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Apple may drop the Touch Bar from its next MacBook Pro

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You got the touch. Here's how to master your MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar.
Apple introduced the context-sensitive Touch Bar in 2016.
Photo: Graham Bower/Cult of Mac

According to reliable TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the next-gen MacBook Pro will come in 14- and 16-inch sizes, feature more ports and bring back the MagSafe charger in some form (!). And, of course,  the high-end laptops will run on new Apple Silicon chips.

But the first big MacBook Pro redesign in half a decade also do away with the Touch Bar, the controversial — and never entirely successful — innovation Apple debuted back in 2016.

3D Touch is dead. Long live Haptic Touch

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3Dtouch
Au revoir 3D Touch.
Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac

3D Touch, the pressure-sensitive screen tech ushered in by Apple, has officially met its end.

Introduced as one of the major new features on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, Apple said 3D Touch was going to take multi-touch into a whole new dimension. Jony Ive waxed poetic about the new peek and pop gestures 3D Touch would enable in an Apple video explaining the feature. With the unveiling of the iPhone SE this morning, 3D Touch is as good as dead and we can’t say we’re really going to miss it.

Access your App Store updates from the iOS 13 Home screen [Pro Tip]

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iOS 13 app updates
The quickest way to see your app updates in iOS 13.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Pro Tip: This to-do list hack turns your tasks into questions iOS 13 did away with the old Updates tab in the App Store, and replaced it with Apple Arcade. That’s pretty bad news if you don’t want to use Apple Arcade. But on the plus side, you can access your app updates from the Home screen using 3D Touch. And the good news is that, in iOS 13, you can also use this trick on the iPad.

How to use 3D Touch menus in iPadOS

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3D Touch shortcuts now work on the iPad.
3D Touch shortcuts now work on the iPad.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

3D Touch is dead. Long live 3D Touch! Even though Apple removed the 3D Touch hardware from iPhone 11, the company resurrected the feature via Haptic Touch on its latest devices (just the way it mimicked it with iPhone XR). And now that iPadOS is here, that means 3D Touch is coming to iPads (in the form of a medium-long press).

In the new iPad version of iOS, you can long-ish press on an app icon, and it will pop up the same 3D Touch menu as you would find on an iPhone. Let’s see how it looks.

3D Touch disappears, and that’s great for people who love it [Opinion]

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ipad 3d touch
Without the sacrifice of 3D Touch, this wouldn't be possible on iPad.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

I love 3D Touch. I use it all the time. It’s one of the handiest shortcuts on the iPhone. And now, with the iPhone 11, it’s gone. But I don’t care. Why? Because Haptic Touch is almost as good. Even better, thanks to Apple’s switch to Haptic Touch, you can use all those 3D Touch features on the iPad.

3D Touch a folder to see only apps with notifications

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Perhaps the greatest 3D Touch trick ever.
Perhaps the greatest 3D Touch trick ever.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

You’re going to L-O-V-E this tip. You know how sometimes you see a folder on your iPhone’s home screen, and there’s a red notification badge on the folder itself? That badge is a summary of all the unread notifications of the apps inside the folder. Of course, at this point you just ignore it, because you don’t want to swipe through the pages of never-used apps inside the folder, just to see which apps have unread alerts.

But what if there was a way to quickly see which apps in that folder have outstanding notifications. Well, there is! And you’re going to kick yourself when you see how easy it is.

Improved Taptic Engine could replace 3D Touch in iPhone 11

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3D Touch
The handy but not vital tricks that come with 3D Touch are reportedly going away.
Photo: Apple

Evidence continues to grow that the iPhone 11 will lack 3D Touch, and will instead include a smarter version of Haptic Touch — a fancy name for long-pressing on the screen.

Previous unconfirmed reports indicated Apple would kill 3D Touch to lower the cost of the 2019 models.