Apple Expected to Remove 3D Touch

While I really like 3D Touch, I'm not surprised. It's very confusing when it works on some devices and not others. Also because of the lack of discoverability it confused a ton of people. When it was first introduced I had to explain the difference between hard press and light press and hold to enable moving icons or deleting programs on Springboard. This really was from day one a very poorly implemented feature. Made worse by it being inconsistent on what devices used it. (No iPads for instance)

Curious what they do on the Mac

This really saddens me. Long press feels comparatively slow and already carries too much meaning. It’s even worse on the iPad, where long press _also_ has the duty of initiating drag-and-drop. I hope they don’t also remove Force Touch on the Mac, but I’d probably have less trouble adjusting to that so long as their trackpads continue to use the Taptic Engine.

This should never have shipped in the first place. I don't know how Apple came up with 3D touch, but it feels like something that hardware engineers thought was cool, but that nobody on the software side had asked for, or had any kind of coherent concept for. Which is a totally backwards way of managing the design of a device like the iPhone.

As a general observation, iOS is already confusing enough, and hides too much stuff from users. The last thing it needs is more ways to hide things behind obscure gestures. This can't die soon enough.

3D Touch is the power user option. I genuinely use it every day - quick actions on Springboard, opening up options on notifications, peek and pop, etc. I miss it every time I use my iPad. Long press (with haptic feedback or otherwise) is not a valid replacement for it and it will be a very bad day if it's removed.

The "New Tab" Quick Action on the Safari icon is something that I use at least a couple of times a day and saves a few taps every time (including one at the top of the screen which can be inconvenient). I also use Peek and Pop a fair amount. If this is removed this year, it will be the first time I've ever kept an iPhone for more than 2 years. To paraphrase Clemenza: "Leave the Touch Bar. Take the 3D Touch."

I hope Apple does the necessary software improvements to iOS to mitigate the loss of 3DT. There are still some things that 3DT can do (like select a paragraph of text in a split second) that are not possible without it. And other substitutions like Long Press take too long or are not as accurate.

It seems 3DT is dying because Apple itself never really explored how to best use it, nor did they encourage developers to support it. Unfortunately, many of the things that Apple to promote it, like Peek and Pop, always seemed gimmicky to me. I think if Apple would’ve put more effort into it, 3D Touch could have been something really amazing.

I don't have a device that supports 3D touch, but there are times when I tap the screen and nothing happens, or the wrong thing happens, and then I get angry and try again, pressing harder this time. So I think that the proper behavior of 3D touch should be that a hard press does the same thing as a light touch, except the OS also issues a verbal apology for not getting it right the first time. THAT is how you delight your users. :-)

I imagine that I'll find myself asking, "WTF did I just do?" a little less frequently when working with my iDevices.

It’s possible to emulate 3D touch without a 3D-touch-capable screen and without switching to a long-press.

I’ve done it with a fake Geiger counter app (see it on on http://fancyham.com) that works on all iPhones and senses finger pressure, and I believe something similar is done in Garage Band for their drums and keyboards (which work on iPads).

It’s probably less consistent out of the box, but I wouldn’t count this pressure-gesture out.

That said, it’s the equivalent of a control-click on the mac — it’s really hidden.

Well, that sucks if you’re making a painting/drawing/sketching app, or a more than casual game...

I’d agree with this decision if only the slightly unintuitive peek/pop and maybe icon shortcuts were lost.

But there are plenty of places where 3D Touch is used in a completely intuitive way (and without the end user even knowing they’re using it, really: they want a thicker coat of paint so they’re just pressing the screen harder, or they want the drum to sound a bit louder so they thump the screen a bit harder) and it seems like a bean-counter-y move to remove 3D Touch because not all its use cases are equally popular.

And after all, are we not paying north of $1000 for a phone precisely because we do not want a Samsung that is carefully tuned to be as cost effective as possible, but because we want a product where even the edge users and use cases (the proverbial invisible back panel of a drawer that Steve Jobs’ father also sanded down and carefully painted) deserve attention?

@Leo those don't necessarily need 3D Touch to work. Like @fancyham mentioned Garage Band has had pressure-sensitive drums & instruments since way before 3D Touch came around. I can't remember if it uses the accelerometer or the surface area of your finger to calculate pressure. But it's always worked well, since v1 was released on early iPhones/iPads.

>are we not paying north of $1000 for a phone precisely because we do not
>want a Samsung that is carefully tuned to be as cost effective as possible

Samsung is the exact wrong example for this. If you want expensive phones that have cool niche features with a lot of attention to detail, then you need to stop buying Apple devices, and switch to Samsung immediately. They have a phone that comes with a fully-integrated, super nicely made pressure-sensitive pen, ffs. Coincidentally, that phone also has an actually useful amount of memory, and a large battery, unlike anything Apple currently has on offer.

Apple has long stopped being the company that sands the back of the drawer. Unfortunately, they still charge "back of the drawer sanded" prices.

" except the OS also issues a verbal apology for not getting it right the first time"

Or maybe just a shrill plea of "mercy master!"

[…] Previously: Apple Expected to Remove 3D Touch. […]