Is Apple's 3D Touch a 'Huge Waste' of Engineering Talent? 99
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.'"
"Waste" versus "experiment" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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T is one hell of an experiment
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There are some potentially interesting uses for it shown in this video. [youtube.com]
Apparently not enough people actually used 3DT, perhaps because as the video hints, it's not intuitive. You have to see videos pretty much to know when and where to use it.
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"Waste" versus "experiment" versus "desperately flailing around trying to find a way to differentiate the product".
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The problem with 3D Touch is there is no inherent feedback for which of the three degrees of force the user is applying. Most of the old people in my client base opt to have this feature turned off. Long press, on the other hand, is a lot easier for people to deal with.
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It was no experiment. It was a gimmick, and 100% achieved its purpose of being gimicky, which was all Apple ever wanted.
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Virtual painting apps benefit, too, for pretty much the same reason. But for general app purposes, it really is an almost useless feature, IMO.
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It really didn't. In order to be a gimmick worth talking about (which is the point of a gimmick), you have to know it exists.
I would bet that upwards of 70% of iPhone users don't even know it's there, or if they know it's there they don't know what it does in any application until they try it, because there is absolutely no hinting of functionality whatsoever.
That sounds a whole lot like a waste of engineering effort to me.
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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.
Yep, I agree. Coming from a guy who usually hates everything Apple (me), I think there's nothing to complain about when a company legitimately tries something innovative. Even if it doesn't work out. The constant passing off of software features as hardware features and other shenanigans I could do without.
Is any R&D a waste? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I used 2 iphones before giving up on the platform. I found 3d touch to be absolutely fantastic for text editing. I could edit long form documents quite nicely with it. Android's screen tapping or "swipe the spacebar" functions are an insult compared to 3d touch. It was also very handy for previewing things without leaving off what I was doing.
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The closest thing most android software keyboards have to fine cursor positioning involves swiping left and right on the spacebar. Course, half the time it just enters a space.
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Download a better keyboard. I know Swype has left right up and down keys- swipe from the swype symbol to the symbols key to open it, although you may need to find an apk as its been canceled. Several other keyboards have similar features. Some allow you to turn off swype functionality and move the cursor by sliding your finger over the keyboard.
The great thing about Android is if you don't like most of the built in apps, you can replace it.
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Nahh, straight up dead end. The real go is glasses, smart phone and rings on your fingers, probably, just index, pointer and thumb, both hands, above the knuckle and first joint or you could glue a disposable electronic reference device to your nails and replace when necessary or you could also use rechargeable thimbles on the end of those fingers for sensory feedback. So the glasses put up you view and locate the position and alignment of the rings to control the projected into 3 dimensions graphical user
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The SE didn't have 3D touch either. They don't put premium features in phones aimed at low rent boomer retirees.
The iPhone XR isn't an SE replacement nor is it "aimed at low rent boomer retirees" though.
The iPhone SE had a starting price of $399. The iPhone XR has a starting price of $749.
No headphone jack ? NO SALE !!! (Score:1)
Apple is becoming increasingly infamous for fucking around with weird stuff while removing basic functionality that lots of users wanted.
Two examples are the removal of the headphone jack and the deletion of the MagSafe connector.
Apple can brag all it wants about how awesome their design is, but the truth is their design sucks ASS.
I never thought I would say this, but I am looking forward to switching to Linux. And my next phone may well be a non-smartphone. I am done allowing companies to pull the rug out
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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.
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For me it's one less wire to have to untangle. Bravo for Bluetooth.
Re: No headphone jack ? NO SALE !!! (Score:1)
So it's down to "one less wire" vs "one less battery to charge".
Tough trade off to choose, but I guess less batteries to charge are more desirable.
Re:Brittle concept (Score:5, Informative)
Meanwhile every other touch vendor gets exactly the same functionality with a much easier to control, and far more intuitive method; long press.
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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
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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.
Link to actual Verge article (Score:3)
Weird, slashdot summary has no link to the actual Verge story....
https://www.theverge.com/circu... [theverge.com]
What about the jack connector? (Score:5, Insightful)
YMMV. (Score:2)
I use 3D touch multiple times every day when editing sentences in Messages and Mail. Pressing down on the keyboard and then moving the cursor within the text like the display is a giant mousing surface is way, way easier than trying to poke the cursor into the text by tapping it directly. I'm happy to see the feature stick around just for that use case.
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That's a standard feature within Android that you can optionally enable. No 3D touch required.
Re:YMMV. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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 ges
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I'm not a fanboy of either platform and have owned one of each since literally the first Android phone and the first iPhone.
3D touch is one of the iPhone features I wish android would hurry up and copy.
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...and I always disabled 3D Touch to avoid the annoyance until Apple introduced features that could only be accessed using it. 3D Touch is a feature I wish Apple would hurry up and delete.
Re: YMMV. (Score:2)
I had my phone for well over a year before I even bothered to look up what 3D Touch was, and how to use it.
Never once activated it on accident.
