[skh]

Your comment reminded me of Seve Jobs mocking the idea of a pen for iPads. You can’t trust that such statements are true or that even if true today that they will be true in a few years. Ideas, tech, beliefs change and sometimes companies publicly proclaim things that are just plain false.

[Arn_Thor]

This is a pet peeve of mine.. Steve didn't mock the idea of styluses in abstract, he didn't want it to be the default and only way people interact with their devices. So Apple made the operation of iPad be all about the touch experience. Now, later on Apple released a much improved stylus as an optional, secondary and not at all necessary input method. That has nothing to do with the truth or untruth of Job's statement, nor is it inconsistent with what he said.

[skh]

My recollection is different. The only thing I could find on Youtube substantiates your claim. I was wrong. Thank you for pointing this out. I think my overall point still stands though.

[jacobolus]

Q: How do you close applications when multitasking?

A: (Scott Forstall) You don't have to. The user just uses things and doesn't ever have to worry about it.

A: (Steve Jobs) It's like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it. In multitasking, if you see a task manager... they blew it. Users shouldn't ever have to think about it.

The point was that using a stylus as intermediary when doing basic interaction with a touchscreen is indirect/awkward and unnatural (the mouse is too, frankly), not that nobody should ever use a stylus for drawing.

Styluses clearly have a big precision (and visibility) advantage vs. tracking a whole fingertip touching/sliding around the screen (i.e. if we compare inherent human capabilities, not specific hardware), but relying on a stylus is also much more prescriptive about acceptable hand movements, and all of the stylus-first mobile devices pretty much suck compared to finger-based multitouch, in practice.

[mixmastamyk]

“No video on the iPod” was my thought.