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iPhone 6S New Feature: Force Touch
New submitter WarJolt writes: Apple is adding Force Touch to their iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus. I'm not sure if Force Touch enough to convince an Android user like myself to switch, but there are definitely some interesting possibilities for app developers. A challenge for App developers will be to make apps compatible with both Force Touch iPhones and non-force touch iPhones. (Here's the Bloomberg report Forbes draws from.)
Doesn't Apple even check for trademarks? "Force Touch" has, for decades, belonged to Bill Cosby.
Android has pressure sensitive styluses. Which have also been available for iOS for years. This is Force Touch, which as it's name implies is about measuring the force of finger touches. Android doesn't have it.
Actually curious here...links?
Hey janitors that run this site, don't link to Wikipedia or anything to tell us what "force touch" is.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
This is Force Touch, which as it's name implies is about measuring the force of finger touches.
For what its worth, (and probably not much) I have a new macbook pro with the force touchpad. I've never actually used it. Not once. Not ever. I tried it on the demo unit in the store to see what the fuss was... but I count it as a total gimmick.
I really only ever use the tap-to-click; so I don't even click the touchpad, nevermind force-click it.
the only thing i can think of that would get me to switch to ios over android would be if they came out of the box with the ability to sideload apps without jailbreaking
also i want to not be stuck using the apple ecosystem and use what i want to use.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Wow the first in a series of Jedi powers! I want Force Push or Force Speed next!
Smash touch!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
A key part of the usability of these glass-covered capacitive-touch devices is that you can very lightly touch the surface and it'll react. Once you get the idea into people's minds that if something isn't working, you should try pressing harder (Force Touching) then frustrated people will think "I'm not pressing hard enough" and press harder and harder until they crack their screen. I've seen people with styluses repeatedly stabbing touchscreens like a psycho killer, because the device wasn't responding the way they wanted (usually because they were missing the button).
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
I guess I'm confused, but we've developed Android applications for years, one of which involves an interactive water surface. We made use of pressure sensitivity and it worked fine. Is this different somehow? I thought this was a bog-standard feature for a capacitive touch screen?
I mean, I guess you could make your UI use it like a right/left click on a mouse or something, but outside of a controlled environment it seems like it'd be kind of finicky.
the only thing i can think of that would get me to switch to ios over android would be if they came out of the box with the ability to sideload apps without jailbreaking
It has this. Just enroll the device as a developer device, and compile the code, or enroll it as a corporate device, if you want to use precompiled code you trust but that Apple won't allow into the App store because Apple doesn't trust it.
If you mean thing like side-loading just random crap, like if I were a private detective hired by your wife, and had 60 seconds of access to your iPhone, I could sideload some serious backdoor onto your phone to enable me to monitor your texts, phone calls, email, Facebook, and so on ... I'm pretty sure no one wants someone else to be able to load that kind of crap on their phones, but if you can do it, they can do it, too.
"This is a strength tester app. When I say 'go!', tap the screen as hard as you can!"
... Is your app Jedi compatible?!?
This is the best restaurant I ever eat in
Bloomberg printing an unsourced rumor does not magically turn it into news. Forbes citing Bloomberg printing an unsourced rumor also does not magically make it news.
Why would something like Force Touch convince someone to switch from Android unless they're the kind of people who constantly rush to any new flashy thing? For one, Force Touch seems like a terrible, unintuitive gimmick that isn't easily discoverable and pretty much all the things you can do with it can be also be done without with little effort. Secondly, if someone is using Android they're likely using it because it isn't iOS; cheaper, more-varied hardware, not-so-tightly controlled lock-in and thus much better access to tools from more than one vendor, dual- and even triple-SIM phones and so on.
The order of the day seems to be trying to invent solutions for problems that don't exist.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Force Touch could yield to interesting app behaviour.
But I am more interested ln the expected camera improvements. Apple bought a company specialising in a new kind of multi sensor camera thet promises much improved picture quality, more so in low light and it could be used for 3d pictures.
i have the 6 plus which is already capable of surprisingly acceptable pictures, and if the low light quality still improves then the phone could convince me to leave my bigger gear more often at home.
Neat to see ios is catching up to android, you've only been able to get pressure sensitive devices with android for about four years now.
