Force Touch, Apple’s new pressure-sensing technology coming to the Apple Watch and its 2-pound, 0.52-inch-thinMacBook is, according to reports, also coming to the iPhone 6 update later this year.
You should consider this very good news.
During Monday’s Apple Watch Eventwhere Apple surprised the world with the ultra-slim (and gold!) MacBook, I had an opportunity to try out what Apple calls “Force Click” on the featherweight portable.
Force Click is more or less the same technology as you’ll find on the upcoming Apple Watch. In the laptop, there are a bunch of sensors under the large trackpad that detect pressure. The tricky part is that even though the trackpad only ever moves slightly down from the surface of the laptop that it shares with the full-sized keyboard, haptic response tricks you into thinking the trackpad is descending much further.
Haptics are not particularly esoteric or new. They’re tiny vibrations that can feel like buzzes, taps or clicks and are generated by super-tiny motors hidden, in this case, just under the trackpad surface.
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In the MacBook, Force Touch / Force Click let me open a video and then use the fast-forward button almost like an accelerator in a car: the harder I pressed on the trackpad, the faster the video playback went. I also used it to preview a browser link by just giving a harder press to a link in an email. Similarly, on a document, I pressed once to highlight and then pressed harder for an expanded preview. In each case, I swore the trackpad was moving down vertically. It wasn’t — at all. A light click under my fingers made me think I was gradually pushing through physical downward steps.
This technology has a dual benefit. First of all, it solves the problem of how you create “pressable buttons” in devices that either do not actually support button movement or where they’re so thin that the movement has to be significantly limited. It also means that developers can use this "faked" range of motion to activate additional features in their apps.
Now let’s imagine the iPhone 6 with its hundreds of thousands of apps.
Force Touch will add a new dimension of functionality to almost everything on the iPhone. It may also do away with some things. Perhaps the double-click necessary to see all running apps disappears in favor of a harder press. One-click for the app carousel and, if your press harder, two or three haptic clicks for accessibility mode (a feature you currently access with three rapid presses of the home button).
It might also improve fingerprint registering in Touch ID. Instead of picking up and placing your finger back on the button, you might press harder and even move your finger as you do. Underneath, the button would have to use the simulated layers to turn the sensor on and off to read all the different parts of your fingerprint. The clicks would be your indication to move your finger around on the button.
Force Touch’s haptic response could be used in gaming. So in addition to using your fingers and thumbs on the Retina HD display, you’ll keep a finger or thumb on the home/Touch ID button where Force Touch will add a physical dimension to game play. You could "feel" gunshots, steps and even running with a tiny "push."
You could use it to change drawing tool widths, so a harder press for a wider pen or, maybe, a “deeper” press for more spray paint.
I could see Force Touch being paired with the iPhone’s iSight camera. You could press lightly to zoom in a bit, or harder to zoom in faster.
Another motor in the iPhone would mean additional power consumption, but for now let's assume that that's an easily surmountable hurdle. These are tiny motors, after all.
The best way to think about this is that Force Touch should add layers of new functionality to almost everything the iPhone does and if it works as well as it did in my brief time with the MacBook, it will likely transform the way we interact with Apple’s best-selling mobile device.
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