“The Apple rumor mill was set abuzz this week by the latest iPhone note from KGI Security’s Ming-Chi Kuo — a Taiwanese supply-chain analyst whose reports about future Apple products have proved so prescient in the past that they bordered on industrial espionage,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“This week’s note lists 11 features of the next iPhone,” P.E.D. reports. “But the most important change, the ‘biggest selling point,’ according to Kuo, will be the addition of Force Touch, Apple’s patented technology for creating the tactile illusion of a pressure-sensitive screen.”
“It’s a powerful illusion, as anyone who has played with the Apple Watch or the new MacBooks can attest. Press hard on the MacBook’s trackpad and you get what feels and sounds like a ‘click.’ The trackpad isn’t actually moving; the sensation of movement is created by vibrating motors (Apple’s “Taptic Engine”) pushing back on your fingers,” P.E.D. reports. “It’s a cool feature. It adds another dimension — literally — to the user interface. You can scroll. You can tap. You can press.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in February:
And Android, littered across a veritable junkyard full of disparate devices, will not be able to follow.
I think you’re burying the lede. By adopting force touch they can actually do away with the final (ish) button – no more physical Home button.
BOOM
Alas, not quite yet: there is going to be Force Touch, but no Haptic Feedback (there is no room for that in much thinner iPhones). So comparisons of experience to Apple Watch or Macbook touchpad are not relevant.
However, UI paradigm will change anyway, because the main thing is Force Touch, not whether user gets physical feedback.
Also, home button will not go away because there is no way to merge touch sensor with screen them without worsening each other — not at least now and in the future few years (for Apple already has patent for that, it is not for now).
What’s wrong with using the vibrator in the phone to provide haptic feedback?
It is not too thin for haptic feedback.
There is no point to use usual vibrator as haptic feedback. Linear engine that Apple uses in Watch and Macbook touchpad has distinct thickness that would make iPhone significantly thicker, hence KGI Security denies such possibility.
Have you not seen the new MacBook? The bottom half of the clamshell case where the trackpad is located is half as thick as my iPhone 5S. There’s plenty of room.
Have you seen Haptic Feedback in iFixit or at least Apple promotional videos?
iPhone is 6.9 mm thick, there is absolutely no place to fit this thing in there without making it thicker — which is why the analyst from this article says there will be only Force Touch (but no Haptic Feedback).
You’re right! That is if you take out the battery, the CPU, etc. 😛
I’d like the home button to go away too, but then where will the Touch ID sensor reside?
My wife has trouble using my iPad because she doesn’t understand that you just touch. Pushing harder does nothing. Maybe she’ll be able to use the next, “taptic” version.
Apple must go full speed ahead, now is the time. show no mercy. no competition or bad partners. kill ’em all, crush, smash, eat them alive.
As long as they take into consideration health and safety of course.
Forbes bloggers are drinking the Ming flavored KoolAid. While he has predicted several Apple hardware features correctly, he has missed many, as well. Worse, his last prediction for KGI Securities on Apple’s Q2 was so pathetically off it was laughable. He predicted 58 million iPhones and 10.1 million iPads. the real numbers were 61 million iPhones and 12.6 million iPads. Those are huge misses and not his first ones. Ming seems to have generated his own Reality Distortion Field.
I think Ming is a woman.
I don’t like the way that headline sounds.
Time to change the name… Apple phone? The letter ‘i’ means nothing anymore. like iBook (dead)… iMac to Mac – iPod is ok.
iTunes to Music. etc