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There used to be iPhone apps that did something similar - https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/28/9625340/iphone-6s-gravity-app-digital-scales https://www.theverge

by benoau 1y ago

There used to be iPhone apps that did something similar - https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/28/9625340/iphone-6s-gravity-app-digital-scales https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/28/9625340/iphone-6s-gravit...

Dban1 1y ago
3D touch was god tier for FPS games on iOS
ashertrockman 1y ago
If anyone happens to be using an iPhone 6S... http://touchscale.co/ http://touchscale.co/
- hackmiester 1y ago
  This worked all the way up through the iPhone Xs.
  - fouc 1y ago
    iPhone 6s and 6s Plus (2015) - First to introduce 3D Touch iPhone 7 and 7 Plus (2016) iPhone 8 and 8 Plus (2017) iPhone X (2017) iPhone XS and XS Max (2018) - Last models with 3D Interesting that the iPhone SE 2nd/3rd generation with iPhone 8 form factor do not have 3D touch but "Haptic touch" instead.
  - jmb99 1y ago
    The single most irritating killed feature from Apple. Redesign half of their UI to rely on 3D Touch to make sense, then get rid of 3D Touch without redesigning the UI. Previewing links, moving the cursor, interacting with items, they’re all “press and hold until haptic feedback” instead of “quickly press hard and get immediate feedback.” Easier to accidentally trigger, slower to trigger on purpose.
    - bagels 1y ago
      I hated when my mother in law came to me for help using her iPhone. She had a hard time controlling and understanding 3d touch.
      - behnamoh 1y ago
        I don't like it when old people are the reason the rest of us can't have nice things. Some grandma in Nebraska can't use 3D touch and now the rest of the demographic of Apple's customers are deprived of it.
        wat10000 1y ago
        There was a principle of UI design that all UI actions should be discoverable, either with a visible button or a menu item in the menus at the top of the screen (or window on Windows). This is annoying for power users and frequently used actions, so those can also be made available with keyboard shortcuts or right-click actions or what have you, but they must always be optional. This allows power users to be power users without impacting usability for novices. We've been losing this idea recently, especially in mobile UIs where there's a lot of functionality, not much space to put it in, and no equivalent of the menu bar.
        nottorp 1y ago
        When I had an iPhone XS i could never understand how to predictably do a normal touch or a 3d touch, or where exactly the OS has different actions for one vs the other. And I play games [1] using just my macbook pro's trackpad... [1] For example, Minecraft works perfectly without a mouse. So does Path of Exile. First person shooters ofc don't.
        allending 1y ago
        For many, old people are the reason the rest of us have nice things.
    - ahoka 1y ago
      Apple UX is generally very bad, especially around discoveribility.
notpushkin 1y ago
https://archive.li/KtfxO https://archive.li/KtfxO
wanderingstan 1y ago
My memory was that the weight API was made private because they didn’t want people using iPhones for drug deals.
- Wingman4l7 1y ago
  Apple, policing use of an API on a privately-owned device for purposes of a consensual, non-violent activity that is only technically a crime in some legal jurisdictions? Sounds about right.
cryptoz 1y ago
You can use any phone with a barometer to make a scale. All iPhones since the 6, and all the Pixels, and Samsung flagships have one. You get a zip loc bag, blow some air into it, put your phone in running an app that shows the pressure in a big font (so you can see it through the ziploc). Then you put an object of known weight on it like a quarter (balanced carefully on top of the air-filled ziploc) and note the pressure change on the display. With that, I think the weight / pressure change scales linearly, so you can now weigh anything small that you can balance on the ziploc.
- jbverschoor 1y ago
  Dropbox shouldn’t exist either bc we have rsync ;)
  - Nathan2055 1y ago
    The infamous Dropbox comment[0] actually didn't even cite rsync; it recommended getting a remote FTP account, using curlftpfs to mount it locally, and then using SVN or CVS to get versioning support. The double irony of that comment is that pretty much all of those technologies listed are obsolete now while Dropbox is still going strong: FTP has been mostly replaced with SFTP and rsync due to its lack of encryption and difficult to manage network architecture, direct mounting of remote hosts still happens but it's more typical in my experience to have local copies of everything that are then synced up with the remote host to provide redundancy, and CVS and SVN have been pretty much completely replaced with Git outside of some specialist and legacy use cases. The "evaluating new products" xkcd[1] is extremely relevant, as is the continued ultra-success of Apple: developing new technologies, and then turning around and marketing those technologies to people who aren't already in this field working on them are effectively two completely different business models. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 [1]: https://xkcd.com/1497/ https://xkcd.com/1497/
    - OskarS 1y ago
      It's also not the same thing as Dropbox was offering: that's a description of a network drive, but the key thing about Dropbox is that it's a syncing engine. It's a much harder thing to do, but with very big benefits: much faster (since it's just reading off disk) and offline access.

