How close are we to pressure-sensitive drawing?

[findwaldonow]

Is there anyone else who heard that Garageband was pressure-sensitive and wondered why nobody is talking about drawing? I can't pull the trigger on an iPad 2 without it. People are making really cool art on the IOS devices already and I think that the drawing and painting apps have come about as far as they can go without this. Clearly Apple is anti-stylus but even with a finger, pressure-sensitivity would make the experience so much more enjoyable. Any thoughts? Will pressure-sensitivity make a debut as an API for developers this year? How far from this can we possibly be?

 

[jclardy]

I think GarageBand's pressure sensitivity can only detect the initial impact. That works for keyboards and drums, but drawing does not rely on just the initial impact, but different pressure at any given point which the accelerometer can't measure.

 

[Stetrain]

Garage Band isn't really pressure sensitive, it just uses the accelerometer to detect a hard hit versus a soft one. You couldn't use that for drawing I don't think.

 

[kdarling]

It's not pressure sensitive. Apparently Garageband uses the accelerometer to determine how hard you tap on an instrument.

 

[bpd115]

Don't know what ended up happening after this but...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgTcyjzXfTg

 

[findwaldonow]

I did see that video. The only two real ways to do it I figure without something being built into the iPad's screen natively would be to have it detect the amount of surface area being covered when a cushy stylus like the one in the video is pressed against the screen. The other way would be a sophisticated stylus feeding data to the ipad which apple would likely not allow. Does anyone else think this would be a good feature to add or is the prosumer/graphic design crowd truly dead to Apple?