“Apple Inc. plans to add sensors to detect how hard a user is pressing on a screen to its next iPhones, incorporating a technology used in its forthcoming MacBook and Apple Watch, according to people familiar with the matter,” Lorraine Luk reports for The Wall Street Journal. “Apple’s Force Touch technology can distinguish between a light tap and deep press, allowing users to control a device differently depending on how hard they push on a surface.”
“The touch technology is one of the changes that Apple plans for the next versions of its iPhones due for release later this year, these people sai,” Luk reports. “Apple isn’t changing the size of the displays in the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhones and plans to keep the resolution similar, but it may add another color for the aluminum casing of the iPhone, these people said. Currently, Apple offers the iPhone in three colors: silver, gold and space gray. It is testing a new pink option to the lineup, these people said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we said back in February when AppleInsider reported this, “And, Android, littered across a veritable junkyard full of disparate devices, will not be able to follow.”
Related articles:
Apple patent application reveals work on Force Touch for iOS devices and more – March 5, 2015
Apple’s next-gen iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus to feature Force Touch – February 28, 2015
Wow, really going out on a limb with this prediction, aren’t we?!
Apple implementing Force Touch across its product lines is kind of predictable when you think about it.
But this is the whole thing that at some point has got to give Scamskunk a corporate nervous breakdown just trying to impossibly keep up with Apple.
More interesting to me is whether iOS 9 has round icons that you drag around, a la WATCH. I say 60-40 Yes.
What about the 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro? It still doesn’t have it even though the 13 inch does.
Thinking the same thing too. I expect the 15 inch to be upgraded around WWDC and maybe with different tech.
Shame that is not out now because we need to upgrade one of our laptop.
My guess is, is that maybe the Broadwell processors designed to go into the 15″ rMBP were not ready in time. WWDC would seem like a good time to upgrade that machine.
The pink one would sell like hotcakes.
Maybe if Ihop made pink hotcakes, they’d sell like iPhones.
I mentioned it last year that the next big thing for iOS devices would be pressure sensitivity.
Music keys that respond to pressure, pens that vary widths etc.
looks like it might happen.
To me, an equally important part of the Force Touch trackpad is the haptic feedback when “pressing” the trackpad. Hopefully, the feedback is subtly different based on pressure. And we need the Magic Trackpad version.
Adding the same sensation (more than just a slight “buzz”) would work great on an iPhone. It would feel like I’m pressing actual buttons when using the virtual keyboard and other interface elements on the screen. Since the mechanism takes up some internal volume, maybe only the “plus” model gets it. A good differentiator to push more customers to the higher-margin iPhone.
Yeah except iPad always gets last year’s tech. iPad won’t see Force Touch until a year after iPhone, unless Apple decides maybe it’s a good idea to make iPad the latest too. Touch ID was the reason I didn’t buy the iPad Air. Nobody wanted tech that’s outdated the day it’s released.