'll accidentally end up selecting that entire
| line.
| chazhaz wrote:
| The problem here is that the "move left to expand left" and
| "move right to expand right" doesn't map mentally to the way
| a cursor works.
|
| With a traditional cursor, it places an anchor wherever
| you've moused down and then drags the selection around that
| anchor.
|
| Whereas with Haptic Touch selection, there's no anchor, so
| you find yourself selecting text you didn't mean to. I'm sure
| that once you've gotten used to it, it's a nice feature; but
| it's not intuitive if you're not accustomed to it (which
| seems to be the majority of folks).
| pmontra wrote:
| I enabled arrows keys on every single keyboard on the
| Android devices I owned. I use them to move the cursor and
| fix mistakes, usually by tapping and adjusting with the
| arrows. Faster than attempting to tap at the right spot.
| Are there no arrows on iOS keyboards?
| MasterScrat wrote:
| Interesting how this comment simply summarizes the post, adding
| no extra information.
|
| There's probably a way to make a lot of HN points just running
| a summarization model and posting the result as comment
| pessimizer wrote:
| You could probably run something over the output summary to
| make it sound like commentary. A filter to make the comment
| seem "unsure" about the conclusions of the article, or one to
| make it express gratitude that the article was written.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > Force Touch
|
| Force Touch was the same tech as 3D Touch, first introduced on
| the watch. It was rebranded for the iPhone when the pressure
| sensitivity stuff was added.
|
| It's current replacement is _Haptic Touch_.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Force Touch was the same tech as 3D Touch..._
|
| "Both 3D Touch and Haptic Touch fall under the umbrella of
| Force Touch functionality. This is Apple's general name for
| its technology that lets input devices distinguish between
| different levels of pressure when you touch them."
|
| https://www.makeuseof.com/apple-force-touch-3d-touch-
| haptic-...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Touch
|
| So, 3D Touch was one implementation of Force Touch.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| > but what was even more useful was being able to apply a
| little bit more pressure to start selecting text with
| incredible precision.
|
| That is not how I remember it. I remember text being selected
| left and right at random for no apparent reason when trying to
| move the cursor.
| trebbble wrote:
| Yeah--I'm a reasonably dextrous person, but had to disable 3d
| touch on iOS and whatever the fancy pressure thing is on
| recent macbook touchpads, to make them usable. Constant
| mistakes with either turned on.
| chaostheory wrote:
| I was wondering how and why text selection seemed to have
| gotten much worse. Now I know
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Neat, knew about the 3d caret placement for years but not the
| selection part. It doesn't seem to be incredible precision
| however, on mine you can only add one word at a time to the end
| of the selection.
|
| Better than I knew before, but not incredible. Would at least
| require letter by letter precision for that.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| As long as you want to select entire words, just double tap and
| drag -- same as desktop to do word-based selection. And even if
| you don't want to do word-based selection, double tap is a good
| way to start selection and have the selection carets close to
| where you want them that you can easily manually adjust.
| vl wrote:
| OMG, this is a game-changer. It makes selection so much
| easier then trying to position long-touch.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| > it's an absolute mess to use
|
| No kidding I just managed to make it bug out and crash safari
| [deleted]
| mike_pol wrote:
| I was sure it was going to be about it as well! 3D touch was a
| really cool feature. I also find now that it's a lot easier to
| activate the flashlight or camera on the Lock Screen since they
| are not 'buttons' any more
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Every time I unlock my phone I'm reminded that the stupid
| flashlight button can't be turned off.
|
| The 3 times this year I've needed to use my flashlight are
| not worth the 20+ times it's been accidentally running in my
| pocket because I held the wrong corner while pocketing my
| phone.
|
| Plus it's in control centre anyway If you need it fast.
| D13Fd wrote:
| Wow I don't agree at all. I use the flashlight all of the
| time, and I rarely if ever activate it accidentally.
|
| I actually used to hit it accidentally more often when it
| was a 3D touch button rather than a delay-based button.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| I just don't believe how that would be possible
| considering they both require holding the same corner
| just one pressing harder.
