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Is Apple's 3D Touch a 'Huge Waste' of Engineering Talent?
Three years ago, Apple introduced 3D Touch for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, a pressure-sensitive feature that uses capacitive sensors integrated into the smartphone's display to sense three degrees of pressure in a user's touch and respond differently based on the amount of pressure exerted. It's a neat idea as it has allowed users to interact with the user interface in a completely new way. Now, with the release of the new iPhone XR, Apple seems to be on the way to phasing it out. The Verge reports: While both the new iPhone XS and XS Max include 3D Touch, Apple has chosen not to include the feature on the iPhone XR. Yes, that phone is cheaper, and Apple had to strip out some features, but 3D Touch has been included on iPhones in that price range since it was introduced not too long ago, so this feels less like necessary cost savings and more like planned omission. There have always been a few core problems with 3D Touch. For one, its use often amounted to the right click of a mouse, which is funny coming from the company that famously refused to put a dedicated right button on its mice or trackpads. And selecting from those right click options was rarely faster or a substantially more useful way of getting something done than just tapping the button and manually navigating to where you needed to go. People also didn't know the feature was there. The iPhone did little to train users on 3D Touch. And even the people who knew it was there had no way to tell which icons supported it without just 3D pressing everything to see what happened.
Apple isn't entirely removing the concept of 3D Touch from the iPhone XR. Instead, the phone will include something Apple is calling Haptic Touch, which will make a click when you activate a button's secondary feature by pressing and holding it. But that replacement underscores just how useless 3D Touch has really become: it's not more than a very, very fancy long press. That's something phones have always been capable of. And despite the name, I've found long press features to be faster and easier to use than their 3D Touch equivalent. Instagram, for instance, lets you preview photos with a 3D Touch on the iPhone or a long press on Android. I find the Android version to be simpler and quicker. Here's what Apple's marketing leader, Phil Schiller, had to say about the feature back in 2015 when it was first introduced: "'Engineering-wise, the hardware to build a display that does what [3D Touch] does is unbelievably hard,' says Schiller. 'And we're going to waste a whole year of engineering -- really, two -- at a tremendous amount of cost and investment in manufacturing if it doesn't do something that [people] are going to use. If it's just a demo feature and a month later nobody is really using it, this is a huge waste of engineering talent.'"
Apple isn't entirely removing the concept of 3D Touch from the iPhone XR. Instead, the phone will include something Apple is calling Haptic Touch, which will make a click when you activate a button's secondary feature by pressing and holding it. But that replacement underscores just how useless 3D Touch has really become: it's not more than a very, very fancy long press. That's something phones have always been capable of. And despite the name, I've found long press features to be faster and easier to use than their 3D Touch equivalent. Instagram, for instance, lets you preview photos with a 3D Touch on the iPhone or a long press on Android. I find the Android version to be simpler and quicker. Here's what Apple's marketing leader, Phil Schiller, had to say about the feature back in 2015 when it was first introduced: "'Engineering-wise, the hardware to build a display that does what [3D Touch] does is unbelievably hard,' says Schiller. 'And we're going to waste a whole year of engineering -- really, two -- at a tremendous amount of cost and investment in manufacturing if it doesn't do something that [people] are going to use. If it's just a demo feature and a month later nobody is really using it, this is a huge waste of engineering talent.'"
Sometimes you just have to try an idea to see if it's practical, and see what software developers do it with. Being on the cutting edge means the idea may just flub out.
Table-ized A.I.
There are a lot of good ideas that just don’t catch on at the time. 3D Touch May be one of them. But the engineering talent and lessons learned are extremely valuable. And the principals may be used in the future.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Weird, slashdot summary has no link to the actual Verge story....
https://www.theverge.com/circu...
Meanwhile every other touch vendor gets exactly the same functionality with a much easier to control, and far more intuitive method; long press.
That's a 'Huge Waste' of Ergonomics Talent.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I have to have a separate battery powered device because Apple can't be bothered to put a half cent jack on their phone? It's moronic.
No. I have used both. The “long press” version is touchy and requires that I wait with my finger in place. The 3D touch version registers immediately. That savings in time and precision makes the feature worth it to me.
Just because the iPhone XR doesn't have 3D Touch doesn't mean Apple's phasing it out. If they were, the iPhone XS and XS Max wouldn't have 3D Touch either. Leaving out a feature(s) is how Apple gets people to pay up for the iPhone XS.
OMG! The iPhone XR doesn't have an OLED display. Apple must be phasing OLED displays out.
OMG! The iPhone XR doesn't have a dual lens rear camera. Apple must be phasing out dual lens cameras.
OMG! The iPhone XR's camera doesn't have optical zoom. Apple must be phasing it out in favor of digital zoom.
No.
I find that interesting. I've owned an iPhone and an Android since the HTC G1 and the original iPhone. One for work, one for personal.
I've used a *lot* of long press implementations, and hated them all. 3D Touch was the first implementation of "the long touch" that actually felt... good to me. It innovated on a shitty ass interface and made it vastly more reliable, and less prone to you not holding your finger perfectly still. The argument that 3D touch is unintuitive because you don't know where to use it is ridiculous, as the same argument applies to *any* kind of long touch.
I look forward to my Android having 3D touch some day.
As someone who developed apps for fun and a little profit I say: exactly this. It's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem, but I always thought that eventually this feature would see much wider use once Apple incorporated it on all their phones. Now that they have decided to not include the feauture on their "low end" phones, it's effectively dead.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It's not really like pushing normally or pushing hard. What you do is "push through", you tap an app's icon normally then increase the pressure, and up pops the hidden menu or whatever. The phone gives you a little clicky feedback which makes it feel like you're pushing through a stiff mechanical resistance. It takes getting used to, but only a little.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I have used both. Situations where long press was unsuitable, so was 3D touch as there few practical differences between holding in place for a split second as there is about controlling how hard you tap something.
The long press however has an advantage. Visual feedback can instantly provide information about the long tap duration and even the presence of the option. You can't do that if you react instantly to an input. 3D Touch's application is straight from the Microsoft "we make things happen through gestures and screen edges but give you no indication that there's anything special about those gestures or edges" playbook.
I think I'd prefer the long touch after having and using 3D touch for 11 months.
The thing I like about 3D touch, tapping my phone when it is lying flat so I can see the time/or if I have a message.
The thing I HAAATTTEEE about 3D touch, is using safari, it is infinitely hard to open links in tabs. If you press ever so slightly too hard it registers as 3D touch and opens the link in a semi view or just totally opens the link. I live by opening links in tabs in any browser.