One of the author's frustrations is actually already present in iOS:
> There’s a super-easy clear all link which is fantastic and hits at my #1 pet peeve w/ iOS’s design: the iOS notifications give me more work to do, not less
If you force touch on the topmost (x) in the iOS notification dropdown, you get an option to clear all notifications.
However, I only recently discovered this myself, after using each iOS since beta 1, so it's not exactly a discoverable feature.
Apple has always done this, and it's frustrating. Another good example is how they've always only had one mouse button on desktop, because they claimed that having two or more was too complicated for users.
Well ... the problem is that having more than one button is actually useful, and when the buttons are hardware buttons at least they are discoverable. Instead, there's lots of functionality hidden behind Control-clicking and Option-clicking and maybe more that is very hard to discover on your own (and this goes back to the pre-OS X days even).
Force touch is similar in that the overall discoverable interface is too simple, and then the added functionality on top of that is way too hidden.
I got an iPhone X after having a 6+ (and several others back to the second-gen iPhone, the 3G). I immediately turned off Force Touch.
I find the cognitive load of having three unknown things happen at any time (touch, long touch, force touch, plus who knows whatever else kind of touch they may have) way, way too high, and the value non-existent.
It was also nearly impossible for me to know what did what, or how to get a long-touch separated from a force-touch.
I would be 100% content if Force Touch entirely disappeared. I don't see the problem it addresses and experienced first hand problems it causes. Example: I could hardly figure out how to move apps around in springboard (or whatever the home screen is called these days) or cancel apps in the task switcher with it on.
Maybe I'm a luddite, but I would really have preferred an iPhone 6+ "v2" with the same CPU and camera as the iPhone X - but none of the other stuff it brought (like color-changing OLED screen, nigh unusable Face ID, lack of a 3.5mm audio port). But, when your boss generously gives you an iPhone X it would be disrespectful not to use it.
Thank you kind sir! The force touch (x) is a god send and I never knew about it. I was just grumbling to myself yesterday about having to hit all these X's.
My biggest issue with the iPhone is all the hidden force touch controls that are never taught. I've had 3 different android phones and always come back to iphone.
> There’s a super-easy clear all link which is fantastic and hits at my #1 pet peeve w/ iOS’s design: the iOS notifications give me more work to do, not less
If you force touch on the topmost (x) in the iOS notification dropdown, you get an option to clear all notifications.
However, I only recently discovered this myself, after using each iOS since beta 1, so it's not exactly a discoverable feature.