[nullflux]

I really want to love this. iPad hardware just doesn't deliver.

The problem isn't that nice drawing software like this doesn't exist, it's that styli on iPad still suck. The capacitive screen (even on "new" iPad) only has about a 6mm capacitive resolution, so you're stuck fudging the fck along with a sausage for a stylus. Ars had a good review[1] on the current state of styli, and they said much the same. I've personally owned about four iPad styli and none come close to what I am capable of with an old Graphire.

We need pressure sensitivity, finer resolution, and proper calibration for this to work well. Everyone wants to replace drawing stuff with iPad (including myself) but until iPad supports Wacom-esque pressure sensitivity, feel and resolution on iPad everything you do there will likely be too rough compared to what you could get with a Bamboo on Painter/Illustrator or what could be drawn directly on paper, scanned in and retraced with said Wacom. Even the Galaxy Note / Lenovo Tablet / etc. are better for this.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2012/03/does-the-stylus...

[schiffern]

I agree completely, but there's something very important that Apple has to to – not bundle a stylus. That's right: they should build Wacom technology into the tablet without including a pen or a place to hold it.

Why? For the same reason that Macs still come defaulted to "one button" mode – to restrain software developers. You see, application developers for Mac can count on a significant percent of their user base being completely without an alternate click, so they are forced to expose functionality as buttons instead of stuffing it all in the context menu.

If Apple bundled a stylus with the iPad tomorrow, thousands of developers would add support for it for "gee whiz" reasons. If the user has to purchase one separately, it won't be used gratuitously. Instead, only the professional apps (which actually benefit from a stylus) would use them.

[flogic]

I feel the one button thing is stupid, but I agree on the stylus.

[icefox]

After seeing study after study found that most people never right click it is hard to find one button stupid. I recall one KDE usability study I sat in on where some actions were only accessible via the right click menu. The user (who was a kde developer!) couldn't figure out how to complete all of the tasks because the actions were hidden and he happen to not right click on the "right spot" to see them. For the maintainer of the application it was an eye opening experience.

[schiffern]

I completely disagree, but not for the reasons you might expect. Most people attribute Apple's decision to stubbornness, laziness, arrogance, vanity, or "just being different." It's not any of those, but Apple is so tight-lipped about their decision making that no one articulates why they make the choices they do. Their "one button" strategy is brilliant, and here's why:

As I said, the real reason Apple needs one button is to prevent interface designers from getting lazy. Apple (and their third-party developers) know that most people never change the defaults.

However, they don't really want to ship single-button hardware. Here's what most people don't realize: Apple knows it's a less expressive device. Back when they shipped real one button mice, their advanced users were forced to BYOHID. The hardware that Apple shipped was wasted. That sucks.

To resolve this dilemma Apple devised the Mighty Mouse (later the Magic Mouse). Since the "right-click" was in software they could keep the one-button default but have the hardware magically transform into a multi-button mouse for advanced users. Surely many will BYOHID anyway (this happens with PCs too), but two buttons satisfy many more users.

It's a neat solution to a technical and social problem.

[mikeash]

I agree with your point in general, but must nitpickishly correct your comment on Macs and right click. Every Apple trackpad and mouse sold today supports right click out of the box, and has done for years. Apple hasn't sold a one-click input device in a long time.

[fourspace]

Correction, they support right-click if you enable it. One-click is the default, and most users never change it.

[RandallBrown]

I don't think that's true. I don't remember enabling it on any mac I've bought, but I remember having to enable tap to click.

[schiffern]

That's right. When you first plug in an Apple Mouse or Magic Mouse it is in one-button mode. However, any multi-button mouse will have all the buttons enabled. This is probably why some people think that multi-button mode is the default.

So let me clarify – all apple hardware comes by default with the secondary click disabled.

[mikeash]

I have never seen this. Are you sure it's off by default?

[fourspace]

It was the case when I purchased my magic mouse last year, and when my wife bought one a few days ago. Prior to that she'd never plugged in a mouse to her MacBook Pro.

[mikeash]

Huh, maybe the external devices are different. Built-in trackpads come configured to use two-fingered clicking as right click by default, as far as I've seen.

[t_kozak]

There is kind of interesting project out there: http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/ipen

They seem to use totally different approach - an external motion detector, proximity sensors which gives this tool much better precision. It's this kind of technology as used in kindle touch. Although it's still early for them, idea behind this is quite interesting.

[hristov]

These pens use ultrasound triangulation. I have tried the earlier paper versions of them and they are eerily accurate. I was just thinking someone should use a pen like this for the ipad and it seems that someone already has.

[omaranto]

Some people have accepted the situation and literally use a sausage as stylus: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/11/south-korean-iphone-users...

[raquo]

I came here to say the same. I really hoped that would be an advanced version of Noteslate https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=note...

Sad that they don't even have what can be called a website anymore.

