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Apple Testing Haptic Feedback

Posted on October 19, 2017 by admin Posted in Hardware, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Apple is continuing to investigate haptic technology as another form of user interaction.

One of the strangest criticisms that appeared when the iPad first arrived was that the iPad didn’t support a mouse. That’s especially odd because that’s like complaining the latest Tesla doesn’t provide a way to hook it up to a horse.

A mouse works great when you have plenty of room to move it around, such as on a desktop. Even laptops omit the mouse in favor of a trackpad. So the best way to control an iPad (or iPhone) is through its touch screen interface, which eliminated the bulky and cumbersome row of physical keys that early smartphones needed.

Yet the touch screen also has its limitations. Touching a flat piece of glass is fine for choosing items, but not so good for tactical feedback, especially when typing on a virtual keyboard on the screen. That’s why Apple has been pushing haptic technology that can detect pressure on a touch screen, providing another way of interacting with a touch screen. In the latest iPhone models, this pressure-sensitive screen is known as 3D Touch.

Right now, 3D Touch lets you interact with items on the screen by pressing and holding a fingertip on the screen. In the future, Apple wants the touch screen to provide feedback as well such as letting you “feel” the touch of a key on a virtual keyboard.

Right now, Apple already uses haptic technology on their trackpads such as the Magic Trackpad. There are no moving parts but when you press down, it simulates a click to give you feedback. The same type of technology will work with touch screens as well.

Haptic technology is important beyond the touch screen. The Apple Watch will never have a touch screen as large as the iPhone or iPad, so it must rely on more haptic technology than other devices. That’s why the Apple Watch can tap your wrist to give you driving directions or alert you without forcing you to look at the tiny Apple Watch screen. Haptic technology is moving user interfaces beyond two-dimensional visual interfaces and incorporating touch into tomorrow’s user interfaces.

Touch screens are part of standard Windows PCs, but notice how touch isn’t crucial or even considered necessary to use a PC? That’s because the keyboard and mouse work just fine and the touch screen is an addition to the user interface that merely duplicates the mouse by replacing the mouse pointer with your finger.

On an Apple Watch, haptic technology is far more necessary because the touch screen will never be able to provide enough ways to give the user interaction. The Apple Watch also uses its crown dial as another way to interact with the screen, but haptic technology is where the Apple Watch shines because it provides huge benefits in alerting users without forcing them to look at the tiny screen. Haptic technology on the Apple Watch isn’t substituting one form of interaction with another like touch screens trying to replace mice on PCs. Instead, haptic technology is simply the best way to interact with an Apple Watch due to the tiny screen limitations.

On an iPhone or iPad, haptic technology will also provide another way to interact with the device. Haptic technology will never replace the touch screen interface, but it will supplement it. That’s the difference between touch screens on Windows PCs and touch screens on mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad. Haptic technology can provide a new form of interaction on touch screens that make no sense on a Windows PC. You don’t need physical feedback on a Windows PC since you already have a physical keyboard. You do need physical feedback on a touch screen because you often don’t have a physical keyboard.

Haptic technology will only get better and become more important over time, especially with wearable computers like the Apple Watch. It’s another form of interaction just like the mouse or touch screen. To read more about Apple’s plans for haptic technology, click here.

The Importance of Haptic Feedback

Posted on June 20, 2016 by admin Posted in Hardware, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: haptic feedback is a way to physically interact with the user.

Back in the old days of computers, you mostly used your sight to interact. The computer displayed something on the screen and you had options to respond, usually by clicking a button or menu command. While such a visual interface might work just fine computers with big screens, they suddenly don’t work with much smaller screens.

That’s why when Microsoft tried to port the Windows desktop interface to the smaller screens of smartphones with Windows Mobile, complete with a Start menu, it didn’t feel intuitive. Visual interfaces work best when you can see what your options are. With a computer, you not only have a large screen, but you also have separate input devices: a mouse and a keyboard.

With smaller screen devices, you can’t lug a keyboard and mouse around. As Windows Mobile proved, trying to cram menus on a tiny smartphone screen becomes difficult and clumsy. That’s why Windows Mobile devices forced users to interact with a stylus since their fingers were too big to comfortable tap on tiny menu commands.

When Apple introduced the iPhone, they defined the touch screen interface. Now you could not only see commands, but choose them by touching them, which is far more intuitive than using a separate device like a keyboard or mouse. The original Blackberry smartphones used a trackball to let you choose items on the screen, but the trackball still isn’t as simple as tapping on the command you want instead. The iPhone and its touch screen interface brought touch as a way to interact with computers.

Apple later introduced 3D Touch/Force Touch, which is a way to interact with a device through short or prolonged pressure. This gives you another way to choose commands without requiring additional input devices like a keyboard or mouse. Now Apple is slowly pushing another way to interact with a computer.

