iOS 9 supports ‘iPhone 6S’ Force Touch, may enhance iMessage, Keyboard & Apple Pay
Some of iOS 9's more important planned enhancements include split-screen apps on iPads, a new Home app for controlling HomeKit accessories, a new system-wide UI font, a mass transit directions service for the Maps app …
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands mid-cycle in an iOS 9 story that has already been framed as consolidation rather than expansion: earlier reporting had Apple's 2015 releases focused on quality, smaller apps, legacy device support and Rootless security, with the iPad getting its own multitasking push via split screen, picture-in-picture and keyboard-as-trackpad.
What's new here is the first concrete sign that iOS 9 is also being built to drive next-generation hardware: the OS ships with hooks for a pressure-sensitive display on the unannounced iPhone 6S, plus planned upgrades to iMessage, Keyboard and Apple Pay. Subsequent reporting fleshed out that input layer as a distinct implementation — different from the Watch and MacBook versions of Force Touch — before it was rebranded as the three-level '3D Touch' interface.
First-order effects
- App developers get a new system-level touch dimension to design against months before the 6S ships, meaning launch-day apps must decide whether to implement press-and-hold shortcuts or ship without them.
- Apple Pay, iMessage and the stock keyboard are positioned for enhancement inside the same release, tying the new input hardware to Apple's own services at launch.
Second-order effects
- Because the iPhone's Force Touch works differently from the Watch and MacBook implementations, developers maintaining apps across Apple platforms face divergent pressure-gesture APIs rather than one portable interaction model.
- Android OEMs and app makers watching the 6S launch face pressure to answer with equivalent hardware-plus-software input features, turning haptic/pressure sensitivity into a spec-sheet battleground.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, each fall iOS release increasingly functions as pre-installed enablement for that year's iPhone hardware — the OS announcement becoming a de facto preview of the device roadmap, a coupling visible again years later when iOS releases like iOS 18's customization and Control Center overhaul were framed around hardware capabilities.
The trend: Apple's annual iOS cycle is evolving into coordinated hardware-software launches where the OS reveal doubles as the software groundwork for that year's flagship iPhone.