The typing and editing experience on iOS is extremely poor. It’s shocking that almost fifteen years later, there are no arrow keys or effective mechanism for zooming in. It should be a scandal how bad it remains.
Imagine being a power user, using Apple products and expecting them to do anything at all for you. This is the company that will do things like sell a one-button mouse for 20 years while trying to convince everybody that that's all you need.
They continually take away powerful features and put out marketing on why the new way is So Much Better (TM). It's never about the alleged improvements though, it's always about saving a few cents here and there.
When they took away the headphone jack, they told everybody it was for a better water seal. Meanwhile other waterproof phones had headphone jacks. It is fewer parts to assemble though, so guess who saves money?
Same thing with the home button. The new home swipe is garbage in comparison as it's far less reliable and in some cases, such as when certain system modals are being displayed... it doesn't even work lol. First they removed the physical button and that was a win-win for us because less parts for apple and less broken buttons for us. But then they just removed the button altogether, with no choice to go back to it unless you use the lowest crappiest model iPhone.
If you're a power user, I recommend staying as far away from Apple products as you can. Sure, use an iPhone - but don't give this company a thousand bucks every year for it. Stay 2 or 3 models behind the latest, buy discounted older versions, used, refurbished or whatever. I've almost exclusively purchased used/refurbished Apple stuff.
Don't support companies who want to control your daily experience instead of letting you make your own decisions, or else one day you'll wake up and you won't be allowed by law to make any decisions for yourself.
Thank you for this memorial. I too thought the feature was a joy and still mourn its loss. But I had no idea about the spacebar alternative until just now :)
Holy moly, after switching from Android I've been struggling with writing on iPhone for 18 months and finally I'll have some relief. It's there on my iPhone 6S. Thank you!!!
I loved 3D Touch on my iPhone 7 back in the day. The 3D Touch trackpad feature was very useful but I especially loved the 3D touch on the left side of the screen and gesturing to the right to trigger multitasking. I was like the gesturing system brought by the iPhone X but before the iPhone X. I never used the home button since figuring that out
I liked the 3D touch. Though it's like a better implemented version of the BlackBerry Storm 2 (which needed it due to the ancient OS), which I typed *very* fast on it despite the lack of hardware keys.
The space bar trick is a facsimile, but I guess people didn't care for it enough to justify the hardware.
I though that I was crazy when switching from iPhone X to iPhone 13 and couldn’t use the feature anymore…. Thanks for this post that clarified this sad story for us…
On the iPad at least there is also a multi touch version: swipe left or right with two fingers to move the cursor around in trackpad mode. Also, tapping a few times with two fingers selects word/sentence/paragraph.
I'm with ya man. The best was telling people about it and blowing their minds. Granted, I don't actually remember if this was possible before, but in fields (like phone numbers) that only pop up the numeric keyboard it's not possible to move the cursor around at all anymore.
The typing and editing experience on iOS is extremely poor. It’s shocking that almost fifteen years later, there are no arrow keys or effective mechanism for zooming in. It should be a scandal how bad it remains.
It's one of the reasons I am still on iPhone X
Imagine being a power user, using Apple products and expecting them to do anything at all for you. This is the company that will do things like sell a one-button mouse for 20 years while trying to convince everybody that that's all you need.
They continually take away powerful features and put out marketing on why the new way is So Much Better (TM). It's never about the alleged improvements though, it's always about saving a few cents here and there.
When they took away the headphone jack, they told everybody it was for a better water seal. Meanwhile other waterproof phones had headphone jacks. It is fewer parts to assemble though, so guess who saves money?
Same thing with the home button. The new home swipe is garbage in comparison as it's far less reliable and in some cases, such as when certain system modals are being displayed... it doesn't even work lol. First they removed the physical button and that was a win-win for us because less parts for apple and less broken buttons for us. But then they just removed the button altogether, with no choice to go back to it unless you use the lowest crappiest model iPhone.
If you're a power user, I recommend staying as far away from Apple products as you can. Sure, use an iPhone - but don't give this company a thousand bucks every year for it. Stay 2 or 3 models behind the latest, buy discounted older versions, used, refurbished or whatever. I've almost exclusively purchased used/refurbished Apple stuff.
Don't support companies who want to control your daily experience instead of letting you make your own decisions, or else one day you'll wake up and you won't be allowed by law to make any decisions for yourself.
Oh man exactly!
It’s one of my main reasons for not moving to a newer iPhone! It genuinely feels like a downgrade.
this, so very very much
Thank you for this memorial. I too thought the feature was a joy and still mourn its loss. But I had no idea about the spacebar alternative until just now :)
Holy moly, after switching from Android I've been struggling with writing on iPhone for 18 months and finally I'll have some relief. It's there on my iPhone 6S. Thank you!!!
I loved 3D Touch on my iPhone 7 back in the day. The 3D Touch trackpad feature was very useful but I especially loved the 3D touch on the left side of the screen and gesturing to the right to trigger multitasking. I was like the gesturing system brought by the iPhone X but before the iPhone X. I never used the home button since figuring that out
I liked the 3D touch. Though it's like a better implemented version of the BlackBerry Storm 2 (which needed it due to the ancient OS), which I typed *very* fast on it despite the lack of hardware keys.
The space bar trick is a facsimile, but I guess people didn't care for it enough to justify the hardware.
this was my favorite too wtf apple. another feature sacrificed on the altar of discoverability
I HATE the new version!!! Why can't I select text as easily as with 3D Touch :( It now requires two fingers and is unusable while one handed
I though that I was crazy when switching from iPhone X to iPhone 13 and couldn’t use the feature anymore…. Thanks for this post that clarified this sad story for us…
I'm in the same boat as you are. Upgraded my experience from 8+ to SE3 and the old habit of navigating and editing written text is of no use anymore.
From time to time, I still try to press the screen to activate 3D Touch just to realize it's gone from this model...
On the iPad at least there is also a multi touch version: swipe left or right with two fingers to move the cursor around in trackpad mode. Also, tapping a few times with two fingers selects word/sentence/paragraph.
I miss it too for the exact same reason. I also never use the new select method, because yeah… why doesn’t it select from exactly where I want?
I also loved it for tab view in safari. It was cool to press a little harder and see all the tabs swing down, but not quite select one yet.
I'm with ya man. The best was telling people about it and blowing their minds. Granted, I don't actually remember if this was possible before, but in fields (like phone numbers) that only pop up the numeric keyboard it's not possible to move the cursor around at all anymore.