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My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

technicallychallenged.substack.com

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Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#121

Post by busymom0 »

needle0 wrote: post #74

The replacement of “force touch on keyboard to move cursor” is “long-touch on space bar to move cursor”. This works fine for western languages where the key to input a space is large and centered, but some keyboards like the Japanese flick input keyboard look more like phone numpads where the middle of the keyboard is taken by the “number keys” (each key represents a consonant). The space key is located on the right…

Why doesn’t Apple use the empty space below the keyboard on the iPhones? Long press there could do the same as long press spacebar.

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#122

Post by voqv »

avnigo wrote: post #36

I 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 will probably soon add an old 3D Touch iphone to my small Human Machine Interface hall of fame along with the old click wheel iPod Classic.

They probably removed it because nobody was using it and they couldn't figure out how to teach people, while spending extra $ to add it into phones.

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#123

Post by philliphaydon »

chpmrc wrote: post #71

I've recently switched to iPhone and this thread is so comforting. My friends thought I was insane when I told them that typing on Android (Samsung or Google keyboard) is much more accurate, fast and way less prone to errors (using autocorrect) than on an iPhone. And that's not even counting swipe mode! The difference is huge.

Nothing beats the flow keyboard on the old windows phone. That was was the peak of typing on a phone.

I still much prefer any keyboard over Samsungs tho. The Samsung default keyboard is the worst I’ve used.

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#124

Post by nabeards »

PinguTS wrote: post #33

Yeah, 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…

For your autocorrect issue with other languages: in addition to having the keyboards activated, do you also have the languages activated in Settings / General / Language & Region? I had to have both the keyboard enabled and the language in here to stop the default-language only autocorrects.

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#125

Post by dan1234 »

dan-robertson wrote: post #45
avnigo wrote: post #36

I 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?

IIRC:

Force Touch is something supported by 2015+ MacBook trackpads (you can push harder to effectively middle-click something) and 3D Touch was the iPhone screen tech that did the same thing, which has been replaced with Haptic Touch (equivalent to Android's "long press").

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#127

Post by whywhywhywhy »

mike_pol wrote: post #39
avnigo wrote: post #36

I 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 was sure it was going to be about it as well! 3D touch was a really cool feature. I also find now that it’s a lot easier to activate the flashlight or camera on the Lock Screen since they are not ‘buttons’ any more

Every time I unlock my phone I’m reminded that the stupid flashlight button can’t be turned off.

The 3 times this year I’ve needed to use my flashlight are not worth the 20+ times it’s been accidentally running in my pocket because I held the wrong corner while pocketing my phone.

Plus it’s in control centre anyway If you need it fast.

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#128

Post by Lio »

nishs wrote: post #94
Lio wrote: post #15

I actually used to turn 3D Touch off on my older iPhones. I just always use that long press on the space bar to move the cursor. 3D Touch is interesting from a technical point of view but it makes manufacture more complex and using the phone more complicated than it needs to be. I was always activating it by accident. When it was first announced I was excited that haptic feedback would allow us to feel the edges of t…

> I just always use that long press on the space bar to move the cursor. So the cursor navigation feature activates on long press of the space bar, in iPhone models that don't have 3D touch?

Yes, it works in all iPhones with or without 3D Touch.

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#129

Post by whywhywhywhy »

I just wish they’d make it so holding delete only did character by character. It always jumps to word by word at the wrong point and eats up way too much text, heck it even jumps to lines after a handful of words.

It boggles my mind how they put up with it when they can change it.

Re: My favorite iPhone feature was removed, long live its subpar replacement

#130

Post by zimpenfish »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #116
zimpenfish wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although there are now[1] three non-shaking ways to access undo[2] - 1) the three-finger tap which brings up the copy and paste icon bar also contains undo and redo, 2) three-finger swipe left, 3) three-finger double tap (which isn't 100% reliable for me in things like Safari since it tends to trigger "show me the tabs"). [1] Since iOS 13, 2019 [2] https://www.macworld.com/article/233056/ios-13-and-ipados-13...

I didn't know about any of those but they all sound a lot better than shake which never works for me. TY!

Yeah, they could really do with a "I see you're shaking the phone to undo, what about trying one of these new ways?" kind of popup / tutorial for things like this. They're great at introducing new features but useless at surfacing them to users.
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