Apple Kills Force Touch on Apple Watch

I’m not the first to point this out, but with watchOS 7, Apple decided to remove Force Touch from the Apple Watch. I’ve been using watchOS 7 for a little more than 24 hours, and I already miss Force Touch a lot.

The Apple Watch was the first device to feature a pressure sensitive touch option, and it made a lot of sense. The display is so tiny that Force Touch was able to solve a lot of problems by effectively doubling the screen real estate for on screen controls. I used it all the time: editing my watch faces, clearing notifications quickly, accessing controls in apps like messages and calendar; the list goes on. I don’t know why on earth they would remove support for it on devices that have hardware dedicated to it, but it’s safe to assume that future models wont have it (I’m really not okay with this, but maybe I’ll be able to make peace with it if it allows them to make the watch noticeably thinner or markedly improve battery life).

Some people have suggested that Force Touch wasn’t widely used on the Apple Watch, but I disagree. I think nearly everyone used it: it was the only way to change your watch face from the watch or clear all your notifications at once. People who say otherwise are likely associating Force Touch too closely with 3D Touch (basically the same thing, they just called it something different for the iPhone). The argument is that not enough people used them because they were difficult to discover, but there’s a diction between 3D Touch and Force Touch and I think that distinction matters: 3D Touch enabled neat shortcuts and features but was ultimately superfluous and unnecessary for navigating the iPhone, but Force Touch enabled some very important functions that couldn’t be accessed otherwise and was nearly essential for navigating the Apple Watch.