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Comment by ballenf | Hacker News Reader

The 3D touch calibration video made me realize just how complicated it is to get the functionality. It's got to be about the worst cost to utilization ration of any feature on the iPhone. Based on my extensive research asking friends and reading various forums.

When the video get taken down, it showed a large device resembling a 3d printer where the phone is precisely mounted while a probe carefully presses on the glass in multiple places to calibrate touch sensitivity. This works in conjunction with a special app running on the attached iMac. The process takes 15 minutes if it works the first time--the instructions indicate that it might fail the first time.

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"It's got to be about the worst cost to utilization ration of any feature on the iPhone."

I can't speak to whether you're correct or not, but that feature is a massive time saver for me. It's one of the most compelling features that keeps me on their platform. I have large fingers and selecting text with 3D touch is incredibly easy compared to using the twin cursors offered by iOS/Android for that purpose.

I run into quite a number of folks who have no idea they have 3D touch though. Surprises them even more than me when I show them.

I don't use 3D touch for much else though, which sort of supports your assertion.

Speaking as an app developer, the little-known nature of 3D Touch means we can never rely on it as the sole way to access a feature, and that pretty much always means we have ignored building much with it.

I wonder if better training by Apple could help? But it seems they’ve already accepted the tap-and-hold workaround for supporting some 3D Touch functionality on devices without 3D Touch.

Seems like 3D Touch, and iOS 7’s lightboxing parallax effect for backgrounds, was likely part of a broader vision by Ive and the design team to bring depth to a thin phone screen. It’s an admirable goal, but whether by lack of discoverability or lack of training, seems like it isn’t poised to be a widely-adopted technology.

There's a broader issue with the loss of discoverability. It's not exclusive to iOS, but the loss of the home button on the iPhone X and the replacement with gestures seems to mark a significant backwards step. Perhaps this is tolerable or even necessary given the increasing complexity of mobile user stories and maximal screen-to-body ratios, but it poses a lot of challenges.

Mobile is increasingly looking like desktop in terms of the gulf between "ordinary users" and "power users"; applications designed of one group are likely to be highly sub-optimal for the other, presenting developers with a difficult UX compromise. Most users understand the hamburger menu, which could be read as a sign of progress or a dismal failure.

I think the problem is that it's not available everywhere on all mobile devices (Android, iPads and older iPhones don't have it) so it's not utilized well or implemented as much as it could be, nor is it a universal behavior users can internalize like they do with panning and pinch to zoom. Android somewhat mimics it with long pressing, but iOS also has long pressing as well as 3D touch. Without ubiquity it can't become a primary UI mechanism, only tacked on to something that must work without it.

Personally though I don't think 3D touch is any less discoverable than your right mouse button on a computer. If you have a 3D touch capable device you had to configure it at least once when you got a new device capable of it so you know it exists just like you know a right mouse button click state often exists (Macs don't even ship with obvious right-click capability, the OS has it disabled by default and neither of their mouse input types have an obvious right click mechanism just by looking at them)

I wonder if better training by Apple could help?

It might help if Apple would put a manual in with the iPhone, instead of making every feature a treasure hunt.

The iPhone manual [1] is good, and it’s not so hard to find.

[1] https://help.apple.com/iphone/11/

Yes, It's available in the Books app as well.

Yeah I use 3D touch as a cursor all the time. It almost makes up for not supporting a mouse. Almost.

Whenever I have to edit text on my work iPhone SE I almost want to text it to my personal phone, correct it there, then send it back. Editing without 3D Touch is a nightmare, especially on a smaller screen.

iOS 12 beta finally lets you get the same function by holding down on spacebar, for non 3d-touch phones.

I have 3D Touch and use this handy cursor all the time but I would welcome a transition to a hold down on the spacebar. 3D Touch doesn’t always fire when I press down hard and I wish it was more reliable to enable. Using the hard press always makes me worry I’m going to either drop my phone or crack the glass.

Because it doesn’t always fire my muscle memory has evolved to just press down harder to increase reliability. And it’s still only sees 90% of my hard presses.

I think you can change the pressure for Force Touch or 3D Touch under Settings > General > Accessibility

This was already present in some 3d keyboards (gboard, for one).

Whoa! So outdated! That thing existed on LG G2.

Almost. This lets you move the insertion point, but AFAIK there's no replacement for the 3D Touch feature wherein you can push in again while moving the cursor to select the word (and again to select the whole line).

Is 3D Touch the only, or even the best way of implementing a cursor?

Why wouldn’t a Long press, for example, not work for that? Or just a dedicated button to switch to a cursor?

A dedicated button wouldn’t be slightly more inconvenient but would be ridiculously more discoverable and make it available for people who have phones older than the 3D Touch supported ones.

A long press wouldn’t suffice, since you’d still need the second gesture (more pressure with the 3D Touch implementation) to switch from moving around a cursor to select mode (ie. moving around the second cursor). Not claiming 3D Touch is the only way it could be done, but a long press seems like it could only support a subset of apples cursor mode.

I had an HTC Incredible that had a little touch nipple thing at the bottom-middle of the screen. It functioned like a Thinkpad nub and was pressable for a click. So far that is the best text selection method I have seen on a cell phone.

I've had a 7 since launch and only now from your comment learned about the text selection feature. What a perfect illustration of the discoveribility issue of 3D Touch.

My mind is blown. I never knew this could be done. I have always hated selecting text on the iphone

On the other hand I have a new MacBook Pro with Force Touch and can't drag and drop anymore. It's stupid. I attempt 5 times until I manage to grab one icon. Apparently it's a feature, not a bug.

I always enable three finger drag in touchpad preferences for this very reason.

That thing was on LG G2 few years ago. On LG's keyboars press spacebar and then move your finger to right or left. It only works in input fields such as url or textfields.

I had to search for an explanation for what 3D touch is and found this Apple video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIuopkLaaa0 This feature looks sooo useless. My intuitive behavior would be to press normally for a (little) longer time. Just looking at the video made worry about hurting my fingers, and breaking the screen...

I do not own an Iphone to test though.

As someone with an iphone that has 3d touch: it doesn't even remotely feel like the screen is going to break, or your fingers are going to hurt. You can also adjust the sensitivity on it. Pressing normally for a little bit longer time does something different (generally will bring up a menu while 3d touch will open up a preview window), and it takes just long enough to do that that it's uncomfortable. IMO it's not a necessary feature, it doesn't enable fundamentally new interactions, but it's really nice to have.

Ok, thanks for these precisions.

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