I was reading that Apple has secured a patent for adding Force Touch to desktop mouses (which may see it added to the Magic Mouse 3), but then I see that Microsoft’s Research department has amazingly demonstrated “pre-touch” for touchscreen.

So now we’re talking about even more layers of multitouch interaction, both for touchscreens, trackpads and multitouch mice. 3D Touch, a more advanced version of Force Touch, is already in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, and adds a layer of shortcuts and actions to touchscreen actions.

Force Touch is already featured in the Apple Watch, MacBook Retina 2015, MacBook Pro Retina, and Magic Trackpad 2. But now “pre-touch” for touchscreens? Maybe we’ll finally get a hover function for alt-text on touchscreen browsers? Maybe we’ll be able to pinch and zoom without touching the screen? I can even imagine that pre-touch could enable 6DOF navigation of 3D interfaces, akin to 3dconnexion’s SpaceNavigator 3D mouse.

This will be the bee’s knees. What a time to be alive.