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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.
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.
I'm waiting for the Force Choke feature. I hear Lord Vader has been working to make that happen.
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.
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.
... Is your app Jedi compatible?!?
This is the best restaurant I ever eat in
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.
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
>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.
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.
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.
Err, no.
Apple's implementation of force touch on the Macbook Pro trackpad (where it is current used, not counting this rumour that it will be on the iPhone) uses a set of strain gauges to measure the applied pressure. It doesn't use the touchscreen controller.
You might want to actually look up how it works before trying to score a "sick burn" (is that what the kids call it these days?) from your armchair quarterback position.
I also don't see where Apple are hyping it up to make it seem like a revolution. They are advertising that the MBPr and MB have it, but I fail to see how their advertising materials claim it's revolutionary. Unless you think the term "whole new way to experience a trackpad" means that, and not "this trackpad works differently than the old ones due to the numerous new ways you can use it due to the force sensors"
Apple is frequently guilty of hyperbole when it comes to advertising, but on the force touch it's pretty understated. Did you just assume they would claim it was a revolution that had never been seen before? Given that you don't understand how Apple's implementation works I have to assume you've done zero research on it. Google (a popular search engine) can tell you quite a lot about it if you're interested.
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.
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).
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!).
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.