I’m here to
praise Apple again.
Sorry.


I have
to do it.
It’s not in my contract nor
am I
paid to do it
– imagine if we were!
We’d be
rich!
– but after manhandling
the iPhone
6S Plus it’s abundantly
clear that Apple
has discovered another
breakthrough.
And
they are surprisingly
nonchalant about it.

Apple’s first interface
breakthrough
happened when it
unleashed real
multitouch on the world.
Until the original
iPhone, screens reacted to
one single point
and often required a stylus
to operate.
There were exceptions,
but even after the
iPhone launched
competitors couldn’t
keep up and had to
release resistive screen
phones until they could
join in the multi
-touch game.
This next interface trick is
far more subtle.
By sensing pressure
applied on the surface
of the Apple Watch, the
new MacBook
trackpad, and the new
iPhones, Apple has
added a new layer to the
touchscreen
experience.
In short, they
have gone deep,
allowing us to move past
surfaces and
into more dynamic menu
systems and
even UI tactics.

As it
stands 3D touch is
pretty boring right now
but imagine 3D
touching into an MRI scan
or anatomy
textbook. Imagine 3D
touching through the
cosmos. Imagine 3D
touching in games
where you focus with a
little pressure.


There is a clear reason
Apple abandoned
the moniker of “Force
Touch:” what their
experience offers has less
to do with force
and a lot more to do with a
three
dimensional experience.
3D Touch isn’t an
incremental update.
It is
a real tool and you can be
sure that, by
CES time, manufacturers
from Samsung to
Xaomi will be offering
stuff called Push
Touch, Deep Finger, and
Insert UI for their
phones. It is inevitable.
And Apple had it
first.
This is not to say I don’t
appreciate what
competitors have brought
to the table.
Samsung’s Edge series is
one of the most
compelling and amazing
screen
technologies to reach the
market in a long
time and many
manufacturers are doing
things with materials and
design that is to
be commended.
But non
of them have
released anything that
intrinsically
changes how we, as
humans, interact with
the slabs of glass and
metal we hold in
our pockets at all times.
That’s a unique
thing.
I’m not saying Force
Touch has changed
the world.
What it has
done is tweak the
world in a very meaningful
way. Apple’s
products are starting to hit
more senses.
Thanks to haptics the
iPhone and the
Apple Watch are able to
tap into our
nervous system. In that
case, Apple
nuzzles us, offering a
feather flick of
interaction. Interestingly,
I’m already
feeling “phantom taps”
even when I wear a
mechanical watch, a sign
that old Pavlov
was right.
With 3D Touch, The Apple
devices ask us
to touch them with a little
more intent, to
move past the glass and
into something
deeper behind the surface.
This is an
important change in how
we use our
phones and one sure to
be successful. Of
all of the other
improvements in these
new
phones, 3D Touch is the
most compelling
and it is the one so subtle
that Apple itself
didn’t really talk it up
during the keynote
or briefings. “By the way,”
they seemed to
say. “You can now stick
your finger
through the phone. No big
deal.”
Apple hasn’t dented the
universe in a while
but they have tapped it
with lots of force.
They’ll ding it eventually,
but until then we
can all enjoy the odd


http://www.foxbaze.com/19/3d-touch-is-apple