Google Android OS is a malware infested pile of garbage better buried forever. I cannot understand supposedly technology literate people fawning over proprietary, walled-garden Google Android OS while squealing like gang-raped schoolgirls about the proprietary, walled-garden that is Apple iOS. I doubt there more is than 1% of /. readers who actually understand the computer systems they use daily much less have ever built an operating system whether a "toy OS" or contributed to an existing OS such as GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, Apple OS X, etc.
squealing like gang-raped schoolgirls
Gang-raped schoolgirls don't squeal in real life. In those Japanese videos you've seen, the girls are actresses, and their squealing is actually a fairly sophisticated response that walks a thin line between rape simulation and forbidden fantasies.
lucm, indeed.
Now your iPhone can scream "Ouch!" when you hit it with a hammer out of frustration. :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
There's no rape culture at Apple, unless you count the Chinese workers who are poisoned on the iPhone assembly lines for $100 per month, or the idiots in the Apple Store who are paid $100 per day to sell stuff they can't afford themselves to people who don't need it.
lucm, indeed.
Yeah they had production problems, but those suicide prevention nets really did the job. Smooth sailing until the next slave uprising.
lucm, indeed.
Your force touch trackpad does not "click" (no traditional hinge movement). The taptic engine behind the track pad simulates the click feeling for click depth without the surface depressing.
So, every time you do or have "clicked" your track pad, you have used the force touch feature.
Secondly, force touch on the Apple Watch works beautifully and will be useful on the iPhone too. Different use cases. Contextual menus in iOS apps will be a great addition.
Given the numerous Android security problems and APPs with hidden data collection issues, I'ld say forget 'Force Touch' as a reason to switch.
If I was a celeb I'd rather have "Android security problems" than The Fappening, As a nobody, the only people likely to steal my naughty pics are Geek Squad employees, and they can do it on IOS or Android so that's no reason to switch.
lucm, indeed.
I assume Android users prefer Android because of the things it has, not those it lacks. How would something that is not on Android convince them to switch? I have several iPhones (up to the iPhone 6 plus) due to my job, but I have never actually used them as phones, they sit on my desk due to their limited OS. Thinking about it, the thing that annoys me most when I use them is probably the lack of a "back" button that works outside just the App level. The fact that I can't connect mass storage devices to them, or at least connect them as a mass storage device is also a serious drawback considering what I usually want to do with a phone. I am not in love with Android. In fact, my first Android phone was the first phone I ever had that I considered a regression from my previous (an N9), mainly due to the OS having a much worse UI than the swipe UI of Maemo/Meego (and of course other drawbacks - I only switched because Meego was abandoned and it lacked some essential apps). So for me it does not seem hard to make something more usable than Android, others have already done it. But force touch is not what is missing.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Apple has become more about marketing than technology these days.
So, every time you do or have "clicked" your track pad, you have used the force touch feature.
Nope. My macbook pro trackpad definitely has a haptic click if I acutally push on it, and then a second click if i push harder.
I *never* touch it with enough force to engage either.
So, every time you do or have "clicked" your track pad, you have used the force touch feature.
The feature is there, and I might be technically using it in the sense that I can't use the trackpad without using it. But the fact that it is 'force touch' is irrelevant to me, I find it no different to the trackpad in my previous macbook pro which didn't have it.
Secondly, force touch on the Apple Watch works beautifully
Meh, a gimmick on a product that is itself a gimmick?
and will be useful on the iPhone too. Contextual menus in iOS apps will be a great addition.
Yeah, maybe. Then again, a phone with more buttons kind of solves most of those issues too; and is more intuitive to use. Just saying.
I'm not anti-apple; I'm using an mbp to write this... but I have no interest in their walled garden; or their watch. The force touch tech... is an evolutionary step with some uses and I do expect to see it become ubuiqitous, but its hardly anything to get excited about.
As far as "Force Touch" goes, remember: No means No.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I thought Force Touch was when you were made to close ads before using the app.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
I use press-and-hold in my own apps and UIKit even includes UILongPressGestureRecognizer as a pre-configured subclass to use for detecting such events. This has been available since whichever iOS introduces gesture recognizers (5 or 6, I think).
ronf... ronf... zzzzz... zzzzzzz
You have finally realized that your touchscreen controller actually provides a pressure strength and are able to hype it up like it's revolutionary.
Not even if we realize the limitations of pressure sensing of a standard capacitive controller and add additional sensors to make the detection less granular is this something new. I don't know how long Synaptics (touchpad manufacturer) have had their capacitive+force sensor combination available but it is at least two years, but even ignoring that the idea and implementation isn't anything new.
Bah.
>Which have also been available for iOS for years.
Ummm... what? I haven't seen any iOS devices with WACOM or N-Trig... everything available for iOS devices has been the high-tech equivalent of fingerpainting.
Great - no need to worry, any more, about butt-dialing your phone. Now, with butt-apping (TM-pending), who knows what we'll be able to achieve, or order!
