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

Post by yreg » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 12:51 PM UTC

voqv wrote: post #122

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.

Post by tardismechanic » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 12:53 PM UTC

Post by ElFitz » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 12:57 PM UTC

elondaits wrote: post #146

vladvasiliu wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's usually missing from these comparisons is how long people are actually using the phone and how they handle the battery. Mine is an iPhone 7 I bought refurbished back in February 2017. This phone is likely to have seen less use than a friend of mine's phone bought at the end of 2021. It spends 95% of its life connected to a power source (even when I actively use it), so I expect the battery to last quite some t…

Being constantly charging is actually bad for the battery life. Being around 100% stresses it… so that’s why some Apple devices now try to determine how much charge is needed and keep it at 80% if possible

Post by gwright » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 1:00 PM UTC

everyone wrote: post #178

empyrrhicist wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if they put any effort whatsoever into teaching or UI discoverability these days. If there was a tutorial app I would have used it, but I have repeatedly had to use Google to find unrelated blog sites describing how to accomplish things in the iOS interface. Cynically, it feels like they think everyone should already "just know" how the various gestures work, which is obnoxious and user hostile.

As someone who only occasionally has to use macOS and iOS for work. The gestures and key combos required to do even the most basic things are insane.. and there is (almost) zero discoverability or affordances for them. On iOS gestures with multiple fingers, on macOS keyboard shortcuts with 3 or 4 keys. I also dont often use Linux, but I could try some new distro with a completely different windows manager I have neve…

Post by nottorp » Fri, Aug 05, 2022, 1:10 PM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #56

nottorp wrote: post #29

I'm glad you understood how to activate 3d touch as opposed to normal touch and long touch. I've had this iphone XS since it was a new model and I still haven't figured it out. This trackpad mode sounds interesting though, I'll try it :)

I think the feature got more confusing as Apple started to phase it out. They dropped the feature where you could force-touch to select text (on e.g. a web page rather than typing) and press harder again to select eg sentences/paragraphs. They also made force touch and long press do the same thing in many cases. I think about the only place it works well is in the keyboard but sadly there are now a bunch of bugs ther…