|
| I just want a way to completely remove it for the
| majority of us who are not wandering around in pitch
| black.
| jader201 wrote:
| I think I've unintentionally trained myself to hold the
| phone on it's sides when pocketing it, for this reason, now
| that you mention it.
|
| I don't think I've ever had the flashlight accidentally
| left on (not in a long time, anyway).
| chaosbolt wrote:
| Force Touch would have been usable for me if I could just
| disable its vibration without having to disable it on the whole
| phone, I don't understand why they don't add special settings
| to do things like this. I hate that anytime I want to move the
| cursor and long press the space bar my phone has to vibrate.
| lttlrck wrote:
| I'm curious, how did the haptic feedback that indicates that
| you've enabled the feature make it unusable? FWIW its
| replacement is the same in that respect.
| chaosbolt wrote:
| I hate notifications and talking on the phone, and after
| years I developed a pavlov reaction to it whenever my phone
| vibrates or makes a sound so I keep that at a minimum for
| important notifications, I used to love the samsung
| notification led but the iphone doesn't have that, so
| having a haptic feedback whenever I want to move the cursor
| (which is lots of times) makes me cringe.
| fossuser wrote:
| Force touch and 3D touch are the same feature - they just
| called it 3D because "forced touching" had a bad sound to it.
|
| Currently it's "long press". I think they did this so they
| could remove the physical layer required for 3D Touch that took
| up space.
|
| The UX was better for the force sensor though, it was instant
| feedback based on user action and didn't require a delay to
| detect.
| mrtksn wrote:
| > However, as much as I miss it every time I fail to accurately
| select text on iOS, I don't mourn its loss
|
| Yes, it's slightly worse now but for a greater cause and the
| greater cause, IMHO, is the unified interaction model on mobile
| devices. If not all devices and apps are using it there's no
| reason to having it.
|
| In the Android world there are tons of exotic stuff, novel
| ideas and even "standards" that go nowhere unless Apple
| implements it.
|
| There is a magic in general availability. I think, if all Apple
| devices had it, it could have been possible to rely on its
| existence and build the UI with that assumption in mind. With
| just some devices having it, you need to have few versions of
| the UI to handle each case.
| someguydave wrote:
| I too enjoy the removal of innovation and excellence in the
| quest for equality comrade
| [deleted]
| mrtksn wrote:
| > I too enjoy the removal of innovation and excellence in
| the quest for equality comrade
|
| I think you misunderstood. This is not an argument for
| equality at all, the problem with patchy support is that
| few bother to implement features against because it costs
| time and money and as a result fades into usbcuirity.
|
| Having uniform platform is a very effective for innovations
| success. It makes sense for Apple and the developers to
| have the hardware based 3D touch with a software based
| alternative so that it can work on all devices the same
| way.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > There is a magic in general availability. I think, if all
| Apple devices had it, it could have been possible to rely on
| its existence and build the UI with that assumption in mind.
| With just some devices having it, you need to have few
| versions of the UI to handle each case.
|
| The way you get there is by putting it into everything for
| several years.
|
| Cutting it after three is the opposite of working for that
| greater cause.
| mrtksn wrote:
| What if it's not feasible on iPad?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| There's a capacitor layer behind the screen and there's a
| tiny actuator for vibration. I don't see how it wouldn't
| be.
| mrtksn wrote:
| For some reason, no iPad had it. Maybe it becomes
| problematic on large screens, maybe the user experience
| degrades on large screens because of simple physics i.e
| the the strength needed for applying pressure becomes
| uncomfortable since it will act as a lever in the hands
| of the user?
|
| Maybe the force the user can apply when iPad is on a
| table(no lever effect) and when is handheld(strong lever
| effect, user needs counterforce on the other end of the
| screen to achieve firm press) is far too different to
| reliably activate the gesture?
| Shank wrote:
| I agree with this entirely too much. I switched to Android via
| the iPhone 6S, which was the first one with 3D Touch. I thought
| it actually made the "hardware and software together" argument
| super strong too, because it truly only made sense when the OS
| supported it.
