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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

#311
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 co-own third party repair shops (we are not Apple certified since we do more complex repairs) and the screens for the 6S-XS have 3D Touch on them even if they’re not replaced by Apple. I will say this, in 50,000+ 3D Touch iPhone screen repairs (conservative estimate) I don’t recall any complaints about non-working 3D Touch. I think probably 0.1% of iPhone users even knew it existed.

Kinda like lack of a real Delete key on Apple laptops. Point that out, and iPologist dweebs always jump in with "Nyeahh, Command-delete!"

NO. Not only is this ridiculously cumbersome, but it's not marked on the keyboard. So 99+ % of Apple users undertake DOUBLE the keystrokes to arrow the cursor past the letters they want to delete and then use Apple's mislabeled Backspace key to get rid of them. I've been in the Apple store and heard a customer come in and ask if there's some way to configure the keyboard to have a legitimate Delete key.

Meanwhile everyone else manages to provide a real Delete key, even on SMALL laptops.

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

#312
post #209

Maybe I’m in the minority here but I really did not like the feature and many people I tried to explain the feature to were confused that it existed.. “no no don’t tap the screen, you need to PUSH on the screen to make it do the action”.. and I would get a look like “huh?? Push on the screen? Why what’s that gonna do..” people saying pushing hard on the screen is intuitive seemed to live in a different bubble of peop…

I kinda agree, but also... NOTHING about modern phones is "intuitive". Every time I have to introduce a modern phone to a 70yo+ family member, I come to that realization promptly. Swipe from bottom to switch programs? Swipe from top left and top right to get different (IMPORTANT!) panels? Why are three lines a "Menu"? But sometimes it's dots, or a gear icon, and they're never in the same place. On iPhone, there's no…

Newer versions of android default to the gesture based app switching, back button, and home, but I dislike it.

Thankfully I'm able to change settings to bring back the dedicated bottom navigation "buttons" (they are virtual, on screen)

Not perfect but I'm glad that it's an option

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

#313
post #87
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can then ‘grab’ the cursor and move it. Or just use the hold spacebar trick two merge those two steps into a single action.

Yeah, I just find it a bit strange that you can't just tap once for exact placement. I know from previous non-iOS phones that it's not that hard to get it in the right spot.

Works for me on the second tap.

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

#314

Long touch/force touch etc are all terrible for anyone who has lost fine motor control in their hands. I guess because the people who design these interface are all young and dexterous they don't realize a single tap can take over a second, and modulating the amount of pressure on the screen can be impossible.

Then don’t use it? Why restrict products to a subset of features just because some people are unable to use them? Apple has always provided accessibility settings to disable 3D Touch if people had issues with accidentally triggering the feature.

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

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. Machines and software that interrupt users are Kafkaesque torture devices. Hell is full of Clippies and microwaves that repeatedly beep for eternity.

There's got to be a tactful way to do this without interrupting users. If anyone's got some good examples I'd like to take a look.

The thing some email clients do where they say “did you mean to attach something” is the one I love.

I’d like a Mark II version which also says “there is no such thing as Sunday 8th of August this year” so that I can fix my errors before they cause problems.

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

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How do you discover key combos in Linux?

You read the man page/documentation for the software you installed that they're for, or else you defined them yourself and don't need to discover them.

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

#318
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

These features really need games added, where the only real requirement to play is learn the new feature. Some say it's why minesweeper et al were added to Windows, so people could learn how to use the mouse.

Way back in the day, Apple shipped several different "Mouse Practice" tutorials on their computers to teach new users how to use the mouse. Here's videos of two of them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvcwFYPiKKA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV-d5F-AdX8

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

#319
post #278
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe it was removed in big part due to being a relatively big energy drain. With that in mind, I don’t believe it was a bad decision, even though I liked the feature as well. (Though probably with additional R&D on the topic, it could have been improved)

And, IIRC, 3D Touch was also technologically infeasible to implement on iPad. That sharply limited what they could do with it, since it would never be available on all iOS devices.

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

#320
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain further how to do it? I still don't get it :( I always just double-tap a word to select it and then drag the selection tabs to expand to what I want. If there's another way I'm interested to hear it.

Hold spacebar to start the cursor. Use 2nd finger tap on the keyboard, the selection markers will show up. Now use the first finger again to move left/right to select stuff. First time trying it for me but it seems.. odd, maybe need to get used to it.

Ahh, thanks. Selecting that way is so janky for me that I wonder if it's not actually a bug. I tried a number of times and it behaves really weirdly / unpredictably.
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