“By adding a more realistic sense of touch to its iPhone, Apple Inc may have conquered a technology that has long promised to take us beyond merely feeling the cold glass of our mobile device screens,” Jeremy Wagstaff and Michael Gold report for Reuters. “In its latest iPhones, Apple included what it calls 3D Touch, allowing users to interact more intuitively with their devices via a pressure-sensitive screen which mimics the feel and response of real buttons.”
“In the long run, the force-sensitive technology also promises new or better applications, from more lifelike games and virtual reality to adding temperature, texture and sound to our screens,” Wagstaff and Gold report. “The fresh iPhones, unveiled on Wednesday, incorporate a version of the Force Touch technology already in some Apple laptop touchpads and its watches. Apple also announced a stylus that includes pressure sensing technology.”
“‘Here we go again. Apple’s done it with gyroscopes, accelerometers, they did it with pressure sensors, they’ve done it with compass, they’ve been great at expediting the adoption of these sensors,’ said Ali Foughi, CEO of US-based NextInput, which has its own technology, trademarked ForceTouch. ‘Apple is at the forefront,'” Wagstaff and Gold report. “The result: In the short term, Force Touch may simply make interacting with a screen more like something we’d touch in real life – a light switch, say, or a physical keyboard. With Force Touch, the device should be able to tell not only whether we are pressing the screen, but how firmly. It should in turn respond with a sensation – not just a vibration, but with a click – even if that click is itself a trick of technology. Indeed, [Apple’s MacBook] trackpad carries the same sensation of a physical click of its predecessors, but without the actual pad moving at all.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last month:
Force Touch will be more important than most people think.
And Android, littered across a veritable junkyard full of disparate devices, will not be able to follow. — MacDailyNews, February 28, 2015
SEE ALSO:
Engadget hands-on with iPhone 6s/Plus: Using 3D Touch feels completely natural – September 9, 2015
Apple unveils the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus with 3D Touch, Apple A9, 12MP iSight camera, 4K video and more – September 9, 2015
Apple’s new Force Touch patent application reveals stylus, virtual paint brush, 3D buttons interactions – May 28, 2015
Just one peek and you’ll pop!
“a pressure-sensitive screen which mimics the feel and response of real buttons”
“Force Touch may simply make interacting with a screen more like something we’d touch in real life – a light switch, say”
I’m impressed. IMHO this is a vivid, accurate, and appealing description of 3D Touch. The wording used seems to do a very good job of communicating the intuitive nature of Touch 3D. More so IMO than the descriptions used at the Event.
Many have written about how the MacBooks force touch trackpad surprisingly feels just like a clickable one. The ip6S has what that trackpad has, but the Watch doesn’t: A very sophisticated haptic engine that goes a long way to help create that intuitive illusion.
And I feel the writer has captured the essence of this new feature.
A dual screen clamshell device supporting force-touch on both displays may allow laptop type devices where you can use one screen to display the keyboard. If the device is flipped the screens would change functions and the keyboard side would become display and vice versa.. That would be cool.. 🙂 Waterproofing such a device would become much easier due to no gaps in the “keyboard” for dust or liquids to enter.