|
| I know it was a power user feature, and I wish they kept it on
| the pro iPhones or reintroduced it there. One-handed text
| selection was an absolutely awesome feature, and it's definitely
| not something everybody needs. But I too miss it dearly.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| Totally agree with the author, I loved this feature and copying
| parts of text/URLs is more difficult now.
| MockObject wrote:
| What is this? I've been using iPhones since 4, and this is the
| first I'm hearing of this feature. I guess that's why they
| removed it.
| jcpst wrote:
| Woah, that is cool, I had no idea. I will definitely be using
| this.
| firasd wrote:
| Kinda unfortunate that phones have made basic workflow gestures
| like this so obscure. Let's not even get into how "undo" is
| accessed by shaking the whole device
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Although there are now[1] _three_ non-shaking ways to access
| undo[2] - 1) the three-finger tap which brings up the copy and
| paste icon bar also contains undo and redo, 2) three-finger
| swipe left, 3) three-finger double tap (which isn 't 100%
| reliable for me in things like Safari since it tends to trigger
| "show me the tabs").
|
| [1] Since iOS 13, 2019 [2]
| https://www.macworld.com/article/233056/ios-13-and-ipados-13...
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I didn't know about any of those but they all sound a lot
| better than shake which never works for me. TY!
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Yeah, they could really do with a "I see you're shaking the
| phone to undo, what about trying one of these new ways?"
| kind of popup / tutorial for things like this. They're
| great at introducing new features but useless at surfacing
| them to users.
| raverbashing wrote:
| This is the true problem. A lot of this is not discoverable
|
| And for real, I'm suspecting Android is better at this than
| iPhone
| firasd wrote:
| Yeah on Android interfaces there is a common concept of a
| 'hamburger icon' on screens. It may not be the best UX but at
| least if a dev doesn't know how to expose a certain feature
| in the UI they can put it in the menu that expands from the
| three dots icon
| ChrisRR wrote:
| > My guess is that people had no idea it was there
|
| That is my issue with so many of Apple's features. Apple fans are
| so happy to shout "it just works. You just have to double tap, or
| three finger swipe or hold your mouse in the corner or press
| harder on the screen"
|
| If the UI doesn't tell me about those hidden methods, then the
| feature doesn't exist.
| thih9 wrote:
| One of the issues with the 3D Touch replacement ("long press") is
| that if I accidentally hold a finger on the screen for too long
| (e.g. I'm touching lightly to scroll, but pausing for a moment to
| finish reading), then I'm unintentionally long pressing
| something. This wouldn't happen with 3D Touch.
|
| Another one is that the illusion of pressing a tactile button is
| gone. 3D Touch would give tactile feedback only if the screen was
| pressed with force; this was realistic enough to simulate actual
| buttons on iphone7/8. The long press has no way of measuring
| force, so it accepts light touch too and still responds with
| haptic feedback; this doesn't happen in the real world and the
| illusion is gone.
| ntauthority wrote:
| > I'm touching lightly to scroll, but pausing for a moment to
| finish reading
|
| Just checked on my own behavior in this regard, and I seem to
| have grown a habit of just scrolling slightly enough to not
| make it appear to be a long press before actually resting my
| finger on the screen.
|
| This might be a more common habit and would explain the
| consensus of long presses not being seen as too problematic.
| thih9 wrote:
| The device quickly teaches you to do scroll like that,
| otherwise you get an unwanted "tap", almost like negative
| feedback.
|
| Anecdotical, I remember not having to do this initial micro
| scroll as a more comfortable scrolling experience.
| uxamanda wrote:
| This explains so much. I didn't realize this feature was removed,
| and I just assumed that I had somehow changed my settings to add
| a delay. For how I used it, long press still works pretty well,
| but now you have to "trust" that it is working during the delay.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I can understand why they killed it (I suspect the average user
| was simply completely unaware that it existed, and no doubt
| getting rid of it made the physical implementation simpler) but I
| do think it's a shame; it was by far the best text-handling on a
| touch device I've seen before or since.
|
| I do wonder if it'll come back at some point.
