Apple’s ‘Force Touch’ Trackpad Fools Users Into Feeling Clicks Without Actually Moving

At its “Spring Forward” event on Monday, Apple announced a brand-new MacBook and updated 13-inch MacBook Pros with a fully redesigned trackpad called the Force Touch trackpad.

Like on the Apple Watch, Force Touch allows the device to distinguish between a light press and a deep press, opening up new methods for interaction. For example, while a light press could be a simple click, a deep press while browsing in Safari could bring up a Wikipedia entry in a pop-up window.

The Force Touch trackpad on the MacBook and new MacBook Pros achieves this through a total reinvention of the way the trackpad works. Apple ditched the “diving board” structure of older trackpads for a new design with four sensors, called Force Sensors.

These Force Sensors allow the user to click anywhere on the Force Touch trackpad. The “diving board” design on previous trackpads made it difficult to click toward the top of the trackpad, forcing users to move their fingers toward the bottom of the trackpad to click.

The Force Sensors are bundled together with the Taptic Engine, which is also featured in the upcoming Apple Watch. The Taptic Engine senses when a user clicks on the trackpad and issues haptic feedback to let a user know that their action was successful. As noted by TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino, this is because the trackpad itself doesn’t move. While the Force Touch trackpad sounds like it clicks and feels like it clicks, it doesn’t actually click.

There is a set of vibrating motors underneath that provides ‘force feedback’, also known as haptics in some applications. This feedback fools your finger into believing that you’ve pressed down on a hinged button, the way your current trackpad works. This feedback relies on phenomenon called lateral force fields (LFFs), which can cause humans to experience vibrations as haptic ‘textures’. This can give you the feel of a ‘clickable’ surface or even depth. The Force Touch feature of the new trackpad allows you to press ‘deeper’, giving you additional levels of tapping feedback. The effect is done so well that you actually feel like you’re pressing down deeper into a trackpad that still isn’t moving at all. It’s so good it’s eerie.

While the Force Touch trackpad was a main highlight of Apple’s introduction of the new MacBook, the updated 13-inch MacBook Pro is actually the first Mac to ship with the feature. iFixit has already performed a teardown of the new MacBook Pro to get a closer look at the workings of the Force Touch trackpad after removing the machine’s well-glued battery.
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Popular ‘Ulysses’ Writing App for Mac Expands to the iPad, Gets Major Update [iOS Blog]

Soulmen’s popular Markdown text editor designed for writers, Ulysses, has long been available on the Mac and is one of the more popular Mac-based writing apps due to its clean, text-focused distraction-free interface and it’s organizational system. As of today, Ulysses for Mac is getting a major update and it’s also expanding to the iPad.

For those of you unfamiliar with the app, Ulysses sets itself apart from other similar writing apps with a three-paned sidebar that lets users see all of their files in one place and its ability to organize files using groups and filters. Writing takes place on sheets, and files are stored locally on the Mac or in iCloud. Markdown text written in Ulysses can be exported in several different file formats, including PDF, ePub, and HTML.

The newest version of Ulysses for Mac includes a new name (dropping the former III) and a new icon — a butterfly. It’s been updated with a Yosemite-style redesign that includes an attachment bar, Favorites on the sidebar, and a new Dark Mode. Quick Export and Preview have been updated, adding TXT and ePub previews, plus export optimizations.

Ulysses for Mac
The biggest change to Ulysses for Mac, aside from the redesign, is its integration with the new Ulysses app for iPad. The Mac app fully syncs with the iPad app via iCloud, making it easy to begin work on one device and pick up on another. Handoff support is also built in.

“Our ideal conception has always been to make Ulysses a universal tool that authors can use for any writing task, at any time and everywhere. Bringing it to iPad means a great leap forward towards turning this into reality”, explains Max Seelemann, head of development and co-founder of The Soulmen.

Ulysses for the iPad will be immediately familiar to anyone who has used Ulysses for Mac, as the interface and feature set are nearly identical. The iPad app uses a three-paned setup, and panes can be open or closed with swipes. A button row above the keyboard has been added to make it easier to format text, with access to special characters and shortcuts for creating headings, lists, paragraph blocks, and more. An info bar displays word count, sentences, characters, lines, and pages.

Ulysses for iPad supports filters much like the Mac version, and attachments like notes and images can be added. It also exports to all of the standard file formats the Mac app exports to, including Plain Text, HTML, ePub, PDF, and RTF. When an external keyboard is attached, Ulysses for iPad supports all standard shortcuts, and the look of the app can be customized with Themes, found in the Settings menu.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/119895209?byline=0&portrait=0
Both of the new apps are available for download today. Those who already own a copy of Ulysses for Mac can upgrade at no cost. The new Mac app is, however, exclusive to Yosemite — it won’t run on older versions of OS X.

Ulysses for iPad can be downloaded from the App Store for $19.99. [Direct Link]

Ulysses for Mac can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for $44.99. [Direct Link]