How is this about Android. The OS doesn't add the hardware feature, it will only support it. They are a lot of New Android phones that don't have that feature as well.
Now I don't expect Apples goal is to switch over Android users but to keep their devises up to date with other winning technology trends and with their vision of future tech as to keep the existing user base and try to get new to the phone users.
For the most part if you are an Android user or an iOS user you will not switch unless their is some killer feature, or some major ball that was dropped. Otherwise there is too much investment in your device with apps and learning how to use it to switch.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I can install at the humble bundle apks I bought.
No, it really doesn't.
Look at the teardown of the MBPr's trackpad - it doesn't physically have a clickable button any more. It is 100% exclusively totally (just for redundancy) controlled via haptic feedback.
It does not physically click. Not even a little bit.
It is a flat plate with no moving parts that has a haptic feedback device fixed to it.
Why would it make you want to switch? Android apps have been doing it since at least 2011. Android's touch API communicates sufficient information to implement this if you wish.
But this being Apple, they will give it a fancy name, everyone will think they invented it, and they will pretend like they invented it. Just like Siri, which came out after I'd been doing searches, sending texts, and starting apps by voice on Android for at least a year.
WACOM you say? Yes they do them for iOS.
http://uk.pcmag.com/tablets/13...
And there are several other companies that also do pressure sensitive styluses for iOS.
Apple should have higher priorities than force touch.
For instance, make a power-on button that works for more than a couple years.
Last three iPhones my wife and I bought had the power switch become less responsive (requiring heavy pressure to register) after about three years.
Or, of course, just expect everyone to throw away their phones in 2 years. That seems to be what everyone does, anyway.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
If Force Touch was useful, we'd have it for mouse clicks. We don't.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
That's an edge case - a special product that doesn't work system-wide - and not a traditional WACOM stylus - the latter requires an active digitizer panel integrated in the screen, which iOS devices simply do not have. There's an entirely different level of accuracy involved, and the iOS version of the product only works with certain apps.
Traditional "real" WACOM styli work system-wide... everywhere you can use a pointing device. And they have absolute positioning on screen.
I am intrigued though - I wonder how the iOS version of the product works, since they're missing an elementary part of the system they usually use (the digitizer in the screen).
To be fair, they add in technology to marketing, with the end result being marketing gimmicks.
A whole new level and dimension of Fart Apps, of course!
They still haven't made a fart app for the iWatch though. I guess 10,000 of them for the iPhone was more of a trend in the early App Store. But this new gimmick opens up new possibilities! (wet farts if you press hard, gurgled farts if you have liver cancer, etc.)
Steve Jobs named a whole computer system (Lisa) after a child he refused to publicly acknowledge and you're claiming there is no rape culture at Apple? There is a culture of forced expropriation at the core of Apple going way back in time.
"Too much ivestment in your device with apps" is less and less of an issue all the time.
The Android and iOS app marketplaces are almost identical feature-wise and most of the big flagship apps are published and available for both types of cell phone.
Plus, it's fairly hard to spend more than $50 on apps for either product without going nuts on junk games you'll probably only play an hour or two.
The 'investment' in the app store is a throwaway consideration. Nobody is really 'trapped' on either platform.
That was the most irrational message I've read in a while.
A new hardware feature leaves users of older devices "out in the cold"? How is that different for iPhones than any other smartphone?
And "after a few months"? Android manufacturers release new phones every month. iPhone has a new model once a year. How can you possibly have not worked out that your stupid criticism applies to Android not iPhone?
And windowing? iOS has windowing on the iPad, where it makes sense. Windowing on a phone makes no sense whatsoever. It's too small.
Are you talking about graphics tablets - separate from the screen? Can you point to an actual product you are referring to? I already came back with an affirmative on your WACOM query, if you're being more selective even than that, then be explicit and actually state what you're talking about.
It's pretty obvious how the iOS stylus works, but if you point to what it is you are thinking of it'll be easier to explain by comparison.
