I still use an iPhone XS and that's one of my favorite features that it has, I use it all the time and it's a shame it's not still there, kind of holding me back from upgrading
My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
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Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#62It was a feature with 1% of users who knew about it and who were its passionate defenders. This is exactly the sort of feature you should RUTHLESSLY kill off. If you do not, the end state of your software is that it is a collection of features, all of them known to 1% of your users, all passionately defended. Kudos to Apple.
I tend to agree. Then again you could argue that iOS is a mature platform to allow for 1% functionalities, which are discovered step-by-step. I still discover awesome settings options through those Tik Tok movies.
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tape your dongle to your headphone cable?
What if you use multiple devices, e.g. a laptop too?
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#64It was a feature with 1% of users who knew about it and who were its passionate defenders. This is exactly the sort of feature you should RUTHLESSLY kill off. If you do not, the end state of your software is that it is a collection of features, all of them known to 1% of your users, all passionately defended. Kudos to Apple.
Most of the improvements that I can think of for the iPhone (and iOS apps in general) would involve removing features. An example, there is a gesture that will open the camera app, I don't know what it is, but it triggers in my pocket all the time, draining the battery. I get why it's there, but most of the time it just makes things worse.
I haven't used Android enough to know if it's the same issue, but the main problem is discoverability. iOS, and many apps, have a ton of features, but there isn't enough screen space to do hint to how to use them. There also isn't enough space to add more buttons. So we end up with these weird swiping motions, long press, 3D Touch or hard to hit icons.
Maybe it's just me being old, but I'd recommend stripping a ton of features from phones and their apps. If you need to do anything more complicated, push people to use a device that's designed for higher levels of interaction.
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#65I had a feeling this was gonna be about 3D Touch just from seeing the title. It was definitely one of my favorite features, and Force Touch isn't a drop-in replacement. With 3D Touch anywhere on the keyboard, you could apply pressure to start moving the caret (text cursor) around, but what was even more useful was being able to apply a little bit more pressure to start selecting text with incredible precision . With…
I don’t know what you mean by force touch. Wasn’t that just Apple’s name for the action of pressing harder on 3D Touch devices?
Yes, they meant to say Haptic Touch.
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know what you mean by force touch. Wasn’t that just Apple’s name for the action of pressing harder on 3D Touch devices?
The screen was actually presssure sensitive with a fair amount of precision. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_Touch
Interesting, so there was a patent claim settled at the start of 2018 over this, and the iPhones released at the end of 2018 had the feature removed. I wonder how much of an impact that had, versus usability / weight / cost considerations.
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#67Yeah, missing this 3D Touch. The input experience (or AI supported typing) is getting worse and worse for me on the iPhone. Especially, if your are using different languages in parallel. For me it is my mother tongue German and my most second language English and sometimes using Spanish. In an (for me) unpredictable way, there are words replaced to "correct" typos. But, independent of the used keyboard language, whic…
I don't disagree with you.
But I think it's great that the keyboard language does not define the autocorrect language.
The German keyboard has smaller-sized keys and it would drive me insane I think if I had to switch to the German keyboard in order to type German text.
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#68The big takeaway for me was
>>> My guess is that people had no idea it was there. Likely it had very low usage statistics and so Apple cut it in order to...
Right there.
I am often frustrated that I cannot edit a URL in the address bar - but not frustrated enough to use a different phone or explore.
What would be useful is some kind of "how to use your phones hidden features" guide on the phone (no not on a website somewhere an actual supported by Apple real tutorial). Then both I can find out and Apple can find the real ratio here - people who know how to use 3D whatever and who just don't bother.
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#69I had a feeling this was gonna be about 3D Touch just from seeing the title. It was definitely one of my favorite features, and Force Touch isn't a drop-in replacement. With 3D Touch anywhere on the keyboard, you could apply pressure to start moving the caret (text cursor) around, but what was even more useful was being able to apply a little bit more pressure to start selecting text with incredible precision . With…
Force Touch would have been usable for me if I could just disable its vibration without having to disable it on the whole phone, I don't understand why they don't add special settings to do things like this. I hate that anytime I want to move the cursor and long press the space bar my phone has to vibrate.
Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement
#70Re text selection, what I find annoying is that that you can't just tap with your finger on the text itself to place the cursor in an exact location. You can tap to place the cursor, but it always snaps to the end of a word. Why?
My favourite iPhone feature that was removed though was being able to fully turn off WiFi from the Control Center (last seen in iOS 10).