For the past eight years , the iPhone has been the innovator . Whether we ’re babble about hardware breakthrough , software solutions , or just plain good looks , the iPhone has always taken the lead , usher in the late technologies and innovation shifts before any other equipment : the Retina screen , Siri , Lightning , Touch ID , Apple Pay — even the new MacBook ’s shiny gold example owes a debt to the iPhone 5s .
For the first time since its first appearance , the iPhone is n’t the most cutting - edge piece of engineering science in Apple ’s lineup . While Apple Watch borrowed some of the iPhone 6 ’s style and smarts , it also brings a legion of new feature and technology made possible by the singularity of the equipment . So while I would n’t carry the next iPhone to frolic a Digital Crown or a dedicated Friends button , there are still plenty of tricks it can learn from the new kid on the block .
Glance encounters
Apple Watch is the rare production that ’s build to be used as minuscule as possible . Its invention and functionality is entail to get you in and out without trifling or beguilement , and the join total of one ’s fundamental interaction — whether it ’s sending a message , tag steps , or just tick off the time — is meant to be measured in minute , not minutes . In the time it select to unlock my iPhones , in fact , I would likely already be pose down my carpus .
It ’s a fundamentally unlike room of thinking , and one I ’d care to see make its manner to the iPhone . Apple has thus far been loth to allow us to do much of anything without unlocking our phones first , and despite Touch ID speed up that up , I ’d make out a Glances - style organization for the iPhone ’s curl screen .
I thought iOS 8 ’s Notification Center widgets would suffice as an iOS adaptation of Android ’s customizable home cover gismo . But after a comparatively brief honeymoon full point , I institute myself push aside widget as much as I did iOS 7 ’s Today view . The iPhone 6 ’s larger blind demand a change in grip ( or my remaining paw ) just to get to the Notification Center , where the topsy-turvy , cluttered interface is n’t contributing to get things done quick .
But Glances is perfect . It could easy supersede the iPhone Control Center — in fact , as John Gruber notes inhis review at Daring Fireball , the leftmost Glance already includes many of the same quick preferences buttons . And Glances would give developer a dead on target vent for pitch straightaway bit of selective information far beyond the capableness of the current readiness of cramped thingmajig .
Notifications decentralized
For all that Apple Watch is able to do , its handsome selling tip is still the ability to deliver timely alert to our wrists . But rather than just beam every alert and dismay from a special app , Apple allows user to be a chip more apprehensive with Apple Watch , more than the iPhone ’s mostly all - or - nothing glide slope .
The iPhone apprisal scheme involve a revamp . away from an occasional special place setting , every app has the same basic options — enforce a badge , set a speech sound , show on the lock covert — and if you ’re not keeping rail fanatically , they can pile up into a ugly slew . But Apple Watch could goad Apple to rethink its manner of speaking system , allowing for more customized notifications , like choosing which contacts you ’d care to get a line from .
Apple Watch also adds a routine of intelligence agency to our notifications . When you revoke your wrist to see one , a “ Short Look ” will initially show a abbreviated scrap of information , but if you tap that screen or keep your wrist raised , the display shifts to a “ Long Look , ” which offer a act more data and some fundamental interaction . And when you take you look on off , presentment are cut off completely .
Apple sum actionable notifications in iOS 8 , but an Apple Watch - trend scheme of tenacious and short looks would help give our notifications an extra level of utility , and pave the way for a sassy alert arrangement of smarter alerts that learns our habits , saves our stamp battery , and pushes the right notifications when we need them .
May the Force be with you
The Digital Crown is getting plenty of care , but even more interesting is how Apple solved the job of manipulating the sieve itself . The iPhone has prepare us to think of all screens in terms of multitouch , but the Apple Watch ’s screen is just too small for more than one finger at a time . Instead of hint and gesture , Apple introduced Force Touch , an invisible layer of the interface accessible by a deep press on the screen . It ’s already made it to the MacBook ’s new trackpad , and it would be gooselike not to believe it ’s coming to the iPhone , too .
Using Force Touch for the first sentence is one of those eureka moments , simplify the way our fingers interact with the screen while also append functionality . It ’s not unlike how the right mouse click further simplified the GUI on our computers , but on the iPhone it could be even more than a quicker way to get at additional ascendency and menus , giving developers another gesture to work with besides tap , holds , and swipe .
Imagine access Evernote ’s web clipper or VSCO ’s filter with just a public press , or calling up Spotlight lookup or the Notification Center without swipes . Force Touch is something of a requirement on Apple Watch , but on the iPhone ( much like the MacBooks ) , it could open up the user interface in knock-down new direction .
Reach out and Touch someone
One of Apple Watch ’s three main part is connectivity , and to that death , it utilize a correctitude method of communicating that lets users contact each other with taps , sketches , and split second . It ’s a neat way to add an extra level of exclusivity to Apple Watch , but if Apple is serious about Digital Touch as a new generation of messaging , it needs to play it to the iPhone .
It seems like a no - brainier — Digital Touch is n’t the kind of killer feature like Siri or FaceTime that ’s inevitably go to oblige anyone to buy an Apple Watch , but contribute to the exist iMessage juggernaut it very well could be . Apple Watch would still be the only way to send off your heartbeat and SOS - style taps , but expanding the sketching function of Digital Touch to the iPhone would only make Apple Watch that much more useful .
It did n’t take long for the iPhone to make its impact felt on the Mac , and we ’re likely to see a exchangeable sphere of influence with Apple Watch . Which is good , because by the metre all of the preorders are filled , the next iPhone will probably already be embark .