| petarb wrote:
| I use 3D Touch on the daily to move the cursor around when typing
| on my XS Max. Definitely a feature I will miss when I get a new
| iPhone and it will take some time to get use to
| nishs wrote:
| I didn't know this feature was 3D touch-specific.
|
| Why can't Apple make the feature activate on a regular "long
| press" for the other models?
| nishs wrote:
| follow up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32354824
|
| so actually it works on long press right now.
| iso1631 wrote:
| The thing I really miss is in apple maps on car play. Until a few
| months back you could press the big direction button to turn
| voice directions on and off, really easy to do while driving
| without looking at the screen. Now it's press in the right part
| of the screen, press a tiny button, press another tiny button
| uplifter wrote:
| iOS dev here who's built apps using the force touch feature, in
| my opinion it never got much traction with developers because the
| standard ui toolkit elements were never extended to make use of
| pressure touch. So instead of being able to create UIs by
| connecting storyboard outlets to function calls like probably 95%
| of iOS app UI development, a dev would have to drop down to and
| override the lower level calls to touchesBegan, touchesMoved and
| touchesEnded functions that govern the phases of a touch where
| the force pressure information was available, a much more
| involved and tricky coding and debbugging experience.
|
| But if you were willing to do that, whole new interface
| possibilities open up because you have an entirely new dimension
| to work with! I made a music instrument app where position on
| screen controls note/frequency and pressure controls amplitude
| and it works very smoothly[0]. But all the established paradigms
| that devs and users know revolve around 2D, so to take advantage
| of the force touch you have to both invent a new paradigm and
| teach it to users, all while supporting devices without 3D touch
| or losing that share of the market. There weren't enough takers
| or it didn't happen fast enough so Apple decided it wasn't worth
| keeping, which is understandable but also kinda tragic in my
| admitedly biased opinion.
|
| [0] Xalophone digital musical instrument incorporating 3D Touch:
| https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/xalophone/id1420669553
| slategruen wrote:
| Why do I feel like Apple's threshold for removing features is
| really low?
| Lucent wrote:
| Every family member whose midrange phone I have to update due to
| EOL software or additional carrier bands somehow loses every
| feature they actually value and they rightfully complain it's a
| downgrade.
| slowmotiony wrote:
| I feel like this even without replacing my hardware, the
| software alone updates itself and changes all the time. I feel
| like whenever I open the youtube app it looks slightly
| different. See that button? Now it's gone! A week later, it's
| there again! Few days later, it's gone again, turns out the
| previous week was just A/B testing.
| MereInterest wrote:
| I wanted to play music that was stored locally on my phone.
| But Play Music has been deprecated for YouTube Music, and so
| it only redirects to a download page. Which would mean
| figuring out new permissions for a new application, whether
| it can read local files at all, whether it can read local
| files that may be marked as accessible only by a different
| application, whether the new app will give notifications that
| need to be disabled, and so on.
|
| Why is it being replaced? Because there's a new branding. Why
| is the old application being disabled? Because it would be
| insecure to keep it without security updates. Why does it
| need security updates? Because it accesses the internet. Why
| does a local music player need to access the internet?
| Because they merged the local music player and streaming
| music player.
|
| So there's a ridiculous user experience and unnecessary
| deprecation, all because local functionality interacts with
| nonlocal functionality.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| I know everyone's sick of hearing about it, but they've
| permanently lost my interest in upgrading thanks to the aux
| jack removal. Some features are so important that across the
| board improvements elsewhere _still_ don't justify the loss.
|
| Kind of like an escape key on a keyboard.
| rexf wrote:
| I definitely don't miss it. Sure, it was great pressing into the
| keyboard to move your text cursor position, but it was a feature
| that most users didn't know about (and would never find about
| since there was usually no visual affordance).
|
| Why would Apple keep hardware that most people didn't know about
| and didn't use?
|
| I do miss the headphone jack, but clearly Apple is not bringing
| that back.
