
Why Apple's Taptic engine in the iPhone 6S is more important than 3D touch - thealexknapp
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/2015/09/25/haptic-feedback/
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arrrg
The iPhone, also the new one, doesn't create any tactile feedback besides just
feeling like a vibrating device. It's a much more subtle and precise and
pleasant vibration than on my current device (iPhone 6) on the new 6s but it's
not really a big change. No quantum leap.

(Can I just say that I really hate people who dislike that metaphor? A quantum
leap is a discontinuous and surprising change, not necessarily a massive one.
It's more appropriate to describe a qualitative difference, not a quantitative
one. As such it doesn't really matter that in reality a quantum leap is a tiny
distance, what matters is that it's discontinuous, with no steps in between.
That's what the metaphor is playing at. Something that seems familiar weirdly
ends up in a suprising place it has no right to be. Not without being
somewhere else in between first.)

On the MacBooks that same technology most certainly is a quantum leap: on the
trackpads it actually feels like clicking down a physical button. On the
phones that same sensation is not created. Not at all, not even a little tiny
bit.

My hypothesis is that with the trackpad your only point of contact with a
vibrating surface is the tip of your finger. With the phones you feel the
whole device vibrating in your hand. That should make it harder to fool your
brain into thinking you are holding anything but a vibrating device. I will
have to lay the new iPhones flat on a table and test it out when I get the
opportunity, maybe they would feel differently. (But even if they could create
that feeling while flat on the table iPhones are probably set up differently
than MacBook trackpads and more tuned to just create a pleasant vibration,
since that's all they normally can do in your hand.)

All that said, yeah, real tactile feedback, if it can be pulled of
convincingly, provides some neat perspectives for touch interfaces.

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alphakappa
Try putting the phone on a surface and press down on one of the system apps
(like say, Maps) to get tactile feedback that is distinct from a vibration.

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spinningarrow
I don't know if I'm the only one but I just tried that and it still felt
distinctly vibration-y.

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chvid
I don't understand the fuzz about 3d touch.

I haven't seen the new phone in real life but as far as I can see from the
press IOS9 has introduced a context menu exclusively for 6S - but could that
now have been done using the existing hardware and thus for all models? Ie. by
triggering the context menu with double tap, long tap, tap and slide up or
something?

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digi_owl
I don't think the current use of it is much interesting.

But bringing pressure sensitivity back to touch screens could allow things
like on-screen keyboards on tablets that allow fingers to rest on the screen
without constantly registering input. Meaning that a OSK moves one step closer
to a physical keyboard.

Edit:

And i just reminded myself that supposedly there is a company working on how
to use static electricity to give variable surface texture. So you could
perhaps recognize the location of keys by your fingers brushing over rough
patches.

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fit2rule
One area where it will be interesting is with music-making apps - still a
market where iOS rules supreme; iOS is the dominant leader in the
synthesizer/music-tool application market. Features like this make a lot of
sense for music performance.

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digi_owl
This article is a demonstration of what i mean with how Apple get attention in
media that other tech companies does not. His one article about another phone
in the archive is at first glance about the Moto X Pure, yet it quickly ends
up talking about phone ergonomics in general.

And other than iPhone he his articles are about biology in various forms, even
when supposedly bringing up Pixars (memory).

