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iPad Pro and Apple Pencil Compared to Surface Pro 4 and Surface Pen
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How can the Surface "win" if it's "Really no comparison."
It's a laptop vs a tablet, so people are comparing two totally different things.
It's a laptop first and foremost...with an added touch interface.
IPad Pro is a tablet first and foremost...with a keyboard.
I love the Surface Pro. I even have the original (3-4 hours battery, still a great machine anyway) and I'm a big fan of the idea and MS's implementation.
But this is a comparison of the pens, and my experience so far is that the Pencil is clearly superior to MS's N-trig implementation (even with the SP4 improvements).
-Linearity: The SP4 pen still has exessive wobble/stair-step effect on diagonals/curves unless you draw fast strokes. Might not matter for note-taking so much, but for art the ability to maintain linearity even when drawing slowly can be really important.
-Pressure: The Pencil pressure response seems to be excellent, though at the moment this can be hard to see because the software hasn't caught up. If you create a custom brush in Procreate you can get impressive pressure resolution over a huge range of stroke size. SP4 pressure is improved over SP3 but I'm still not entirely happy with it. In addition the Pencil has a zero initial activation pressure (any contact is registered, N-trig ignores extremely light strokes).
-Tip contact vs input registration: the Pencil has placed the emitter at the very tip by having the emitter itself actually fit inside the replaceable tip. The SP4 pen still shows some Wacom-like offset between the contact point and the registered input point when you tilt the pen, which you generally do when writing/drawing. I've tested a few iPPs and they all have what looks to be nearly perfect tracking of the actual contact point, which (IMO) eliminates the need for the hover cursor when drawing.
-Latency: The difference isn't huge, but when the software is efficiently-written and taking advantage of prediction the latency is industry leading.
-Glass strength: The SP4 glass is extremely thin and I can't help worrying about how much it flexes and presses on the LCD when I use the pen with any decent amount of pressure. This may not be a real issue, but I'm also not a fan of how much is distorts the image around the point you're writing/drawing on.
I've only had it for a few days, but at the moment I'd say that only the Cintiq can currently beat the Pencil due to its razor-straight linearity. (and YMMV depending on how much the Wacom parallax bothers you).
But this is a comparison of the pens, and my experience so far is that the Pencil is clearly superior to MS's N-trig implementation (even with the SP4 improvements).
-Linearity: The SP4 pen still has exessive wobble/stair-step effect on diagonals/curves unless you draw fast strokes. Might not matter for note-taking so much, but for art the ability to maintain linearity even when drawing slowly can be really important.
-Pressure: The Pencil pressure response seems to be excellent, though at the moment this can be hard to see because the software hasn't caught up. If you create a custom brush in Procreate you can get impressive pressure resolution over a huge range of stroke size. SP4 pressure is improved over SP3 but I'm still not entirely happy with it. In addition the Pencil has a zero initial activation pressure (any contact is registered, N-trig ignores extremely light strokes).
-Tip contact vs input registration: the Pencil has placed the emitter at the very tip by having the emitter itself actually fit inside the replaceable tip. The SP4 pen still shows some Wacom-like offset between the contact point and the registered input point when you tilt the pen, which you generally do when writing/drawing. I've tested a few iPPs and they all have what looks to be nearly perfect tracking of the actual contact point, which (IMO) eliminates the need for the hover cursor when drawing.
-Latency: The difference isn't huge, but when the software is efficiently-written and taking advantage of prediction the latency is industry leading.
-Glass strength: The SP4 glass is extremely thin and I can't help worrying about how much it flexes and presses on the LCD when I use the pen with any decent amount of pressure. This may not be a real issue, but I'm also not a fan of how much is distorts the image around the point you're writing/drawing on.
I've only had it for a few days, but at the moment I'd say that only the Cintiq can currently beat the Pencil due to its razor-straight linearity. (and YMMV depending on how much the Wacom parallax bothers you).
No, the Surface Book is a laptop. The Surface Pro 4 is a laptabltopletabopletop.
I think it really depends if you do you work in coffee shops or an office.
For me, the surface is a desktop I can travel with. If I want a ipad, I use my phone.
Watching the videos, the surface seems to outperform the Apple. While the pencil looks better on the ipad pro, the inking looked better on the surface. And idea of sharing your draft with you Mac Adobe Creative Suite as a feature is total biased nonsense - it is literally demonstrating that the iPad pro can't do the job that the surface completes.
Clearly, the Pencil and iPad Pro with some apps will be a new must-have combo for graphic artists
Er, no. They're not passing it off as anything but a bigger, more professional iPad. I'm sure they've been working on tablet/laptop hybrids for years in their lab, but this is not it. When they do come out with it, you'll know.
I don't think it's worth being obsessed with it, but it does feel like a bit of a miss. Especially for Apple. If the point is to make the Pencil writing experience as natural as possible (which they've done brilliantly in some ways—I played with one in the stores and loved it) then not being able to quickly erase without hunting for the onscreen erase tool is an added layer of complexity. Sure, if you're using one program all the time and you have a nice workflow, then it might seem like a gimmick. But if you're moving between apps with different tool layouts, it'd be nice to have the option for a consistent erase function, if that's your preference. Plus it's fun. And Apple is usually pretty on top of that stuff.
That didn't look good for MS, and that watch is ugly what was she thinking when she bought that?
Still, for me its all about: can i start AND finish a professional drawing on this tablet. Sure, i can run into all kind of apps. But I want to work in Photoshop where i have 10+ years of experience with. With an Surface Pro I can start and finish an 3840x2160px drawing in CMYK - 300 dpi, and do this all in a full Adobe Photoshop. If needed, i can acces Adobe Illustrator and After Effects to for some extra effects.
But, i am happy this iPad Pro is going to break open the market for much more devices in the very near future so i can work on my 27" cintiq at day, and finish some stuff on the couch in the evening.
But, i am happy this iPad Pro is going to break open the market for much more devices in the very near future so i can work on my 27" cintiq at day, and finish some stuff on the couch in the evening.
Yup. I needed something where I could carry a project from sketch to the final output in one place. Apple took far too long to get anything out and when they did it was just a bigger iPad.
I'm sure the Pencil is great. I know iOS isn't.
When I found the Surface Pro 3 everything fell into place. Once I broke away from Apple's very restricted vision of the tablet I never looked back.
Oh, if you use the B nibs for the Surface it feels a lot nicer.
The pencil has 2048 levels of pressure?
I'm sure Apple would have mentioned this. I've never seen any specs on the site.
What I take away from these videos is that drawing on a tablet is continuing to get better and better and both offerings from Apple and Microsoft are fantastic. Apple does certain things better with the iPad Pro and Microsoft does other things better with the Surface Book/Pro. However both are fantastic products and you just need to find which device in whole is better for you. Neither one "sucks" and neither one is "perfect". Both are incredible when thinking what we all had 5 years ago (when the iPad was first introduced) or 3 years ago (when the Surface Pro was first introduced). Just think about what we'll have in 3 and 5 years from now!
Technology will continue to improve and I for one am very happy that Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Google and others are continuing to one up each other as the end result will be better products for the consumer across the board.
Technology will continue to improve and I for one am very happy that Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Google and others are continuing to one up each other as the end result will be better products for the consumer across the board.
