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Apple Researching Stylus Concepts with Optical Tracking and Haptic Feedback
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I dont get why so many are so vehemently against this?
It is not like apple os going to force you to use and only use a stylus to access the device.
It's like so many things people thought they didn't need or want, camera-phones, retina screens.
why the hate?
It is not like apple os going to force you to use and only use a stylus to access the device.
It's like so many things people thought they didn't need or want, camera-phones, retina screens.
why the hate?
I knew it~!!!
I predicted this AGES ago~!! And the first company that is going to be wetting itself -- WACOM.
Just as Apple stole the show away from NOKIA, it's going to do the same with WACOM. Why?
Because those arrogant a$$hats at Wacom are dragging their butts and capitalising off their 'monopoly' in the industry. That's right -- they produce the best tablets, but they aren't producing what they ~CAN~ and offering it at a reasonable price.
Furthermore, there have been quality concerns lately surrounding WACOM's USB connectors.
So I predict Apple is going to PWN pressure-sensitivity and develop an iPad with pressure sensitivity -- that will absolutely KILL WACOM'S CINTIQ line... as well as the rest of its products.
WACOM better start making some attractive (and affordable!) products REAL soon!!
I predicted this AGES ago~!! And the first company that is going to be wetting itself -- WACOM.
Just as Apple stole the show away from NOKIA, it's going to do the same with WACOM. Why?
Because those arrogant a$$hats at Wacom are dragging their butts and capitalising off their 'monopoly' in the industry. That's right -- they produce the best tablets, but they aren't producing what they ~CAN~ and offering it at a reasonable price.
Furthermore, there have been quality concerns lately surrounding WACOM's USB connectors.
So I predict Apple is going to PWN pressure-sensitivity and develop an iPad with pressure sensitivity -- that will absolutely KILL WACOM'S CINTIQ line... as well as the rest of its products.
WACOM better start making some attractive (and affordable!) products REAL soon!!
HOLY.... I just had a geekgasm.
PREORDER??? Sure I would... but the technology just seems too good to be true. Think I'm gonna wait till the real thing appears in a store for me to demo!
The Nintendo DS touchscreen is smaller than 3.5" and uses a stylus. You think that's stupid?
You mean to say that the stylus that comes with the Note has haptic feedback and has optical sensors that can pick up data beyond the threshold of the human eye, and can process that information within the stylus?So.. they want to copy Galaxy Note
And here I thought it was just a dumb capacitative pointer.
Why would it be stupid? Lots of people write little notes on those little yellow sticky post its and those are smaller than 3.5."
It would be great if I could just jot down a quick scribble to myself on phone using a built in stylus.
Of course some people are too short sighted to see the usefulness of a stylus. Until apple incorporates it with some cheezy marketing... magical ipen. lol
The pen (not an inert stylus) that comes with the Note is a WACOM tablet pen, with great accuracy and over 100 levels of pressure sensitivity.
Nope, it's not even close to being a dumb capacitive stick.
It uses electromagnetic resonance technology via a grid below the screen. This grid is used both to ascertain the pen's position and also powers the pen through resonant coupling so it needs no batteries.
The Apple optical version requires patterns in the screen which will lower the light transmission level. Its pen would also need a way to recharge (or change) its batteries.
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In your zeal to bash Apple and the deceased Steve Jobs, you miss entirely that companies routinely research and patent things they themselves may not implement in products.
It's about building a war chest of technology patents which or may not generate licensing revenue even if Apple doesn't bring it to market in iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch or trackpads.
I know. How dare he.
It's the simple fact that the iPad needs a stylus to stay competitive against the more feature rich tablets that are coming out now, and against the even more powerful tablets that are bound to show up in the near future. It doesn't matter how "elegant" the OS is, how everything "just works" together. If the hardware can't do what you need it to do, it's nigh on useless.
If you're an artist, and you can't draw with a pressure sensitive stylus because "Steve Jobs thought styluses were dumb", are you going to stick with Apple, or are you going to go for the ICS/Windows 8 tablet that lets you navigate the UI with multitouch finger stabbing AND offers a pen with 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity alongside it?
