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Comment by Tloewald | Hacker News Reader

Although 3D touch is not widely supported (even by Apple's apps) the "trackpad" on the keyboard alone is worth it.

This is going a little off topic: But Microsoft's on-screen keyboard has the best trackpoint for doing that. Doesn't require 3D touch and works wonderfully.

Looks like this:

https://i.imgur.com/eX2bfHp.jpg

The blue dot is always there, but the four way arrows only appear after you press it, and you can drag further away to move faster, or closer to move slower.

It is one of these things that after you use it you wonder why everyone hasn't copied it yet. Microsoft's keyboard is actually the best thing on Windows Mobile.

Apple's accessibility feature works the same way.

> It is one of these things that after you use it you wonder why everyone hasn't copied it yet.

Patents are very possible

Does IBM have a patent for the hardware version of it?

This is yet another invention from PARC that was marketed/finished outside of Xerox.

The patent was initially filed in 1990 and granted in 1996. So it should have expired in 2013. It seems to be owned by Lexmark (which was owned by IBM.)

Wow. I wish something like this was available on Windows 10 for tablets/convertibles.

Don't get me started on that.

I still want gesture based typing (Swype) on the Surface Pro. The on screen keyboard is substantially worse on full Windows 10 than it is on Windows 10 Mobile, it makes no sense at all...

What the heck Microsoft? Why is a keyboard on a 5" device better than a keyboard on a 10" one?

And I heard a while ago that Microsoft is working on bringing their keyboard to iOS. The 3rd party keyboard APIs on iOS are still awful, which would explain any delay/hesitance on their part. :(

I don't know why Apple didn't do something similar for phones without 3D Touch.

Wow, I've had an iPhone 6S for months and didn't realize this existed.

Maybe I should check the documentation, but this also highlights the discoverability problem of 3D Touch. I guess I need to get in the habit of trying to "3D Touch" all over the place to find new features?

Wow, same here. Nifty little feature.

^ This is also IMO the best use of 3D Touch.

This video explains how to activate it for those who haven't used it before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQpCPOSCu10

Edit: I wasn't aware of the double peek to select whole sentences. Cool.

It's great when it works, but it's a shame that it barely works. There is clearly some state machine with lots of states that don't let you activate the trackpad.

It's really weird how you must wait a short moment after touching the keyboard until you can hard-press, or it will just ignore you. Then you let go, and now you accidentally typed a letter...

would have worked better with a button on the keyboard that turns it into a trackpad.

Yeah, it's much nicer on the iPad, where you just scroll with 2 fingers to use the trackpad feature.

Much improved in my experience in iOS 9.3 that came out today. Thankfully, because it was infuriating before.

Why didn't they just implement the two finger trackpad from the ipad?

You can't use that gesture one-handed.

You have pinch to zoom all over ios, so that is obviously not the reason.

No you don't. Double tap also zooms.

I couldn't agree more - this makes typing and correcting mistakes unbelievably easier.

To the point that I get frustrated when I have to write on a phone without it.

It's really nice to be able to move the cursor and select text so easily and fast. It feels like a hack.

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