iPhone 6s 3D Touch: Why Its Propaganda

          Apple unveiled their new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus weeks ago at its WWDC event on September 9th, 2015, and Apple's biggest three iPhone improvements were double the RAM (increased multitasking), a reinforced chassis (so no more #bendgate), and its rumored 3D Touch. Interestingly enough, Apple has taken the technology from its Apple Watch, which used to be called "Force Touch", and given it a new name in the iPhone, probably because the name "Force Touch" had a negative connotation given to it. The technology is the same, and allows the panel to distinguish between a regular tap, hard tap, and a hard press. Tim Cook made the feature set sound innovating, standing by the new slogan "The only thing that changed is everything." However, I believe 3D Touch is merely a marketing scheme. Surely, companies such as Samsung also have their own master plans of trying to take over market share with advertising, but Samsung's current campaigns, Wireless charging and Turbo charging, are both completely useful features. However, I see 3D Touch having little impact on how users interact with their iPhone. It is not even like "3D Touch" is a new feature. A week before the launch of the iPhone 6s, Huawei, a Chinese manufacturer, released a new phone, the Huawei Mate S, with a pressure-sensitive screen, and in a live demo, used it to effectively weigh an orange.

          Since the dawn of the iPhone, the controls have been seen as very simple, with a home button and lock button as the main physical buttons, and app developers being responsible for placing simple back buttons in the upper left of every app. However, 3D Touch introduces a whole new world of interaction that could be very confusing for less tech-savy users. I for one know that if my mother were to try to use 3D Touch, she would end up hard pressing something when she wanted a light tap, and would not know when to hard tap vs light tap, and explaining the difference between a tap and a press would just confuse her to the point where she would ask me how to turn 3D Touch off (luckily, Apple has recognized this, and created a settings toggle switch to disable it). I predict 3D Touch will be a feature students and the younger crowd will cause commotion about it during the school day for the first few weeks the phone diffuses through the population, but after this period, the feature will be limited in its actual effective uses, and will fade, remaining as only a propaganda feature.

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