In this situation, the iPad doesn't "just work" for them, does it? So why would they continue to use it? To do light editing and check their email while being immersed in stylish grey Apple bling? Is that worth $500 to them? Probably not.
Most people who looked down upon the Note's stylus failed to realize it had a Wacom digitizer that gave it considerable amount of accuracy and pressure sensitivity.
I bought an iPad2 with the hopes of using a stylus for writing down notes on top of PowerPoint slides. It didn't have the accuracy I wanted and I switched back to pen and paper.
If an iPad was designed for stylus use like the Note was, I think it could become a huge hit among students and artists (can you imagine how awesome it would be if the iPad could connect wirelessly and act as an Intuos tablet?). Unfortunately, it seems so many people here are more concerned about pissing contests about who copied who or defending Steve Jobs/Apple/Android/Samsung/whomever or whatever rather than seeing the actual usefulness and application of the technology.
I bought an iPad2 with the hopes of using a stylus for writing down notes on top of PowerPoint slides. It didn't have the accuracy I wanted and I switched back to pen and paper.
If an iPad was designed for stylus use like the Note was, I think it could become a huge hit among students and artists (can you imagine how awesome it would be if the iPad could connect wirelessly and act as an Intuos tablet?). Unfortunately, it seems so many people here are more concerned about pissing contests about who copied who or defending Steve Jobs/Apple/Android/Samsung/whomever or whatever rather than seeing the actual usefulness and application of the technology.
What in the world are you talking about?? the ipad has to stay competitive??? against who? what a joke. the ipad is the ONLY tablet that matters.
I'm going to borrow from Apple fans' arguments here and just say that sale and market share do not necessarily correlate to the superiority of a product. How about the Transformer Prime TF700T?
The key word you're missing is "now". It is really successful and the dominating tablet by a huge margin at the moment. But I don't care if Apple really is an impeccable company that can do no wrong; if they remain complacent, then they'll suffer the consequences just like everyone else.
I'd really like to know that Apple has an iPad product strategy that includes stylus input for professionals and consumers alike. We acknowledge that many get by with 3rd party styli and Apple should acknlowledge this too. The probems with these are familiar: they are mushy crayons that obscure the input area (we want fine-tipped pens that glide without too much resistance on the surface); they do not offer accuracy and pressure sensitivity (though I personally can say that pressure sensitivity is nothing without cartographic precision); we'd like to not compromise portability, convenience, or elegance.
If I were brainstorming with Apple and identifying the stylus situation as both a real problem and opportunity, I would have a few questions for some engineers and lawyers. All of this as prelude to offering an iStylus.
Can we double the resolution of the capacitive sensor? Seems like the best time would have been when we doubled the LCD rez. More input detail would let us shrink our stylus down to half the current offerings and possibly use harder materials. This might end up being a workable stylus form factor.
Can we work with--or work around--Wacom technology? Their solution has been working for 15 years with very little compromise on the user side. The stylus is unpowered and cheap to produce. Super high resolution input with two end of the stylus. But a joint effort between Apple and Wacom could be an unstoppable force: one company makes products that sell like hotcakes despite having some consumer-only limitations, the other has supply chain problems but has a certain tried-and-true professional grade technology.
So my question for this forum is why is Apple trying to reinvent the wheel (where I think my ideas above do not). Nobody needs a styus with haptic feedback. Is it pride / company culture (we'll find our own way), iOS product strategy limitations (we can't appear to appeal to professionals) or are they limited legally (Wacom owns magnetic input) and as such have to innovate a new product, when existing tech exists?
If I were brainstorming with Apple and identifying the stylus situation as both a real problem and opportunity, I would have a few questions for some engineers and lawyers. All of this as prelude to offering an iStylus.