OK, from the top then :D
Traditional tablet PCs with WACOM styluses have existed for ages - over 10 years. They use an active digitizer (built into the screen) combined with an inductive stylus, which has a pressure-sensitive tip and does not require a battery. It's the same technology WACOM uses for its separate graphics tablets, which is why the pens are, in many cases, interchangeable - I can use the pen from my graphics tablet for my tablet PC (in this case, a Samsung ATIV Smart PC tablet), for instance. This technology is highly accurate, works across the entire system (due to presenting as a [PS2 or similar] pointing device) and is highly compatible with all existing software. Many Windows and Android devices come with this hardware built in... others (such as Microsoft for their Surface line) have switched to WACOM's main competitor for these products, N-Trig - even more accurate, but require batteries in the pens AFAIK.
iOS devices such as iPads have no such hardware built in - they have a "fat finger" capacitive touch display and no native palm rejection due to the fact that if you turn off the capacitive touchscreen, well, you lose all input - WACOM systems automatically turn off the capacitive touch when the stylus comes within a few centimeters of the digitizer screen, which incidentally also allows hovering over the screen with the stylus as a pointing device. The workaround palm rejection algorithms in these "let's use capacitive touch as a crutch for a stylus" devices and apps are almost always universally horrible. I'm hoping WACOM figured out something better for the product you mentioned, but I kinda doubt it.
The accuracy is also quite horrendous - with most iPad styluses, you wouldn't be much worse off using a hot-dog instead.
Hence the complicated workaround for iOS with Bluetooth (for the pressure sensitivity) and the very slow performance - take a look here for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I dunno about you, but while the reviewer keeps talking about fast performance, I'd pretty much be pulling my hair out. That might be because of that Bamboo drawing app on the iPad though, and not because the Bluetooth connection is lagging (although that's a possibility too!).
Is this just an upgrade on the standard Breaking Force feature that comes with all current iphone screens. If you are using Android then you may not know about this novel iphone feature. To enable Breaking Force on your iphone you simply touch / drop the device onto a surface. The screen then displays a spider web pattern. You then pay £100 to have it pattern removed and start again.
...I'm not a Jedi.
If you take that comment and swap 'iOS' and 'Android', you go from a -1 to +5.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Will it suck like force touch on the Apple Watch, and the stupid microswitch on the Apple Magic Trackpads?
I have both. The problem with the watch is that it makes both force touch and normal touch suck. You have to be dainty with a normal touch or it is not recognized. And force touch seems to require the some gorilla approach as the trackpad. Ow! It hurts my thumb!
Fortunately, Apple long ago realized how awful that switch on the trackpads is (this started with the notebooks, and then they decided this dysfunctional design was so good that they spun it off as a separate piece for desktops...) that they fiddled the software to let you configure it to just ignore any errant click and just let you tap without activating the switch. Which is the way I use it. You know, except when you tap too hard, and then the switch does activate and you hurt your thumb.
I want unforce touch. That is, distinguish between hovering over the surface and finger actually on the surface. It might make browser "hover" not suck again. On the other hand, naw. It will bring back those awful Microsoft-y cascading menus that are designed as a test of your skill in precision mouse pathing...
No, it really doesn't.
It really doesn't MATTER.
There are two thresholds where it clicks - the fact that its haptic vs mechanical is irreelevent. I never ever touch it with enough force to engage either click threshold.
So any additional functionality mapped to touching with greater force; I'm not ever using. So it may as well not be there.
No, it really doesn't.
It really doesn't MATTER.
There are two thresholds where it clicks - the fact that its haptic vs mechanical is irreelevent. I never ever touch it with enough force to engage either click threshold.
So any additional functionality mapped to touching with greater force; I'm not ever using. So it may as well not be there.
Ah, so you're changing your argument. Fair enough.
I was just pointing out that you were factually incorrect and based an argument on it. Next time you say that you don't use any part of a technology that you literally have to (because that's how the trackpad works in its entirety) you'll know a little more about it.
You don't get it.
What vux984 is saying is that he set up the magic trackpad so that he only has to touch the trackpad to click, and he does not have to exert a force on it.
I personally got rid of everything that requires to exert an additional vertical force on the trackpad the day I tried to use it on my laps. I'm talking about a wireless magic trackpad of course. I replaced everything with two and three fingers gestures, and it feels so confortable that I setup my laptop the same way, and never looked back. So force touch for me doesn't make sense, but I have to admit that I have not tried a force touch enabled magic trackpad.
I do get it. He is saying that he has never used the force touch feature when that's literally impossible, even if he taps it lightly enough to just register his finger - the cap sensor and the strain gauges work together on the new trackpad. Je just didn't understand that.
It was pretty clear what he meant, you were just being a dick.
If you're following the comments, why didn't you log in?
It was clear that the original poster didn't understand how the technology worked.
Also, if my comment to him is considered "being a dick" then my goodness he must have a thin skin. He'd better be careful on the internet. What specifically about it is me "being a dick"?
Ah, so you're changing your argument. Fair enough.
I'm not changing the argument. My position was and remains that I don't use the force touch feature.
Next time you say that you don't use any part of a technology that you literally have to [...]
