Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple’s 3D Touch Is the Start of a New Interface

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 51 posts

Re: Apple’s 3D Touch Is the Start of a New Interface

#31

Post by arrrg »

IanCal wrote: post #21

I'm unsure on this. Long pressing at least has the description of "press, wait for X". "Press this, no, hmm try harder, no not that hard, no the other one you need to press lightly, wait maybe that's too light..." Some things obviously lend themselves well to this. The piano example is good, as is drawing. However, things with a threshold sound less obvious. > “There was a physical thing on the screen,” he says. “You…

Just press hard. That’s it. No need to differentiate. The interface does not make that mistake you are assuming it makes.

Re: Apple’s 3D Touch Is the Start of a New Interface

#32

Post by threeseed »

kevingadd wrote: post #16

How does this feature impact users with disabilities? Long presses already seem a little iffy in this area - especially in applications where the long press needs to be nearly still for it to register (I've seen this pretty often). I'm also not sure how blind users would be able to make use of verbs that are only accessible via 3D touch. At least with press/long press you're just performing that verb on a particular…

It works just fine for blind people at least. When you enable Voiceover you can hard press on an icon and it will read out the options in the contextual menu. Works well.

And you can adjust the sensitivity of 3D touch so it should be easier to use than typical long presses.

Re: Apple’s 3D Touch Is the Start of a New Interface

#33

Post by IanCal »

arrrg wrote: post #31
IanCal wrote: post #21

I'm unsure on this. Long pressing at least has the description of "press, wait for X". "Press this, no, hmm try harder, no not that hard, no the other one you need to press lightly, wait maybe that's too light..." Some things obviously lend themselves well to this. The piano example is good, as is drawing. However, things with a threshold sound less obvious. > “There was a physical thing on the screen,” he says. “You…

Just press hard. That’s it. No need to differentiate. The interface does not make that mistake you are assuming it makes.

Doesn't the article talk about the interface doing something different if you press hard vs. pressing lighter?

Re: Apple’s 3D Touch Is the Start of a New Interface

#34

Post by IanCal »

arrrg wrote: post #31
IanCal wrote: post #21

I'm unsure on this. Long pressing at least has the description of "press, wait for X". "Press this, no, hmm try harder, no not that hard, no the other one you need to press lightly, wait maybe that's too light..." Some things obviously lend themselves well to this. The piano example is good, as is drawing. However, things with a threshold sound less obvious. > “There was a physical thing on the screen,” he says. “You…

Just press hard. That’s it. No need to differentiate. The interface does not make that mistake you are assuming it makes.

Doesn't the article talk about the interface doing something different if you press hard vs. pressing lighter?

Re: Apple’s 3D Touch Is the Start of a New Interface

#35

Post by 6d0debc071 »

mnem wrote: post #27
onion2k wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not born with the knowledge of how to operate things, but we do learn it very quickly. A two year old can use a touch screen because the way you interact with it is largely the same as the way you interact with the world - touch something and see things change. With most real world devices that you put pressure on to use it's the distance you push them that selects the input - e.g. a car accelerator pedal doesn…

I suspect you may find artists will disagree with you there. They've been using pressure sensitive interfaces for thousands of years.

Use of pressure to control the behaviour of the tool there has:

A) immediate graduated feedback (perhaps a learning point for pressure sensitive interfaces here?)

B) is something that you have to learn to do well (an awful lot of people never do - most people aren't artists.)

Re: Apple’s 3D Touch Is the Start of a New Interface

#36

Post by chrisBob »

mnem wrote: post #28
microtonal wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3D Touch is great, and has loads of potential, but it's going to be hard to make it genuinely useful. I see one big exception and that is games. Phones are limited when it comes to controls and 3D Touch can be a welcome addition. Discoverability isn't as much of a problem for games, because there is usually a tutorial anyway. Of course, it will be a while before games will be designed around 3D touch, because older i…

I wonder if the upcoming Apple TV remote is pressure sensitive, or if it just does touches. If it was pressure sensitive, that may drive a lot of games to adopt it in some fashion.

The touch pad is also a button but has no pressure sensitivity other than that

Re: Apple’s 3D Touch Is the Start of a New Interface

#37

Post by arrrg »

IanCal wrote: post #33
arrrg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just press hard. That’s it. No need to differentiate. The interface does not make that mistake you are assuming it makes.

Doesn't the article talk about the interface doing something different if you press hard vs. pressing lighter?

Sure, but you don't have to hit that right pressure point. No matter how hard you press, when you first engage it you will always only be at the first preview step. Then you can press harder still, sure, but you cannot just skip a step.

It's very well thought out. This is all about the software implementation. Pressure sensitive screens by themselves are boring tech.

Re: Apple’s 3D Touch Is the Start of a New Interface

#38

Post by arrrg »

jafingi wrote: post #14

I think the biggest reason that 3D Touch will take some years to get adopted by the users is, that it's not visible whether or not there are any 3D Touch actions available. It's simply not intuitive as of now, until apps get updated to take advantage of it. Sure, I can preview a link in Safari or Mail, but what about when someone posts a link on Facebook or Messenger, I can't deep press on it to preview that link. So…

Apple blankets the world with ads. Apple has recognition. The iPhone is relatively focused in its additions and it's not like they added a million different things, all of which they have to tell you about. There is only one iPhone and not millions different models with different features.

Unlike many Android device manufacturers (except maybe Samsung if they were to focus for once and not be so overwhelmingly complex in all the stuff they put into their phones) Apple is in a unique position to actually teach people about this through marketing. And they will. They will teach people about it, devs will be on board real quick and it will just become a natural interaction. That's my prediction.

Re: Apple’s 3D Touch Is the Start of a New Interface

#39

Post by tommyd »

wodenokoto wrote: post #19

I went by an apple store today and I thought the force-touch on a Macbook felt much, much more realistic than 3D touch. Anyone know why that is? I thought it was the same tech.

I guess it is because on the Macbook, the "Taptic Engine" (i.e. vibration motor) is directly under the glass of the trackpad, so it's actually gently moving the glass, which feels a bit like you've pressed it. On the iPhone, it is the whole phone that is vibrating rather than just glass, so it feels less like you are directly interacting with the glass, and rather that the phone is responding to your touch. I have to admit, I was hoping it would feel more like the Macbook Force Touch too, but I guess it's just not possible to build it so the vibration directly affects only the glass with the current design.
Post reply on HN