Can we double the resolution of the capacitive sensor? Seems like the best time would have been when we doubled the LCD rez. More input detail would let us shrink our stylus down to half the current offerings and possibly use harder materials. This might end up being a workable stylus form factor.
Can we work with--or work around--Wacom technology? Their solution has been working for 15 years with very little compromise on the user side. The stylus is unpowered and cheap to produce. Super high resolution input with two end of the stylus. But a joint effort between Apple and Wacom could be an unstoppable force: one company makes products that sell like hotcakes despite having some consumer-only limitations, the other has supply chain problems but has a certain tried-and-true professional grade technology.
So my question for this forum is why is Apple trying to reinvent the wheel (where I think my ideas above do not). Nobody needs a styus with haptic feedback. Is it pride / company culture (we'll find our own way), iOS product strategy limitations (we can't appear to appeal to professionals) or are they limited legally (Wacom owns magnetic input) and as such have to innovate a new product, when existing tech exists?
To be clearer as to what you want, please use "pen" instead of "stylus".
A "stylus" is a dumb tool... basically a stick. It takes the place of a finger touching touchscreens, or making a groove on clay on a pottery wheel, or for making cuneiform marks.
The industry uses "pen" to denote an instrument that interacts in some electronic way.
Apple's touch patents are about determining where a blunt finger is pointing at, and specifically mention ignoring smaller touch patches because they're likely to be just anomalies.
In other words, Apple is geared towards less resolution, not more.
Moreover, a capacitive touchscreen requires a relatively large capacitance to work, and a tiny point won't do it. (Some stylii try to fake this by having a larger area above a tiny point.)
That's why everyone tries to come up with an additional input method when they want more precision.
I think you're right: Apple tends to not want to license things if they can come up with something of their own.
Btw, Wacom pens don't use magnetic input. The stylus itself has digital circuitry inside that's powered from the grid behind the screen, and it transmits information back via its point to the grid to be processed. Kind of like an RF tag or toll pass transponder, only more sophisticated.
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Thanks for the advice. Though I'd really like a pen like on my Wacoms I use at work and at home, I also own various styli for my iPad. I would consider it progress to see Apple enable or engineer an improved stylus experience. I understand your clarification about the capacitive screen, but if Apple engineers approach a project like this open-mindedly I think they could solve this problem. They might need to rethink how they handle input, allow for different use modes (eg, when stylus taken out of a dock it would enable a mode that would listen only for a certain size input that is smaller than a finger), or open up the touch data to app developers who want access to it. All these are extremely unlikely, as is a Wacom collaboration. And Wacom seems stretched a little thin to create their own tablet at this point.
I rather enjoyed Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.
The Nintendo DS is not an argument for a pen phone. It is an absolutely awkward method of doing anything. I will submit (as I have earlier) that a pen type device (not a stylus stick) would be an awesome addition particularly in fields where drawings take center stage (e.g. Engineering and Architecture, among others). I still hold that the finger is the best tool for drag and drop over a pen or a stylus, particularly on screens smaller than 4".
Well if you've played Spirit Tracks you must admit that it definitely wouldn't be better to play that with your finger instead of the stylus and that the reason is partially because of the small screen?
Maybe the DS isn't an argument for a stylus based phone, but your statement appear to be a general one that a stylus is stupid on any screen smaller than 4" regardless of the type of device and that's what I'm arguing against.
Interesting tech, to be sure, and thanks for the info, though my original point that this patent application is not a copy of the Note stylus still stands.
Then don't use one. On the Galaxy Note you can use both, no doubt the same would be true of an iOS device with a stylus.
Agreed.
Then it's a good thing that you don't have to.
A pen is an ADDITIONAL means of input. Just like voice input. Or using a physical volume control. Or using the earbud switch to change tracks.
Sometime in the future, top smartphones and tablets will also recognize each bristle of a brush. They'll watch your hands for air gestures. They'll watch your face to read your lips or facial emotions or eyelid winks. They might even have a sense of smell, like some military prototypes that already sense fear nearby.
Humans do not use just one form of input or output. Neither will our devices.