If I have a variable speed blender, and I only ever use one speed, then I am not using the variable speed feature.
The variable speed FEATURE is the ability to vary the speed. The fact that I always use one speed means I'm not using variable speed feature.
Then someone comes along arguing that the fact that the one speed I always use is technically a selection of one of the variable speed settings... who gives a shit? I'm still not varying the speed, so the variable speed feature is irrelevant.
Force touch is the same thing. I know damned well I'm technically using the force touch trackpad when I tap on it. I'm not using the force touch feature though, because I never vary the force; nor use variable force to access additional functionality.
You are just being a pedantic twit.
Don't you use it every time you click on the trackpad?
I don't even click the touchpad
Perhaps if you log in we can discuss it. It's pretty obvious.
Do you touch the trackpad to make it work?
Then you're using the force touch feature, even if you don't click.
There is a reason Sony dropped pressure sensitive buttons on the DualShock 4, no one used it.
Good-bye
Then you're using the force touch feature, even if you don't click.
Given that use case, would it be any different to doing that on a trackpad that doesn't have Force Touch?
Exactly how many schoolgirls have you raped to make this determination?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
We already have enough technologies to make user input ambiguous: (1) My Synaptics touchpad thinks my index finger is a two finger gesture about half the time. There doesn't seem to be an adjustment to reduce sensitivity for this. (A middle finger gesture doesn't work any better, tempting as it is.) (2) Kindle Fire sometimes thinks that holding it by the black border, well outside the screen area, is a tap on whatever is the nearest screen-edge icon. (3) Disuse of the Accelerator Key input method, making me aim my carpal tunnel at everything (including targets obviously sized in the days of 14" 800x600 pixel displays).
There are many ways Force Touch might miss: An arm-length reach for a phone on the table will not have accurate force input. Perhaps potholes, too much coffee, or Parkinson's or other tremor disease. ([sarcasm]Assuming smartphones are otherwise disability-friendly.[/sarcasm])
My best friend has been gang-raped (by adults) when she was in middle school. It lasted for 6 hours, and she required extensive medical care after that event, including reconstructive surgery in multiple areas (genitals, colon, dental and facial). For the parts that she recalls, she did not "squeal".
As it happens, one of our common friends is a porn producer that specializes in hardcore stuff. So we have discussed the whole rape fantasy thing extensively over the years.
None of this makes me an expert, but I don't think anyone in this thread has better information on this subject than me.
lucm, indeed.
I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are correct. I dare say that it is not a subject I am an expert in. At first blush this may sound bad but I have had sex with a school aged girl. Of course she was older than I and I was young but this did happen more than once. Also college chicks but they do not count. I have never raped anyone of any age so I am really going to defer to your expertise as I have just shared the entirety of my knowledge on the subject or, rather, my lack of it.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I dunno about you, but while the reviewer keeps talking about fast performance, I'd pretty much be pulling my hair out. That might be because of that Bamboo drawing app on the iPad though, and not because the Bluetooth connection is lagging (although that's a possibility too!).
That's definitely a big part of it, I've reviewed a few different stylus/tablet solutions (except for some of nicer Android solutions I couldn't easily get my hands on like the note) and part of the problem is the smoothness of the ipad screen and the stylus nib; because it's so very smooth many apps do a lot of interpolation of the data to create more natural lines introducing a noticeable lag. This can be adjusted in some, with the tradeoff of an unnatural writing experience. Some (like the bamboo paper app) can be set to use the bluetooth/stylus exclusively for effective palm rejection which is pretty much a must. Sadly, many ipad applications also don't make much use of the pressure levels provided, perhaps the despite the 1024 levels of the bamboo fineline I have it's too noisy to make good use out of.
Another big issue I've found with the ipad stylus solutions is the accuracy simply because of the parallax due to the thickness of the display stack; where the "ink" appears is too far below the surface. At the surface of the glass the accuracy is pretty solid (imo). I did borrow a surface pro 3 during some of my tests, which gets a lot of things right: very little parallax, a resistance-inducing nib for natural writing and low latency.
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
What you don't appreciate is that there is always a cost to adding UI. If the phone has windowing then there has to be some means of activating it. And that's extra UI. And if that extra UI has to work with the iPhone, then that has implications for how it's implemented on the iPad.
The windowing system on the iPad is really sweet. It uses the dimensions of the screen really well. Why potentially fuck it up for no gain by implementing windowing on iPhone?
What people miss about the essence of good design is it's as much about what you leave out as what you add.
You are missing something very important. For a large number of users of apple products the product does define who they are.