The Language of Thumbs

(Yahoo image)

3D Touch: one feature of the new iPhones that got lesser notice yesterday. Accustomed to pressing on smartphones, trackpads, and mice, customers may not appreciate the technology that distinguishes a tap from a hard press.

Apple says it's different. [bold added]

You’re trying to read minds. And yet you have a user who might be using his thumb, his finger, might be emotional at the moment, might be walking, might be laying on the couch. These things don’t affect intent, but they do affect what a sensor [inside the phone] sees. So there are a huge number of technical hurdles. We have to do sensor fusion with accelerometers to cancel out gravity—but when you turn [the device] a different way, we have to subtract out gravity. … Your thumb can read differently to the touch sensor than your finger would. That difference is important to understanding how to interpret the force. And so we’re fusing both what the force sensor is giving us with what the touch sensor is giving us about the nature of your interaction.

the company has spent “multi, multi, multi years” working on 3D Touch.

Some tech writers predict that 3D Touch will become a mainstream feature. Unconvinced, skeptics have been heaping scorn on the message boards regarding Apple's hyping of the technology.

History says that they should give it time to play out; many of Apple's nice-to-have inventions (I'm looking at you, Apple Watch) turned out to be must-have (iPad).