When you touch a screen, it’s a one-way interaction between you and the computer. You’re in control. With haptic feedback, the computer touches you.

While unveiling the latest watchOS 3, Apple introduced a new Breath app that lets you slow down and focus on your breathing. Since you’re likely close your eyes while breathing slowly and meditating, the Apple Watch can use haptic technology to gently guide your breathing from fast initially to much slower near the end. By using haptic technology, the Apple Watch eliminates the need for you to look at a screen altogether.

Currently if you get driving directions with an iPhone, you can hear turn by turn directions as well as view a map on the screen. However, it’s always dangerous to take your eyes off the road for even second, so looking at driving directions on an iPhone screen is distracting. Listening to driving directions is one way to keep your eyes on the road, but haptic technology is another way.

As you drive with an Apple Watch, you’ll feel a tapping on your wrist as you approach a street where you’re supposed to turn. Such haptic feedback combined with audio instructions helps keep your eyes on the road while still allowing the computer to interact with you.

Imagine more haptic feedback with virtual reality. Right now virtual reality relies entirely on sight and sound, but toss in haptic feedback and you’ll be able to feel as well.

While haptic feedback likely won’t be the primary way to interact with a computer, it can be a secondary way. In some cases, it might be the best way. Imagine getting an important phone call. You don’t want a noisy ringer to disturb others and you don’t want the bright flash of a screen to annoy people either. Instead, haptic feedback can tap you on the wrist and let you know when an important call arrives. Now nobody else but you gets that signal.

Haptic technology will play a greater role in computer interactions than ever before. Expect more haptic feedback to appear in the Apple Watch but also the iPhone and iPad. Right now the iPhone and iPad display a virtual keyboard that’s versatile enough to change depending on whether you need numbers or foreign language characters. However, virtual keyboards have one drawback in that you type on a flat piece of glass, which is never the same as typing on a physical keyboard.

Apple (and others) are working on providing haptic feedback so when you type on a flat piece of glass, you’ll actually feel something under each fingertip. This will give you feedback like touching a physical keyboard, but without the actual keys. In the future, you’ll likely use a computer and not even notice the haptic feedback since the purpose of haptic feedback is to notify you of something without being intrusive.

haptic feedback is part of the future. It may not be as sexy as virtual reality, but it’s far more likely to appear in your everyday devices soon. By the time you notice it, you won’t even remember a time when haptic feedback didn’t exist on devices at all.

Force Touch Coming to the Magic Mouse

Posted on April 6, 2016 by admin Posted in Hardware, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Force Touch is Apple’s new way to interact with computers by detecting the length of time and amount of pressure a user exerts on a surface.

The original Apple mouse came with only one button while other mice at the time came with two or three buttons. The idea of one button meant that you could never accidentally press the wrong button. The drawback was that one button eventually proved too limiting. That’s why today’s mice respond to left and right clicks where the left click is the more common command and the right click often brings up a popup menu of relevant commands.

Yet on touch screens and trackpads, Apple has introduced a third way to interact through Force Touch, which can detect the length of time and pressure a finger exerts on a surface. Force Touch arrived first on the iPhone and migrated to the Magic Trackpad. Now Apple’s latest patent reveals that Force Touch will likely come to the Magic Mouse as well.

Right now the Magic Mouse is limited to swipes up and down or left and right across its surface. Force Touch will simply make the Magic Mouse compatible with the Magic Trackpad and its ability to detect pressure. While Force Touch is mostly an accessory like right-clicking was initially with mice, expect Force Touch to become more popular in the future.

Touch screens on smartphones and tablets can only detect taps. Force Touch promises to give all types of devices more ways to control them that will gradually become as intuitive as today’s user’s feel when using a mouse. Remember back in the early days, people actually found a mouse confusing to use when they were so used to using keyboard shortcuts for everything. Once graphical user interfaces become commonplace, using a mouse became the simplest and fastest way to control a computer.

Right now, everyone’s finally comfortable with using touch screens on smartphones and tablets. The next step is to get everyone comfortable with Force Touch interaction as another way to control a computer.

Coupling a screen as both a display device and a controlling device means keeping devices small. Anyone remember the old days when mobile phones had a tiny screen and a big keypad? A touch screen eliminated that cumbersome mess. Now as we bump up against the limitations of touch screens, Force Touch is a way to avoid adding additional hardware controls.

Force Touch is coming to every smartphone, tablet, and computer eventually. The next time you use a touch screen, a trackpad, or even a mouse, you can soon expect Force Touch to be an integral feature to the point where not having it will suddenly feel weird and limiting.

Force Touch is the Difference

Posted on October 8, 2015 by admin Posted in Hardware, Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: In the latest OS X beta, code reveals updates to Apple’s mouse, trackpad, and keyboard.

