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I don't understand the fuzz about 3d touch. I haven't seen the new phone in real life but as far as I can see from the press IOS9 has introduced a context menu

by chvid 11y ago

I don't understand the fuzz about 3d touch. I haven't seen the new phone in real life but as far as I can see from the press IOS9 has introduced a context menu exclusively for 6S - but could that now have been done using the existing hardware and thus for all models? Ie. by triggering the context menu with double tap, long tap, tap and slide up or something?

steve-benjamins 11y ago
As soon as I tried "peeks" I understood 3d touch. It felt like a pretty dramatic UI improvement.
ctdonath 11y ago
Long taps are annoying. You want to do something NOW, but have to waaaaiiiittt for it. Much more satisfying to press hard and get the same response.
mikeash 11y ago
Regular touch gestures are like a one-button mouse. You can do everything with it, but it's nice to have some extra buttons.
- chvid 11y ago
  Why the down votes? This is an honest question. It is a classical critism of context menus that they are hidden and their presence needs to be learned. This problem obviously gets worse here as the context menu is only present in the latest hardware. From a business perspective it makes sense: You are selling a package and the extra software feature is given to those pay for the update. But whether it is good design - that is another question. And as a curiosity: Context menus are used much less in Mac OS than Windows. There is only a single button on an Apple laptop and Apple went on for decades with the one-button mouse for their desktop computers, only to introduce a multi-button mouse very late.
  - muddi900 11y ago
    Apple did advertise universal apps AND games, but all the devices have different control interfaces.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Apple laptops technically have one button, but effectively have two (or more) because clicking with two fingers performs a right click. You can't really tap with two fingers on a touchscreen so that wouldn't translate to iOS well.
plorkyeran 11y ago
Pressing a bit harder is a very natural gesture, while long-touch and double-tap are annoying. As with pretty much everything they oversold it in the announcement, but nonetheless it is a nice improvement that makes the phone incrementally more pleasant to use.
digi_owl 11y ago
I don't think the current use of it is much interesting. But bringing pressure sensitivity back to touch screens could allow things like on-screen keyboards on tablets that allow fingers to rest on the screen without constantly registering input. Meaning that a OSK moves one step closer to a physical keyboard. Edit: And i just reminded myself that supposedly there is a company working on how to use static electricity to give variable surface texture. So you could perhaps recognize the location of keys by your fingers brushing over rough patches.
- fit2rule 11y ago
  One area where it will be interesting is with music-making apps - still a market where iOS rules supreme; iOS is the dominant leader in the synthesizer/music-tool application market. Features like this make a lot of sense for music performance.

by chvid 11y ago

steve-benjamins 11y ago

As soon as I tried "peeks" I understood 3d touch. It felt like a pretty dramatic UI improvement.

ctdonath 11y ago

Long taps are annoying. You want to do something NOW, but have to waaaaiiiittt for it. Much more satisfying to press hard and get the same response.

mikeash 11y ago

Regular touch gestures are like a one-button mouse. You can do everything with it, but it's nice to have some extra buttons.

chvid 11y ago
Why the down votes? This is an honest question. It is a classical critism of context menus that they are hidden and their presence needs to be learned. This problem obviously gets worse here as the context menu is only present in the latest hardware. From a business perspective it makes sense: You are selling a package and the extra software feature is given to those pay for the update. But whether it is good design - that is another question. And as a curiosity: Context menus are used much less in Mac OS than Windows. There is only a single button on an Apple laptop and Apple went on for decades with the one-button mouse for their desktop computers, only to introduce a multi-button mouse very late.
- muddi900 11y ago
  Apple did advertise universal apps AND games, but all the devices have different control interfaces.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Apple laptops technically have one button, but effectively have two (or more) because clicking with two fingers performs a right click. You can't really tap with two fingers on a touchscreen so that wouldn't translate to iOS well.

plorkyeran 11y ago

Pressing a bit harder is a very natural gesture, while long-touch and double-tap are annoying. As with pretty much everything they oversold it in the announcement, but nonetheless it is a nice improvement that makes the phone incrementally more pleasant to use.

digi_owl 11y ago

I don't think the current use of it is much interesting. But bringing pressure sensitivity back to touch screens could allow things like on-screen keyboards on tablets that allow fingers to rest on the screen without constantly registering input. Meaning that a OSK moves one step closer to a physical keyboard. Edit: And i just reminded myself that supposedly there is a company working on how to use static electricity to give variable surface texture. So you could perhaps recognize the location of keys by your fingers brushing over rough patches.

fit2rule 11y ago
One area where it will be interesting is with music-making apps - still a market where iOS rules supreme; iOS is the dominant leader in the synthesizer/music-tool application market. Features like this make a lot of sense for music performance.