by benoau 1y ago

Dban1 1y ago

3D touch was god tier for FPS games on iOS

ashertrockman 1y ago

If anyone happens to be using an iPhone 6S... http://touchscale.co/ http://touchscale.co/

hackmiester 1y ago
This worked all the way up through the iPhone Xs.
- fouc 1y ago
  iPhone 6s and 6s Plus (2015) - First to introduce 3D Touch iPhone 7 and 7 Plus (2016) iPhone 8 and 8 Plus (2017) iPhone X (2017) iPhone XS and XS Max (2018) - Last models with 3D Interesting that the iPhone SE 2nd/3rd generation with iPhone 8 form factor do not have 3D touch but "Haptic touch" instead.
- jmb99 1y ago
  The single most irritating killed feature from Apple. Redesign half of their UI to rely on 3D Touch to make sense, then get rid of 3D Touch without redesigning the UI. Previewing links, moving the cursor, interacting with items, they’re all “press and hold until haptic feedback” instead of “quickly press hard and get immediate feedback.” Easier to accidentally trigger, slower to trigger on purpose.
  - bagels 1y ago
    I hated when my mother in law came to me for help using her iPhone. She had a hard time controlling and understanding 3d touch.
    - behnamoh 1y ago
      I don't like it when old people are the reason the rest of us can't have nice things. Some grandma in Nebraska can't use 3D touch and now the rest of the demographic of Apple's customers are deprived of it.
      - wat10000 1y ago
        There was a principle of UI design that all UI actions should be discoverable, either with a visible button or a menu item in the menus at the top of the screen (or window on Windows). This is annoying for power users and frequently used actions, so those can also be made available with keyboard shortcuts or right-click actions or what have you, but they must always be optional. This allows power users to be power users without impacting usability for novices. We've been losing this idea recently, especially in mobile UIs where there's a lot of functionality, not much space to put it in, and no equivalent of the menu bar.
      - nottorp 1y ago
        When I had an iPhone XS i could never understand how to predictably do a normal touch or a 3d touch, or where exactly the OS has different actions for one vs the other. And I play games [1] using just my macbook pro's trackpad... [1] For example, Minecraft works perfectly without a mouse. So does Path of Exile. First person shooters ofc don't.
      - allending 1y ago
        For many, old people are the reason the rest of us have nice things.
  - ahoka 1y ago
    Apple UX is generally very bad, especially around discoveribility.

notpushkin 1y ago

https://archive.li/KtfxO https://archive.li/KtfxO

wanderingstan 1y ago

My memory was that the weight API was made private because they didn’t want people using iPhones for drug deals.

Wingman4l7 1y ago
Apple, policing use of an API on a privately-owned device for purposes of a consensual, non-violent activity that is only technically a crime in some legal jurisdictions? Sounds about right.

cryptoz 1y ago

You can use any phone with a barometer to make a scale. All iPhones since the 6, and all the Pixels, and Samsung flagships have one. You get a zip loc bag, blow some air into it, put your phone in running an app that shows the pressure in a big font (so you can see it through the ziploc). Then you put an object of known weight on it like a quarter (balanced carefully on top of the air-filled ziploc) and note the pressure change on the display. With that, I think the weight / pressure change scales linearly, so you can now weigh anything small that you can balance on the ziploc.

jbverschoor 1y ago
Dropbox shouldn’t exist either bc we have rsync ;)
- Nathan2055 1y ago
  The infamous Dropbox comment[0] actually didn't even cite rsync; it recommended getting a remote FTP account, using curlftpfs to mount it locally, and then using SVN or CVS to get versioning support. The double irony of that comment is that pretty much all of those technologies listed are obsolete now while Dropbox is still going strong: FTP has been mostly replaced with SFTP and rsync due to its lack of encryption and difficult to manage network architecture, direct mounting of remote hosts still happens but it's more typical in my experience to have local copies of everything that are then synced up with the remote host to provide redundancy, and CVS and SVN have been pretty much completely replaced with Git outside of some specialist and legacy use cases. The "evaluating new products" xkcd[1] is extremely relevant, as is the continued ultra-success of Apple: developing new technologies, and then turning around and marketing those technologies to people who aren't already in this field working on them are effectively two completely different business models. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 [1]: https://xkcd.com/1497/ https://xkcd.com/1497/
  - OskarS 1y ago
    It's also not the same thing as Dropbox was offering: that's a description of a network drive, but the key thing about Dropbox is that it's a syncing engine. It's a much harder thing to do, but with very big benefits: much faster (since it's just reading off disk) and offline access.