Apple 3D Touch: past, present and future

Apple introduced it to the Apple Watch, brought it to the MacBook, and then upgraded it to the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. He has called it Force Touch first, then 3D Touch, and beta after beta has been gradually improving and adding more functions. It has been one of the most outstanding novelties by Apple in the launch of the new iPhones, and the last advertising campaigns have affected precisely this characteristic of the screen of their smartphones.

The company has bet heavily on this new technology that allows you not only to know where you press but also with what force you do it. What did it offer originally? What does it offer now? How could it evolve? That is what we want to show you in this video.

Force Touch for Apple Watch

We could see it in 2014, although the Apple Watch was not launched until much later, well into 2015, but it was the first device to use this new technology that is capable of detecting the force with which you press the screen. The goal on the Apple Watch was clear: to offer a way to access more specific menus without having to dedicate a button to do so on the watch's tiny screen. In addition to being unsightly, a "Menu" button would take up essential space on a screen as small as the Apple Watch. With just one button and a digital crown, the Force Touch of the Apple Watch was a more than intelligent resource to be able to display menus within the applications or configure the faces of your watch.

Force Touch for MacBook

This new technology also came to the MacBook on its Trackpad. Apple managed to make the new MacBook trackpad, despite not having a physical "click", make us still not believe it, thanks to the feedback offered by the vibration that occurs in the Trackpad when pressing. Also thanks to this pressure Actions are achieved that previously could only be achieved through multi-finger gestures, which expands the possibilities of using the Trackpad of the MacBook. Apple also released a new Trackpad with this new technology that can be used with their desktop computers.

However, in the case of Apple computers, it has not been able to get developers to bet so much on this new technology. Few applications have adapted to it, and they also do so with not too "groundbreaking" functions. We will have to wait patiently for Force Click, as Apple also calls this technology in their computers, to settle more and applications give it use.

3D Touch on iPhone

It has been the last device to incorporate it, but the one that has had the most impact, firstly because everything that happens with the iPhone always has a great impact, for better and for worse, and secondly because Apple has also had a lot of impact on 3D Touch so much in its presentation and in the advertising campaigns it has launched. With two pressure levels (Peek and Pop) Apple has managed to get us used not only to use our fingers but to control how hard we press. Preview emails and messages, view animated photos, launch multitasking, switch applications, icon shortcuts, special functions within applications ... 3D Touch is everywhere on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, but it falls short .

Very good but we want more

It's like when they give you a taste of something very good but they don't give you the plate ... The feeling with 3D Touch on the iPhone is good, but we would like more. Why stick to menu shortcuts? Why not interact directly with applications using 3D Touch without having to open them? The new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have 2GB of RAM, double that of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, so they could perfectly perform these tasks, or at least they should be able to do so. Allow applications to show us information through 3D Touch on the springboard, such as the weather forecast, or write a message without having to open WhatsApp or Telegram. Not to mention more configuration options to be able to customize what we can do using 3D Touch in an application.

And what about the iPad? It seems that Apple has not incorporated it, according to rumors, due to problems implementing this technology on such large screens, but that its intention is to do so. The next iPad Air 3 looks like it won't, but subsequent generations will.

iOS 10, our great hope

iOS 7 was a radical design change, iOS 8 included a huge list of new functions and opened many functions to developers, something that Apple had never done before. iOS 9 has been the most mature system in recent years, fixing many stability and performance glitches.

There are many of us who think that iOS 10 should be a system that again offers something completely new, and the 3D Touch should be one of its pillars. We have just 4 months left to see for the first time what Apple wants to offer us with iOS 10, at WWDC 2016 in June. We wait for patients.