Apple has ruined everything once again. Must be Tuesday.
Writing for the Forbes contributor network and competitive rock-paper-scissors circuit, Ewan Spence says “Apple Cancels Another Revolutionary iPhone Feature.” (Tip o’ the antlers to @designheretic.)
Another!
The Macalope would ask what the other ones were but he learned a long time ago not to ask questions you don’t want the answers to.
So, what’s this revolutionary iPhone feature you’ll no longer have? The one you’re probably not using unless you trigger it by accident.
This year’s iPhones will not have hardware support for 3D Touch.
This is still a rumor, of course, but 3D Touch never has gained much traction with developers, probably because it isn’t available across the breadth of Apple’s iOS devices. The horny one isn’t sure why it never came to iPads, for example, but it’s possible the new small-bezel design of the iPad Pro and the added weight of an iPad would have caused it to be triggered all the time. Or maybe it was too expensive to implement. Or maybe Apple just didn’t like it. Whatever the case, Spence sees it as a massive failure for the company, of course, even though it’s likely to be replaced by haptic feedback.
Contrast the lack of commitment to 3D Touch to that of Face ID. Not only did Apple commit fully to using Face ID on the iPhone, it also backed up these statements by essentially ‘burning the ships’ underneath it by removing Touch ID from the iPhones with Face ID. That made a statement that people believed.
People other than Ewan Spence who resoundingly bemoaned Face ID before the iPhone X even arrived. Also, when Apple shipped the iPhone 7, Spence didn’t seem to think much of 3D Touch at the time as he complained that the device was “arguably the same handset as the [iPhone 6]”, which didn’t have 3D Touch. The pattern from the Forbes contributor network and tainted meat drop-off facility is clear: dismiss features Apple introduces until it removes them, then claim they were fantastic and Apple’s ruining everything.
Way back in 2012, Microsoft’s Frank X. Shaw sagely noted:
Forbes online does not equal Forbes Mag, and “forbes contributor” smells like linkbait collector to me.
Here in 2019 we know it’s even worse than that. As The New York Times reports, a Forbes contributor was paid $600 to slap his name on a piece written by a PR firm touting the futuristic vision of sex predator Jeffrey Epstein as part of his effort to polish Epstein’s image after he served a lenient jail sentence as part of a plea deal. (Tip o’ the antlers to Philip Elmer-DeWitt.)
The articles in praise of Mr. Epstein came about partly because of an online publishing model adopted by some news organizations that relied on outside contributors who often wrote for little or no pay, with little or no input from editors.
$600 is the price of integrity at the Forbes contributor network and unlicensed Mummenschanz festival. This story is like peeling an onion of sleaze; from Epstein to the PR firm that took his account to the Forbes contributor network’s editorial staff (if there even is one) to the contributor who sold out, each layer smells bad and makes you want to cry.
If there’s one thing the Macalope would like to leave you with it’s this: the Forbes contributor network is a garbage fire inside an already raging tire fire surrounded by a circle of dumpster fires.
It’s certainly nothing having to do with 3D Touch.