[nikcub]

Yep - there is a reason Wacom tablets are still so expansive. You wouldn't be able to get that resolution at an iPad size for cheap enough - but it is only a matter of time (now that there is a higher scale of demand from Apple and other tablets)

[ben_straub]

I used to work for Wacom, and there's another reason they're so expensive: volume. Think how much a retina display would cost if, say, Samsung made it in 10k-per-year quantities, and you'll have an idea. Wacom just isn't a big enough fish.

They also have an insanely high threshold for parts quality, but without the volume to keep manufacturers making the same parts, they keep running out. The new Cintiq[1] has one of the nicest displays you'll ever see, but it will likely always be in short supply.

[1] http://www.wacom.com/en/Products/Cintiq/Cintiq24HD.aspx

[brohee]

My Asus Eee Note disagrees, and is seen as a Wacom tablet when USB connected to my comp as an added bonus.

[nikcub]

the real wacoms have 1025 lines per inch, your Aus Eee Note doesn't have 1025 in the entire touchscreen

the component cost of the touchscreen in the Asus is around $40. I have the larger model here. the component cost for the wacom touch interface and controller (which you can't even really buy) would be in the hundreds of dollars (for a 7").

if you have used a real wacom you will know what I am talking about, the feeling and accuracy is simply awesome. I can't wait until the technology makes it into consumer tablets

[stcredzero]

I know exactly what you are talking about. I have a tablet PC with a Wacom digitizer, and it is awesome. Also, it's been around since 2001.

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=tc1100

[nikcub]

I remember that tablet, had no idea it was Wacom

they are doing a lot more integrations now, though most are pen:

http://www.wacom-components.com/english/partner/index.html

[wmf]

Beware; "now" appears to be 2009 and most of those products were discontinued once the iPad came out.

[jacobolus]

Has anyone tried one of these? http://adonit.net/product/jot-pro/

It looks like a somewhat different design than all the other styluses, and so might work better, but I haven’t seen any direct reviews except their marketing material, which is hardly impartial.

[nullflux]

Yes. I own one. It is by far the best of the capacitive styli, hands down. It isn't perfect but is the closest thing you will get to perfect without dropping $100+ for something like the XO[1], which is a bit buggy from what I've seen and you are stuck with their software/SDK. I just won't pay an extra $150 for a stylus. At that point I might as well go the Wacom-equipped Android route.

Even with the Adonit, though, iPad is still no match for a Wacom. It's not even close.

Go on YouTube and just search for Adonit Jot Pro reviews. There are lots of impartial people and accurate action.

[1] http://www.by-zero.com/

[Zaheer]

I have one. Same deal. Nothing comes close to classic pen and paper. I've actually stopped using it now as well.

[philwebster]

While looking for a precise stylus I came across this one as well: http://www.cregle.com/ It looks like it solves a lot of the gripes with normal capacitive styluses, but I haven't tried it.

[nullflux]

This is the same hardware as the XO stylus in a different case. Same OEM for both. They look great, the demos are wonderful, but user reviews say that they don't work well in the upper third of the screen and require frequent recalibration.

[philwebster]

Interesting, I hadn't seen the XO before. It's too bad these ultrasonic styluses don't live up to the hype. I would love to take notes on a new iPad and ditch the paper notebooks completely. It'd be sweet if Apple shipped a solution, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

[justjimmy]

If you go to Cregle's iPen Kickstarter page - Comments section - you'll see it didn't live up to expectations. (Google iPen, should be first result).

Calibration issues, broken, etc. I was really looking forward to a precise stylus (pressure sensitivity is number 2 priority to me), and I'm still waiting…

[xerula]

The low resolution and lack of pressure sensitivity is frustrating. It feels like I'm drawing with a chalk stick. We can zoom into the image to add detail, but lose sight of the overall structure.

However, as an artist, there is sometimes something to be gained from embracing the confines of a particular medium and learning to work within them. And there are serious artists working with the ipad, e.g. David Hockney:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/8066839/...

[trafnar]

One of my customers does pretty great iPad art. You can read about him on our blog. http://blog.imagesnap.com/post/19713596419/from-ipad-to-tile

[xerula]

Only just noticed your reply. Thanks for the link, I enjoyed the art. :)

[commieneko]

I'm a lot more interested in stroke dynamics and zooming than I am in resolution and pressure sensitivity. I don't mean to say that those features wouldn't be welcome, but no real world tool can do everything. And limitations are often the foundation of style and expression.

I spent several years drawing with silverpoint and while it was an excruciating experience, the results were often gorgeous; especially as the drawing "ages" and the silver tarnishes. Talk about your non-intuitive interface.

[malnourish]

Can your share some of your art? I'd like to see what silverpoint is.

[commieneko]

Most of that stuff is in storage in another state. I'm not sure how silverpoint would scan. It would probably just look like a pen or pencil drawing.

Basically it is drawing with a piece of silver wire. The mark is very faint, especially on paper. To get enough silver to deposit, you often use paper covered with a ground of some kind, like gesso or very find sand or grit in a sizing of some kind.

Over time the silver tarnishes and darkens, but it has a luster about it that would be very difficult to photograph or scan. If you don't want the silver to tarnish, you can coat the work with a modern sealer, but no one really knows how that will age over the years.

