I can't speak to whether you're correct or not, but that feature is a massive time saver for me. It's one of the most compelling features that keeps me on their platform. I have large fingers and selecting text with 3D touch is incredibly easy compared to using the twin cursors offered by iOS/Android for that purpose.
I run into quite a number of folks who have no idea they have 3D touch though. Surprises them even more than me when I show them.
I don't use 3D touch for much else though, which sort of supports your assertion.
I wonder if better training by Apple could help? But it seems they’ve already accepted the tap-and-hold workaround for supporting some 3D Touch functionality on devices without 3D Touch.
Seems like 3D Touch, and iOS 7’s lightboxing parallax effect for backgrounds, was likely part of a broader vision by Ive and the design team to bring depth to a thin phone screen. It’s an admirable goal, but whether by lack of discoverability or lack of training, seems like it isn’t poised to be a widely-adopted technology.
Mobile is increasingly looking like desktop in terms of the gulf between "ordinary users" and "power users"; applications designed of one group are likely to be highly sub-optimal for the other, presenting developers with a difficult UX compromise. Most users understand the hamburger menu, which could be read as a sign of progress or a dismal failure.
Personally though I don't think 3D touch is any less discoverable than your right mouse button on a computer. If you have a 3D touch capable device you had to configure it at least once when you got a new device capable of it so you know it exists just like you know a right mouse button click state often exists (Macs don't even ship with obvious right-click capability, the OS has it disabled by default and neither of their mouse input types have an obvious right click mechanism just by looking at them)
It might help if Apple would put a manual in with the iPhone, instead of making every feature a treasure hunt.
Whenever I have to edit text on my work iPhone SE I almost want to text it to my personal phone, correct it there, then send it back. Editing without 3D Touch is a nightmare, especially on a smaller screen.
Because it doesn’t always fire my muscle memory has evolved to just press down harder to increase reliability. And it’s still only sees 90% of my hard presses.
Why wouldn’t a Long press, for example, not work for that? Or just a dedicated button to switch to a cursor?
A dedicated button wouldn’t be slightly more inconvenient but would be ridiculously more discoverable and make it available for people who have phones older than the 3D Touch supported ones.
I do not own an Iphone to test though.
When the video get taken down, it showed a large device resembling a 3d printer where the phone is precisely mounted while a probe carefully presses on the glass in multiple places to calibrate touch sensitivity. This works in conjunction with a special app running on the attached iMac. The process takes 15 minutes if it works the first time--the instructions indicate that it might fail the first time.