3D Touch is a hard problem that Apple got just right
Holding the iPhone 6s in my hand, though, it was utterly clear that Apple had done a tremendous amount of work on the software side to take advantage of the hardware it had built. This is the stuff that separates Apple from its competition, and I can’t think of a more impressive example than 3D Touch.
Every time I intended to use 3D Touch to “push” an icon on the iPhone home screen, the feature activated and a contextual menu popped into view, accompanied by a tiny vibration to indicate that I had succeeded with my gesture. The extension of that gesture–sliding my finger or thumb down to the right menu item and then letting go–felt natural after a single try.
I upgraded from an iPhone 6 to the 6s Plus and the UPS guy knocked on the door around 4pm. After going through the setup process, the very first thing I wanted to try was the new 3D Touch feature, because like most people, I wasn’t sure whether to believe the hype. Could it really be an entirely new input paradigm for touchscreen devices?
Well, I believe it now.
Push just a little harder on the Camera icon, and a context menu pops out — just like right-clicking an icon on your computer — with quick commands that can jump you right into the most important features. Want to take a video? Instead of launching the camera, and then swiping over to get to Video mode, you’re just instantly in Video mode. Want to see the latest picture you took but you closed the camera app too quickly? Just use 3D Touch on the Photos icon and you can jump right to the last picture you took.
This also works in other apps, like the built-in Mail app, where you can press a little harder to see a quick preview of the message, and then drag left or right to archive or mark as unread, or drag up to quickly jump to Reply or other options. Almost all of the other built-in Apple apps already support this, and surprisingly a lot of third-party apps have already updated with support.
It’s different than a “long press”, where you hold your finger down on something because there’s no delay. You just press slightly harder, and 3D Touch is activated. Tap something normally, and it works the same way it always has. You’ll rarely trigger the wrong thing, and there’s a taptic feedback so you know when you’ve activated 3D Touch rather than a normal tap on something.
The main problem with 3D Touch is that it’s hard to figure out where you can actually use it. There’s no way to know without just trying it everywhere to see where it works. The smaller problem is that some interactions, like previewing email by Peeking (their name for it) isn’t always the most valuable interaction, and you need to make sure that you don’t have your finger in the middle of the screen when you activate it or your finger will be in the way of trying to see what you’re looking at. Overall though, it’s an amazing addition to iOS that works really well.
It’ll be interesting to see what developers use this for.
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Previous Thoughts You Might Have Missed:
- Tuesday: Microsoft is Trying Really Hard to Shoot Themselves in the Foot
- Monday: The Best Upgrade for Your Surface Pro 3 is the SP4 Keyboard
- Saturday: First Impressions of the Apple TV: Lots of Entering Passwords Using the Remote
- Friday: Soon, Windows 10 Will Be Automatically Pushed Through Windows Update
- Monday: The Emperor Has No Clothes and Nobody Cares