Everything that feels obvious now, once didn't. This goes double for smartphones: All the pinch-to-zoom, touch-friendly interactions we now take for granted and marvel at a two-year-old's ability to figure it out, didn't always seem so natural. In 2007, when Apple released the first iPhone, everything about it seemed crazy.
In his review for the New York Times, David Pogue described a few of the features:
With eight years' hindsight, this seems like a remarkable waste of column inches. But these new gestures, the new mode of interaction, were actually the story of the iPhone. And people needed to know how to use these new-fangled devices.
With the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, we're back in the same position. The devices are, for most purposes, the same as they were last year... and the same as they were the year before and the year before that. The specs change, but the iPhone does the same things the same way to the same effect, year after year after year.
At a certain screen size, that stops working. I don't know exactly where the tipping point is, but it's probably less than 4.7 inches and it's definitely less than 5.5. We need more from our phones than we used to, and we need it to be easier at least until we evolve super-long thumbs to better poke our screens. So far, though, the interface is like we've kept adding channels to the rotary dials on our 1950s TVs.
This year's iPhone 6s Plus is a terrific phone in virtually every respect. (So is the smaller iPhone 6s.) If you liked the iPhone before, you'll like it even better now. If you didn't, well, there's still good news: The iPhone 6s really isn't dramatically better than the best Android phones on the market, the new Moto X, the many new Samsung Galaxy S and Note devices, or presumably the various Nexus devices. Those are all big, great phones; so is the 6S Plus. If you happen to want an iPhone, well, this one's the best ever. (Duh.) If not, you're (finally) not missing much.
What's most powerful about the iPhone 6s is that it's showing off the first big interaction change since multitouch. That's not bravado, at least not just bravado—it's fact. Few of these features are brand-new to Apple, but Apple has proven over and over that it can turn the industry's rudder like no other company. If what Apple says goes, then everyone else's phones are about to change. When you boil it all the way down, they're becoming easier to use with one hand—or no hands. That's how big screens stop being compromises, and start being the only choice that makes any sense.
The new paradigm is partly about 3D Touch, the new pressure-sensitive display and corresponding software. Right now, 3D Touch means a couple of very specific things. You can press slightly harder than usual on an app icon, and a sort of right-click menu will show up offering quick access to certain actions or portions of the app. These are called Quick Actions, and when they do their job they keep you from tapping that button in the top-right corner, then searching through menus; you just go straight to your destination. There's also Peek and Pop, which are like opening a window to see what's outside, and then diving through it to be part of a new world. You tap lightly on an email, or photo, or link, to preview it; press harder, and you jump to their proper app or place.
All this stuff is useful, where it works. It just doesn't work many places. Most apps don't have Quick Actions, so you just get a buzz when you hard-press on their icon. Nor do most support Peek and Pop yet. If you use Apple's built-in apps, there's already lots to like here, but third parties aren't really showing up yet. And when there are still too many apps that don't even properly support the big screen of the iPhone 6, I wouldn't hold your breath. The tech that powers 3D Touch is incredibly powerful, and has the potential to genuinely change the way we think about our apps and phones, but right now it just makes taking selfies faster. (Which is good, I guess!)
"Press harder" isn't the only new way to use your iPhone, though. There's also Siri, which is finally almost sort of a little bit kind of useful, and is very much the centerpiece of the iPhone's experience. Everything complicated you want to do—search in Apple Music, look up the weather, text somebody—is just easier to do with Siri now. With "Hey Siri," the always-listening co-processor chip, you don't even need to touch your phone anymore. Well, you do, because Hey Siri doesn't work all the time, but you get the idea. When you can't speak, you can swipe right or down on the homescreen and get to Search (how has Apple, lord and baron of branding, not come up with a better name for this?), the panel that helps you find whatever app or information you need. (Most of this is available in all iOS 9-supported devices, by the way.) All these things are about the same thing: getting you places, faster. Hitting the homescreen less. Downloading fewer apps. Spending less time moving the phone up and down in your hands trying to streeeeeetch toward the icons. Just doing more with your phone, with less work.