Microsoft recently surprised everyone by releasing a laptop called the Surface Book. Unlike most laptops, the Surface Book’s screen can be detached so you can use it as a tablet. While this will likely keep Windows enthusiasts from switching to a Macintosh, it’s already behind in the user interface compared to the Macintosh.

The latest OS X beta reveals Apple is planning second generation products for their Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Keyboard. One rumor suggests that these devices will be wireless and include a rechargeable battery so you don’t have to keep replacing AA batteries. However the more interesting feature will be the addition of Force Touch.

Force Touch first appeared on the Apple Watch and migrated to the track pad of the latest MacBook Pro laptops. Then Force Touch got renamed 3D Touch for the iPhone 6s so it’s likely that the newest Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Trackpad 2 will also incorporate Force Touch as a way to interact with the computer.

While Windows PCs still rely on older trackpads, Macintosh computers will be able to use Force Touch with the latest version of OS X and a magic Mouse 2 or Magic Trackpad 2. Force Touch will be a new way to interact with the Macintosh that can provide shortcuts much like right-clicking currently does. How useful Force Touch will be depends on the software but Force Touch should be able to provide shortcuts for performing common tasks.

If Force Touch proves useful on the Macintosh as it already appears on the iPhone 6s, then the Macintosh will have an advantage over Windows and Linux PCs that lack similar Force Touch features. This will be like using a Macintosh with a mouse while trying to use a Windows PC without one.

Of course it all depends on how useful Force Touch might be for a mouse and trackpad. However useful it might be, you can be sure that Windows and eventually Linux will try to copy that, but that requires integrating both hardware and software.

Adding Force Touch features in software is fairly simple, but software is useless without hardware to go along with it. That means every PC manufacturer will have to add Force Touch hardware in the form of a trackpad or mouse to take advantage of Force Touch in the operating system. it can be done, but it already highlights the distance Apple is starting to put between the Macintosh and ordinary PCs.

Force Touch won’t be just a gimmick but a new way to interact with devices. With Force Touch, Apple has created a new way to use devices. Notice that today’s smartphones, smart watches, and computers currently lack similar Force Touch features, but given enough time, they’ll all start to add it, thereby validating the worth of haptic feedback as a user interface feature.

Force Touch alone won’t convince people to abandon Windows for a Macintosh, but it’s just one more way that Apple has innovated a new way to use a computer while rivals do not.

iPhone Sales Hit 13 Million in One Weekend

Posted on September 28, 2015 by admin Posted in Business Leave a comment

What it is: The iPhone 6s is the latest iPhone model that recently broke previous sales records.

Every year, critics claim the iPhone won’t sell because it lacks features that Android phones have had for years. Yet every year Apple manages to sell a record-breaking number of iPhones in the first weekend. Ignoring technical specifications that mean nothing if they don’t translate into improved user experience, the iPhone continues to sell each new model because it does offer major features that users want and like.

The two most prominent examples are 3D Touch and Live Photos. 3D Touch detects soft vs. hard presses on the screen so you can view commands without wading through multiple menus. This alone makes the iPhone 6s easier to use, which is a feature that Android phones will have a hard time matching. Wait another year or two for a 3D Touch-like feature to come to Android, and even then it will be useless until more apps take advantage of this new form of user interaction.

Live Photos is another example of an interesting feature that’s not necessary, but still interesting and makes ordinary pictures come alive. Although Live Photos does take up more space, it is a unique feature that Android should be able to mimic fairly soon. In the meantime, you won’t hear Android supporters claiming the iPhone offers features that you can’t find on Android.

While Apple is busy selling 13 million iPhones in one weekend, Blackberry managed to sell 800,000 devices in the second quarter. That’s actually down from the 1.4 million they sold in the previous quarter, which tells you how far Blackberry phones have dropped in popularity. Will Blackberry ever regain their once dominant lead? You might as well ask if Kodak will ever overtake digital photography with film cameras or if Borders Books will ever overtake Amazon by opening more retail stores.

The reason why people buy Apple products is because they trust the products to work as advertised and to make features easy to use. That’s what critics fail to understand when they attack Apple. Most critics look at all the features Apple products lack while ignoring the idea that features are useless if they’re not easy for most people to use.

One major example of this is the file system found in desktop operating systems like Windows, OS X and Linux. Most novices have trouble understanding the concept of folder hierarchies and files. They easily lose files and forget where they put them. Using a file management program like Windows Explorer or OS X’s Finder won’t help these people because they don’t understand how files and folders work in the first place.

That’s why iOS keeps files linked to the app that created them so all you need to do is find the app and search through the files that particular app created. Critics who dismiss iOS because it doesn’t have a file system should also criticize a Lamborghini because it lacks a crank in the front to start the engine.