One of the ways of drawing with silver point is to "glaze" over the work by tracing and retracing over the forms, to build up a fusion of the marking material. This can result in a very cloudy, diffuse rendering that still has a definite graphic look to it.

Very time consuming and it's hard to judge when to stop since the image is so faint.

One artist I knew used to spray the silver with chemicals to "develop" the image to a certain point, and then neutralize it when it had reached the darkness level he wanted, and then he sealed it.

You can also draw with gold wire, the markings are a faint yellow brownish color, but they have a definite luster to them. The gold doesn't tarnish like the silver, so you don't have the change over time. Depends on the effect you want I guess.

There was an artist in recent years who did these very large semi-photo real silver and gold point drawings. Several feet across. A reproduction simply cannot do them justice. They are very faint, and the light changes as you walk around them.

I've actually thought about doing a digital installation piece using Processing that has drawings and photos that exhibit apparent change according to the light and the viewer's orientation to the work. And of course with digital, you could have the actual image itself change, and not just the viewing apparition.

[commieneko]

Here is a link to a drawing by the artist I mentioned in my reply:

http://art.wmmhs.org/marrero/drawing_class/silverpoint/denni...

This would probably be considered a "Not Safe For Work" image, so be aware.

The photo really doesn't do justice to what these look like. The image as perceived in the room is almost latent, no where near this explicit. Very faint, but definitely there.

A very difficult medium to work with.

[radarsat1]

I wonder if the resolution issue could be improved by combining inertial sensing in the stylus with the position data from the capacitive display. You should be able to get sub-"pixel" resolution by using multiple sensors this way, though I'm not sure how well it would work in practice, with inertial drift, etc. It might be pretty good though! Worth trying I bet.

[commieneko]

I would be willing to bet they are doing some kind of inertial modeling in their stroke dynamics right now. There is some kind of "Dynadraw" algorithm in their now that is smoothing and adjusting stroke thickness. Some it seems to be based on pointer velocity, but there is something else going on that I can't quite put my finger on ... as it were.

[aoberoi]

Noting that the interaction you are accustomed to using a Wacom tablet is far more controlled and rich, I don't think thats the point here at all.

Every artistic medium has constraints, and every artist is used to this fact whether he is a painter or a sculpter. The iPad's input device (capacitive screen) is one such constraint here. What I think is great about this app is how great it can be at capturing a good number of important expressive pieces that are possible in the medium and presenting them as easy to understand tools. In using the app for about 30 mins I felt pretty great about what I was able to create in comparison to other apps on the same medium (iPad apps).

[Gring]

Note that while the iPad does indeed have a capacitive sensor element about every 6mm, the resolution when using a finger or stylus equals one pixel.

The reason all those stylus balls are so big is to always be close enough to a at least one sensor element.

[yojimbo311]

There appears to be a project on Kickstarter to create an open source pressure sensitive pen. The current design doesn't look like it incorporates a "higher precision" tip like the iPen (http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/ipen) or Jot Pro (http://adonit.net/product/jot-pro/) that have already been mentioned, but it could be promising.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/option8/pressurepen-open...

[niels_olson]

> The capacitive screen (even on "new" iPad) only has about a 6mm capacitive resolution

I told this to a rather well known analytic design guy, before he went to Frisco to lecture at Apple before the release of iPad 2: the input resolution needs to be a lot better.

16 months on, no improvement. I can only hope tablet designers have boxed themselves in: there's not much more to improve on this thing. I've got the new ipad, the first gen ipad, and the touchpad. They're all stone cold awesome. But their drawing inputs still fail miserably compared to a sharp pencil. Hell, most erasers are more precise than a tablet.

[charlieok]

I recently wondered:

“What hardware improvements would I want in a tablet? The iPad can already do 3D games, resolution limited more by your retina than the screen, wireless networking, sensors for touch, position, orientation, acceleration, sound, front and rear facing cameras...”

I think you just provided a great answer to that question.

The ability to write, or draw, with a high degree of precision is something I think a lot of people are going to want.

[kijin]

Dang, I was finally hoping for a worthy replacement for the aborted Microsoft Courier.

If it's possible to have a tablet with high enough display resolution that you can't see individual pixels, why can't we also have a touchscreen with high enough touch resolution?

[trafnar]

A bit of trivia: The team that made Paper was involved in Courier at Microsoft.

[geon]

> The capacitive screen (even on "new" iPad) only has about a 6mm capacitive resolution

What do you mean? I can definitely draw smaller features than 6 mm.

[gfosco]

Pretty sure he means that while you can draw smaller than 6mm, you won't be able to position it accurately. I've tried using capacitive touchscreens and styluses, and they are not precise at all.

[commieneko]

Your fingers don't have that kind of accuracy either. What you do have is precision in your finger/hand/arm system. Moment arm dynamics are far more important in precise drawings than addressable accuracy. The best digital drawing tools I've found make use of stroke dynamics rather than sensor sampling to produce precise and high quality strokes.