Still possible (Score:2)
I use that too but like the other responder, I think what is happening there is doable just with gesture recognizers that detect a long press and then start tracking movement. In fact I'm pretty sure when it's actually tracking where to move the cursor at that point it's just tracking motion, not pressure - so 3D Touch is only used to activate the feature.
A long press activation could be worse in that it may take more time to activate the keyboard cursor though.
I've been looking but I have not seen word on
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OMG, how did I not know about this feature. One of my complaints has been how impossible it is to get the cursor on the word I want. It seems like trying to tap into the right spot is like a dog next to a door, always on the wrong side. You, sir, our a hero.
3D touch seems like a feature that could be cool if app developers got behind it more and made some innovative features with it. ... Okay, just tested a bunch of apps on my home screen, its adoption seems to be coming along, quite a few have a quick acce
Apple chose not to go all in (Score:2)
Re:Apple chose not to go all in (Score:4, Insightful)
You probably do (Score:2)
Hold down when the keyboard is up, and you can move the text cursor - really useful.
Also try a hard press on notifications, they also generally have very useful options (I use that every day along with the keyboard).
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The issue isn't whether useful features can be mapped to hard-press, it's whether hard-press itself is a useful gesture. It is not because it works terribly.
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It works greta, not terribly, for the cases I mentioned.
The part where I feel it does not work great is the springboard, where you have to press harder for options than for making the icons wiggle so you can move items. That I feel is a bad UI. But the cases I mentioned have zero issues with things like that - hard pressing on notifications or a keyboard works perfectly. So it is a useful gesture at least sometimes, I just don't think it can be overloaded with long-press to do other things.
Is a waste of eng. talent? (Score:2)
Is the dual camera a huge waste of engineering talent?
Is the OLED display a huge waste of engineering talent?
Is super-retina resolution a huge waste of engineering talent?
Is a 120Hz refresh rate a huge waste of engineering talent?
Is IP68 certification a huge waste of engineering talent?
Is "the most durable glass ever in a smartphone" a huge waste of engineering talent?
All of these are omitted from the iPhone XR, a premium, but cost-reduced model.
Why, SURELY Apple must be planning on dropping all of these fe
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Is the dual camera a huge waste of engineering talent?
Yes.
Is the OLED display a huge waste of engineering talent?
No.
Is super-retina resolution a huge waste of engineering talent?
Kind of.
Is a 120Hz refresh rate a huge waste of engineering talent?
Yes.
Is IP68 certification a huge waste of engineering talent?
No.
Is "the most durable glass ever in a smartphone" a huge waste of engineering talent?
If it still breaks, yes.
Real World Usage? Plus Sony already... (Score:2)
Who actually pushes on the screen gently, normal, and hard? Probably statistically insignificant. Tap screen, expect response.
Remember who else "solved" this problem? Sony, with the PS2 controller. The face buttons were analog, so you could go easy on the gas and brake in Ridge Racer & GT. Turns out, the L2/R2 triggers were much more effective for analog control. Gamers (like me) just mash the face buttons. Usi
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My ps3 has variable touch (Score:2)
My phone's touchscreen is a lot less discerning that my PS3 controller. And I still have a bitch of a time with games that provide, I dunno, a slider. I want 50%, I settle for 45%, but when my finger leaves the screen I'm at 60%. I can't imagine 3D will make this situation any better.
No, no, no. It has legitimate artistic use. (Score:1)
3D Touch has completely changed the iPhone's utility in music production and creation of visual arts.
I'm sorry that it doesn't help you use Waze or Mail any faster. It's not all about that.
If 3D Touch is on its way out, then the iPhone Xs may be in my pocket until it dies and parts are no longer available. I use it every day and it would be a sorely missed piece of my creative suite should it die.
Not phasing out 3D Touch (Score:3)
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.
It depends (Score:2)
However, on the Apple Watch, with its limited input possibilities, 3D touch is great. I use it every day, for instance to clear all notifications.
An old story (Score:2)
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A slightly less old variant of that story: If you ask a customer what they want, you'll get the same answers as every other company out there, and you'll be selling the same product as every other company. Many times, the customer won't know what they want until it's already available and you've sunk the costs to build it.
For instance, the iPhone in 2007.
Progress is never wasteful (Score:2)
It sounded like a terrific idea - it was an experiment. It turned out to not be such a good idea, but valuable information & feedback has been gained. Who knows, maybe a v2 will come in the future after these years of feedback is digested. It sounds like the long-touch provides "80%" of the functionality without having extra wires and chips. I remember, when it was announced, thinking it was going to be a cool feature as it seemed to have terrific potential.
My wife has it on her phone-7, and my Wa
why does it matter now? (Score:2)
Easy solution (Score:1)
ProMotion 120Hz (Score:1)
Yeah, half hearted approach to 3D touch indeed.
Worse... reading specs, I see that NONE of the new iPhones does 120Hz display, or what Apple calls “ProMotion” which they do for their iPad PRO models.
I took the effort of making my apps 120Hz capable, but that seems wasted on the new iPhones.