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Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2019-08-13, 14:03

It sounds like they’re ditching 3D Touch with this year’s iPhones. I had high hopes for 3D Touch but that clearly hasn’t panned out at this point. A key problem with it is that it isn’t discoverable, on a UI where everything is supposed to be not just discoverable, but immediately obvious. 3D Touch has clear costs, both monetary and in thickness, and I think Apple feels it’s just not worth those trade offs at this point. The XR ditched 3D Touch, and essentially nobody cared. I don’t think it’s long for this world.

That’s maybe another reason to replace the iPhone 8 with a new model, to eliminate the weirdness of the $449 iPhone having a feature that the $1099 iPhone doesn’t.

The Touch Bar is more interesting. Last month Apple brought the Touch Bar to the entire MacBook Pro line. They didn’t have to do that; just updating the 15W models after two years and giving them quad-core processors would have satisfied a lot of people, and they could have given it Touch ID and a T2 without the full Touch Bar (as on the MacBook Air). But they gave it the full Touch Bar, at a much lower price point. That suggests to me that Apple still sees a lot of value and potential in the concept, even if a lot of users don’t (yet).

Touch Bar on desktops is an interesting nut to crack, because I don’t think Apple will ever put Touch ID on an external device that isn’t built into the system – it’s just not secure enough. So that’s not going to be part of the system. But if Apple redesigns the iMacs and gives them Face ID, that takes care of the secure effortless authentication angle. The T-series chip inside the iMac would essentially project the Touch Bar UI wirelessly onto the keyboard, kind of like CarPlay or how watchOS worked at the very beginning. Gives new meaning to the term “Magic Keyboard.”

Apple’s all about getting rid of the inessential, and I think the F1-F12 keys are something that they’ve felt are outmoded and needlessly complex for a long time. I don’t see the Touch Bar as something they tacked on to give the 2016 MacBook Pros a buzzy new feature; I view it as then finally being able to tackle a peeve they’ve had for potentially decades.

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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