Praise the deities of hardware and software. Apple’s just announced and shipping April 10 new MacBook features the completely new Force Touch trackpad. To whit, the just released OS X 10.10.3 14D98g developer seed includes APIs that work Force Touch — careful, you might like it too much.
Apple’s just updated and shipping now 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro also features Force Touch.
And, all of this Force Touch goodness originated with the last September’s Apple Watch introduction. Apple Watch arrives in nine countries — Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, the UK and the US — on April 24.
That said, OS X 10.10.3 contains new dev API (application programming interfaces) that bring Force Touch functionality to life:
Force click — Apps can have any button, control, or region on the screen respond to a press of stronger pressure. This Force click can provide a shortcut to additional functionality within the app.
Accelerators — Pressure sensitivity in the trackpad enables apps to give users greater control. For instance the fast-forward button in media playback can speed up as pressure increases.
See Also: iOS 8.3 Goes ‘Public,’ Polishes Messages
Pressure sensitivity — Drawing and other creative apps can take advantage of the pressure-sensing capabilities of the trackpad to make lines thicker or give the brush a changing style.
Drag and Drop — Apps can add the springLoaded property to their controls so they can react to a Force click gesture while in the middle of performing a drag, for instance to immediately open a new target for the drop.
For what it’s worth, third betas of iOS 8.3, Xcode 6.3 with Swift 1.2 and OS X Server 4.1 have also been seeded to devs.
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