| divbzero wrote:
| Looks like 3D Touch survived 4 years, appearing in: [1]
|
| - iPhone 6S
|
| - iPhone 6S Plus
|
| - iPhone 7
|
| - iPhone 7 Plus
|
| - iPhone 8
|
| - iPhone 8 Plus
|
| - iPhone X
|
| - iPhone XS
|
| - iPhone XS Max
|
| The feature was discontinued with the release of iPhone 11. [2]
|
| [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/does-iphone-have-3d-touch
|
| [2]: https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-
| discontinues-3d-touch-...
| sroussey wrote:
| 3D Touch had 256 levels of pressure. But it it was replaced with
| Forced touch (hard press vs normal press), nothing would have
| been lost.
|
| I wish they would bring it back via Force Touch on iPhones.
| degun wrote:
| Oh poor man. You have to go "all the way" to the spacebar to do
| it now? So sad.
| circa wrote:
| Long live 3D Touch. I miss my XS Max only because of that.
| NonNefarious wrote:
| 3-D Touch, Force Touch, whatever... it's lazy, undiscoverable UI.
|
| If there's a proper, disclosed affordance to do the same
| things... then I guess they are harmless. But if there is ANY
| compromise made to implement them, good riddance.
| b93rn wrote:
| I always used the cursor function, but did not know about the
| press again selection mode. I still have a iPhone 10, so i can
| still enjoy while it lasts.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| The big takeaway for me was
|
| >>> My guess is that people had no idea it was there. Likely it
| had very low usage statistics and so Apple cut it in order to...
|
| Right there.
|
| I am often frustrated that I cannot edit a URL in the address bar
| - but not frustrated enough to use a different phone or explore.
|
| What would be useful is some kind of "how to use your phones
| hidden features" guide on the phone (no not on a website
| somewhere an actual supported by Apple real tutorial). Then both
| I can find out and Apple can find the real ratio here - people
| who know how to use 3D whatever and who just don't bother.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| Funny enough, the infrastructure for that exists too, and you
| may not realize it ... in the Tips app. What is lacking is the
| even just moderately advanced topics.
|
| I suspect that the long-press alternative in software was found
| to be sufficient alternative to not warrant the force-press. I
| wonder if this is where we are going on Mac too where, e.g.,
| force press to trigger definitions of words is a godsend
| especially when leaving foreign languages,
| happyopossum wrote:
| > I am often frustrated that I cannot edit a URL in the address
| bar
|
| On an iPhone? You've always been able to do that...
| m12k wrote:
| Functionality that has no visual component is invisible to the
| point that it might as well not exist for 99% of users. Apple has
| done a lot to teach the built-in functionality like this (e.g.
| the swipe from top/bottom gestures). But a feature like 3D Touch
| requires individual apps to support it, and there's a chicken and
| egg problem here, since it's not worth it for the app developers
| to spend time on a feature that 99% of their users won't know
| exists. And because so few apps supported 3D touch, most users
| never learned to use it (they probably gave up after the first
| couple apps didn't do anything) and thus there was little
| pressure on developers to implement it. Neat as it was, I think
| this feature was doomed from the beginning for this reason.
| stormbrew wrote:
| 3d touch was incredibly frustrating because there was both long
| touch and hard touch and they both feel like similar actions but
| did different things. I think the world is better off without it
| adding on yet another way to hide potential user actions behind
| impossible to guess and subtle gestures.
| [deleted]
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| I miss the squeeze feature on my old Pixel 2 - I used it all the
| time and it was awesome. Shame they removed it
| tgv wrote:
| What's that? I'm another iPhone user who likes 3D touch, and
| I've seen a few Androids, but I've never heard of a squeeze
| function. Do you trigger some function by squeezing the sides?
