Hacker News Reader

Comment by cycloptic | Hacker News Reader

The over-reliance on gestures and other hidden things like 3D Touch is the exact problem. It's a complete about-face from their classic 90s design policies, which were about ensuring applications were fully discoverable and did not hide any state from the user.

View on HN

I want to add on here—the problem isn’t gestures, it’s gestures for core functionality. Gestures should be like keyboard shortcuts—optional pathways for advanced users. It’s okay to never discover them.

I'd use macOS’s three finger trackpad swipe for switching workspaces as an example of a great gesture. It’s just one of a ton of ways to switch workspaces.

> hidden things like 3D Touch is the exact problem

I’ve had an iPhone for around 5 years now and I still have no idea what 3D Touch is.

I hear it’s not supported on all models, so my phone may be lacking it, but if it does, I wouldn’t even be able to tell.

Pressing hard on a UI element, like an app icon[0], tweet, etc will show certain actions. On the newer models without a pressure-sensing screen, you can hold the UI icon for about a second to perform the same thing.

0: https://imgur.com/a/wOTDT3s

I.e. it never really mattered. My girlfriend still swears by it tho.

> On the newer models without a pressure-sensing screen, you can hold the UI icon for about a second to perform the same thing.

On all devices that run iOS 13.

Hmm interesting. I always knew I had to press and hold with different pressure on songs in my library to pull up different menus but I didn't realize that this is what that was. Thanks

They disabled the pressure sensing on old devices in iOS 13 so it wouldn’t feel like a downgrade on newer phones without pressure sensing.

What? No, I have both an i11 and an i8+ and the 8+ is noticably quicker at showing the 3d touch menu since it has the 3d touch screen.

I believe 3D Touch is disabled by default on devices with 3D Touch. You may have re-enabled it in Accessibility...or you have Touch Duration set to Fast on one and Slow on the other. Or I could be wrong and Apple changed it so 3D Touch is enabled by default on those devices that support it, but it was certainly disabled by default during the Beta phases.

Regardless, it's still available as an option for phones with the 3D Touch hardware.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com