The Apple Pencil is AMAZING!

[highdefjunkie]

Next week? Please tell

OK, I'm being a little optimistic about next week. I'm hoping it arrives on the 19th. Oh... and Yeah, I'm one of the idiot who paid the extra money to have it shipped overnight. I WANT IT THAT BAD!!!!!

Processing Items
Delivers: 19 Nov, 2015 - 23 Nov, 2015 by Next Day Shipping, before noon

I bet I'll luck out and pick one up at the store before this order ships. (Fingers crossed)

 

[highdefjunkie]

Call me crazy, but weren't there reports from users that when they tested the pencil, the pro screen had a matte/grip to it? I don't see/feel any difference compared to my iPad Air 2?

 

[Lobwedgephil]

How'd you manage that?

I was one of those that had the option to pickup in store when preorders went live, manager called me yesterday saying pencil and keyboard didn't arrive, but I could keep the order open and I will get them when they get to store, so I did. They called today saying keyboard arrived and that the pencil will be there tomorrow.

 

[Retrogecko]

Call me crazy, but weren't there reports from users that when they tested the pencil, the pro screen had a matte/grip to it? I don't see/feel any difference compared to my iPad Air 2?

Save one for me too! I'm in the Nov 19-27 group!

 

[Atomic Walrus]

Just went and tried the Pencil in store (displays were set up this time). I own a Cintiq 21UX, Surface Pro 1, and Note 4. I've tested the SP3 and SP4 extensively as well. Here are some (probably TL;DR) thoughts:

-Linearity (slow line wobble) is way better than SP3 or SP4, and is also better than Wacom's Penabled digitizers (lower end digitizers for 3rd party devices, SP1/2, Note series, Yoga Pro, anything that has Wacom and is not a Cintiq). It's not perfect; At extremely low speeds I can barely make out the stair-step pattern, but only because I knew exactly what I'm looking for. In practice I believe that linearity is just slightly below the Cintiq and vastly superior to any of the mobile options. I would call it a non-issue, and I find linearity to be a problem on every version of the SP (Wacom and N-trig).

-General accuracy seemed very good. I can't comment on pixel-perfect, but I was able to write and draw much smaller than I'm used to on my SP1 and the lack of an on-screen floating cursor didn't harm my ability to draw at all, which means there's no issue with parallax or drift.

-Hardware tracking latency is fast, but brush latency varies significantly from app to app. Notes is very responsive and writing/sketching/algebra with its pencil tool feels impressively realistic. Adobe Sketch had a much laggier brush engine which doesn't surprise me because while Photoshop may be industry standard, I don't associate Adobe with efficient software or particularly good brush engines

I really wanted to try Sketchbook and Procreate as I already know they both have fairly responsive brush engines, but they were not installed as others have reported. (Aside: Sketchbook on my Air still seems like it hasn't been updated to use the "proper" brush engine that it runs on Android and Win/OSX, hopefully they'll resolve that quickly).

I would say that the hardware tracking is faster than Wacom's Penabled tech and the SP4 N-trig implementation. I found that you could use the eraser in Notes to get a tracking cursor, and that its latency was lower than the cursor on the Note 4 I brought with me. I feel like it was faster than the Surface Pro 1 (Wacom Penabled), but I didn't bring it to compare. I don't want to comment about the lag vs. Cintiq until I have one at home because the difference in size of the displays can confuse the perception of latency.

OneNote was disappointingly laggy and did not use pressure data from the Pencil. I blame MS for this entirely; Their brush engine is very simple, but it's always been kind of laggy outside the desktop version. Actually even their desktop version on the SP is still not great considering that it only draws simple opaque lines. Some kind of interpolation maybe? It's not needed with the Pencil so if that's the case they should turn it off.

-I invented some random physics problems and solved them in Notes with the pencil tool because this is a situation where latency and feel can make or break the experience. I have to say that I agree with the Anandtech preview: This was by far the best pencil and paper simulation I've ever used. For the first time using a pen on a tablet I felt like I was having a natural writing experience. My handwriting looked surprisingly normal compared to what I get on SP or Note, and for a second my brain was almost tricked into thinking I was using real pencil and paper. The effect is the result of combining very low latency, high precision, and a good pencil software simulation.

I saw the correction algorithm make adjustments a couple times when I was doing math, but it happened so quickly that it was more like... did I see that? I'm not sure.

Summary/TL;DR

When the software is good then the Pencil is the best digitizer pen experience available on a mobile device today by a mile (note that I'm leaving the Cintiq Companion out because no one would buy the current as a general-use tablet PC). The software is very immature and we don't yet know if/when it will improve.