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| You could squeeze the bottom half of the phone to trigger the
| Google Assistant, can't remember if it was remappable or not.
| martijn_himself wrote:
| This is cool but I think technically minded people vastly
| overestimate how many people would use it _even if they knew
| about it_. It 's just another thing to remember. I have an iPhone
| 8 and the 3D Touch version of it is clever but it doesn't seem to
| activate all the time (I'm not sure if that is a bug or not).
|
| Apple probably collects usage statistics and knows no one (by
| approximation) uses it so they scrap it. That's sad, but
| understandable as well.
| Nition wrote:
| Re text selection, what I find annoying is that that you can't
| just tap with your finger on the text itself to place the cursor
| in an exact location. You can tap to place the cursor, but it
| always snaps to the end of a word. Why?
|
| My favourite iPhone feature that was removed though was being
| able to fully turn off WiFi from the Control Center (last seen in
| iOS 10).
| grsmvg wrote:
| You can then 'grab' the cursor and move it. Or just use the
| hold spacebar trick two merge those two steps into a single
| action.
| Nition wrote:
| Yeah, I just find it a bit strange that you can't just tap
| once for exact placement. I know from previous non-iOS phones
| that it's not that hard to get it in the right spot.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Works for me on the second tap.
| everyone wrote:
| I was just thinking, was the only time some solid human interface
| design work was put into practice at a large scale, when apple
| and MS copied the work by Xerox parc?
|
| Like, everything else since then seems to just have been some
| stupid gimmick driven by the bean counters and not any evidence
| based approach. I assume modern academic human interface
| designers have been going quietly insane for the past few
| decades.
| Lio wrote:
| I actually used to turn 3D Touch off on my older iPhones.
|
| I just always use that long press on the space bar to move the
| cursor.
|
| 3D Touch is interesting from a technical point of view but it
| makes manufacture more complex and using the phone more
| complicated than it needs to be. I was always activating it by
| accident.
|
| When it was first announced I was excited that haptic feedback
| would allow us to feel the edges of the virtual keyboard keys and
| improve typing accuracy. That's not what we got and I've found
| very little utility in the current implementation sadly.
|
| It also makes it harder to get the screen replaced. Since I don't
| live near an Apple Store that's important to me. I want to be
| able to pop into a local locksmith and get them to change a
| broken screen while I wait. The alternative is either a long
| drive or sending the phone away for days on end.
|
| If Apple really wanted to impress me they would replace the
| dictation key on the keyboard which I regularly trigger by
| accident with something useful like an Undo button. I have never
| used dictation so this is just a daily irritation to me.
| ericabiz wrote:
| I co-own third party repair shops (we are not Apple certified
| since we do more complex repairs) and the screens for the 6S-XS
| have 3D Touch on them even if they're not replaced by Apple.
|
| I will say this, in 50,000+ 3D Touch iPhone screen repairs
| (conservative estimate) I don't recall any complaints about
| non-working 3D Touch. I think probably 0.1% of iPhone users
| even knew it existed.
| NonNefarious wrote:
| Kinda like lack of a real Delete key on Apple laptops. Point
| that out, and iPologist dweebs always jump in with "Nyeahh,
| Command-delete!"
|
| NO. Not only is this ridiculously cumbersome, but it's not
| marked on the keyboard. So 99+ % of Apple users undertake
| DOUBLE the keystrokes to arrow the cursor past the letters
| they want to delete and then use Apple's mislabeled Backspace
| key to get rid of them. I've been in the Apple store and
| heard a customer come in and ask if there's some way to
| configure the keyboard to have a legitimate Delete key.
|
| Meanwhile everyone else manages to provide a real Delete key,
| even on SMALL laptops.
| nishs wrote:
| > I just always use that long press on the space bar to move
| the cursor.
|
| So the cursor navigation feature activates on long press of the
| space bar, in iPhone models that don't have 3D touch?
| Lio wrote:
| Yes, it works in all iPhones with or without 3D Touch.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| 3D Touch was a lovely feature but to be honest I've adapted to
| its replacements to the point where I hadn't thought about it for
| months until reading this. I imagine the amount of engineering
| complexity on the hardware side for such a relatively niche
| feature just didn't make sense, also the fact that it seemingly
| couldn't scale to iPad sized screens. A shame, but probably a
| sensible move.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| "Why do users disable automatic updates?"
| irrational wrote:
| I had no idea this spacebar to trackpad feature existed! It is
| awesome!
| cdmckay wrote:
| Someone showed me this a couple years ago and my mind was
| blown!
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