People don’t keep buying Apple products and breaking sales records every year because they want a cheap product that’s hard to use and poorly supported. Apple will continue selling a record breaking number of iPhones every year as long as they keep developing products that people want with features that people can understand. Other companies can continue selling products that people don’t want (Blackberry) with features that don’t translate into greater user satisfaction.

Apple shows how to make money selling products that people want. Blackberry and other companies show how to make money selling products meant to deceive the customer (think of bloatware on PCs), products that are poorly supported (think of the lack of Android updates on most smartphones and tablets), and products that aren’t as easy to use with few features that people want (think Windows RT).

It’s not hard to understand Apple’s success unless you think success should only go towards companies that don’t care about their customers.

Useless Technical Specifications

Posted on September 5, 2015 by admin Posted in Hardware, Software, User Interface Leave a comment

What it is: Technical specifications are a way to make a product look impressive but often without a reason to use them.

One way companies try to show the superiority of their products is by parading a long list of technical specifications. The reasoning is that the more technical specifications a product offers, the better it is. Unfortunately, a laundry list of technical specifications only appeals to tech-savvy users who actually understand what technical specifications even mean. What’s the difference between two smartphones where one has 1GB of RAM and the other has 2GB of RAM?

Comparing numbers alone, the smartphone with 2GB of RAM should be superior, but if the performance of that smartphone is no different than the other product with only 1GB of RAM, that technical specification is pointless.

The real value of technical specifications isn’t what’s inside a product but what that product can do for you. A B-2 stealth bomber is far more impressive than a 737 jetliner, yet if you just need to fly form Dallas to Miami, there’s little reason to use a B-2 stealth bomber despite its far more impressive technical specifications. Technical specifications should never be used as the sole comparison between products. Instead, every technical specification should explain what it will do for the user.

Apple’s next iPhone is rumored to have Force Touch, which is a haptic feedback mechanism currently used in the Apple Watch and the trackpad of the MacBook. The purpose of Force Touch is to provide another way to interact with a user interface through tactile feedback. When you’re driving, the Apple Watch can tap you on the wrist to alert you that the street coming up is the one you need to turn on. Such tactile feedback lets the Apple Watch communicate with you without forcing you to take you eyes off the road.

To compete against Apple’s Force Touch in the next iPhone, Huawei recently introduced a smartphone that can weigh objects placed on the screen. While an interesting gimmick, the problem with Huawei’s phone is that they didn’t demonstrate how this technical feature would translate into actual use to benefit the user. How many people are going to weigh products using their smartphone? What Huawei really needed to do was show how their haptic engine in their smartphone translated into improved performance for the user.

The bigger problem for Huawei is that their smartphone uses Android, and standard Android apps don’t take advantage of technology similar to Apple’s Force Touch. That means Huawei will need to write custom apps that do take advantage of this tactile feedback mechanism since standard Android won’t support this (yet). Because most Android apps won’t know how to take advantage of Huawei’s version of Force Touch, most apps will simply ignore this feature, making this technical specification essentially useless.

Technical specifications make no sense if they can’t improve someone’s experience with a product. A while back, Samsung heavily promoted the ability to tap two Samsung phones together to share data. The problem was that this feature only worked with a limited number of Samsung phones but not with any other Android phones. The big problem with using Android for manufacturers is that they can’t add unique features because most Android apps won’t take advantage of it. That’s the reason why Samsung’s curved screen displaying items on the edge is interesting, but ultimately pointless since most Android apps don’t know how to use this curved edge screen. If you’re happy with Samsung’s custom apps that use this curved edge screen, then the curved edge makes sense. If you want to use this curved edge screen with other apps, you can’t. That’s the problem of Android.

Unless something becomes a standard feature of all Android phones, apps won’t take advantage of it. As soon as it becomes a standard feature of all Android phones, you’ve lost your unique competitive advantage. Android forces every manufacturer to either create commodity products that look and work like everyone else’s, or forces them to create interesting features that aren’t widely adopted so they’re generally useless.

Huawei’s phone that can weigh an orange may be interesting, but until there’s a practical use for such haptic feedback in Android, that feature is pointless. Apple can introduce Force Touch because they can control the iOS operating system and create apps to take advantage of this feature. Pages, Keynote, Numbers, and Apple’s other apps will likely support Force Touch and third-parties can support Force touch as well until Force Touch becomes yet another standard feature of the iPhone like a Retina display and a larger screen.

Huawei’s stunt to beat Apple to Force Touch technology in a smartphone is pointless and meaningless. What Huawei really needs to do is demonstrate a practical use for their technology. Until they can do that, all the gimmicks in the world can’t make their smartphones better than the iPhone.