[aquanext]

I agree both about the keyboard feature and 3D Touch in general. Just because some people can't figure out how to use right-click or force touch, doesn't mean it shouldn't be there for the people who can figure it out. I feel like it shouldn't have been removed and that the experience of editing text is objectively worse now than it used be. I used that keyboard feature the exact same way all the time.

[mrehler]

I agree that removing 3D Touch makes text editing worse (presumably — my XS Max still has it and I’ll discover this fall), but if you step back, hopefully you can understand its removal. Adding an entire extra layer to the display was far from ‘free’ from a design perspective. That extra layer really limited design options and its removal saw immediate jumps in battery life attributable to the space its removal saved.

There are all sorts of things out there a lot of people don’t figure out, or old features that new users never discover, but they require maintenance of code — this required a component, and saw poor adoption amongst many, many devs. Apple surely deserves some blame for it never taking off, primarily for a lack of discoverability. They added this new interaction after 7 years of a well-established and simple model, and didn’t give any visual indications for where you should be trying to use it. Plus, it was never on iPads, and only made it to iPhone models for four generations (6S, 7, 8/X, and XS — and it wasn’t on the XR).

It was a great idea, and I still wish they doubled down on it, but it makes perfect sense for them to have let it go for other advantages that ultimately will be used by more people and sell more phones.

[lolsal]

> I agree both about the keyboard feature and 3D Touch in general. Just because some people can't figure out how to use right-click or force touch, doesn't mean it shouldn't be there for the people who can figure it out. I feel like it shouldn't have been removed and that the experience of editing text is objectively worse now than it used be. I used that keyboard feature the exact same way all the time.

As a developer, it'd be nice if I didn't have to support a minority. I appreciate that iOS streamlines the experience that I have to develop for.