When you compare to the Cintiq it's unclear who comes out on top, but that itself is huge. The fact that I would have to spend time comparing them to come to a conclusion means Apple has done impressive work (Wacom's been at this game for a long time).

 

[Atomic Walrus]

Sorry to double post, but I have enough to add that I think it deserves bumping the thread.

-Notes is applying a post-stroke smoothing filter that reduced the stair-step wobble effect. I'll be going back today to more thoroughly test for this issue in as many other apps as I can. To see it in action, try the linearity test with Notes on an older iPad which displays significant stair-step effect (it will be reduced in Notes).

-That video comparison going around which shows the jaggy lines is NOT ACCURATE because it uses OneNote on the SP4 and Notes on the iPP. These are very different brush engines! The jagged lines are caused by OneNote's poor brush engine, not the SP4 pen tracking. The OneNote brush engine shows this effect on ALL DEVICES. I have several complaints about MS's N-trig tech, but this issue is not one of them.

 

[audioslave-]

Sorry to double post, but I have enough to add that I think it deserves bumping the thread.

-Notes is applying a post-stroke smoothing filter that reduced the stair-step wobble effect. I'll be going back today to more thoroughly test for this issue in as many other apps as I can. To see it in action, try the linearity test with Notes on an older iPad which displays significant stair-step effect (it will be reduced in Notes).

-That video comparison going around which shows the jaggy lines is NOT ACCURATE because it uses OneNote on the SP4 and Notes on the iPP. These are very different brush engines! The jagged lines are caused by OneNote's poor brush engine, not the SP4 pen tracking. The OneNote brush engine shows this effect on ALL DEVICES. I have several complaints about MS's N-trig tech, but this issue is not one of them.

Great read, especially considering your experience with similar products. My main concern has been what it'll be like to take notes with the Pencil but from yours and others experience, it seems to work great. As soon as the pencil is in stock here in Sweden I'll try it out and probably buy it.

 

[Atomic Walrus]

Great read, especially considering your experience with similar products. My main concern has been what it'll be like to take notes with the Pencil but from yours and others experience, it seems to work great. As soon as the pencil is in stock here in Sweden I'll try it out and probably buy it.

Yeah, I'd definitely say that all the technical details aside the actual experience of writing and doing a bit of algebra was excellent, better than either of the Surface Pro digitizer types. But it's important to add that this was in Apple's Notes app, where I think they've done a lot of work to optimize the brush engine. YMMV in other apps.

 

[audioslave-]

Yeah, I'd definitely say that all the technical details aside the actual experience of writing and doing a bit of algebra was excellent, better than either of the Surface Pro digitizer types. But it's important to add that this was in Apple's Notes app, where I think they've done a lot of work to optimize the brush engine. YMMV in other apps.

I'm sure other apps will have any issues sorted out in time. As a engineering student, I really think the Pro and pencil will be worth it's price. Having all notes, pdf documents and the literature that's available as e-books, beeing able to sketch etc. all in one place, will really ease my workflow. And new tech is always fun.

 

[flux73]

Sorry to double post, but I have enough to add that I think it deserves bumping the thread.

-Notes is applying a post-stroke smoothing filter that reduced the stair-step wobble effect. I'll be going back today to more thoroughly test for this issue in as many other apps as I can. To see it in action, try the linearity test with Notes on an older iPad which displays significant stair-step effect (it will be reduced in Notes).

There's another possibility for why Notes on an older iPad shows stair-step effect. With the iPad Pro, the Pencil is an active stylus. If I recall the early previews correctly, the iPad Pro polls the Pencil at double the rate compared to a passive stylus. When you use Pencil with an older iPad, it only functions as a passive stylus. It's possible the more recent version of Notes is optimized for this doubled polling rate. Increased sampling should result in smoother lines.

Regardless of how they do it, as long as it looks good, and you can't feel the lag, I'll be pretty happy with it.

 

[M-5]

I tried out the Apple Pencil at the store within the the Paper 53 app. It was cool, although I did notice perceptible lag with certain strokes, so I was surprised when I read comments about the lag being virtually nonexistent. I didn't realize until later that Apple's Notes app was the app that most people had been testing out the pencil in, and I didn't think to try this app out at the time.

I just tried out a normal stylus on my iPad Pro within the Notes app, and I was surprised how little lag there was! I imagine using the Apple Pencil would be even better. I hope other apps will work to fix lag that exists in their apps.

 

[Atomic Walrus]

There's another possibility for why Notes on an older iPad shows stair-step effect. With the iPad Pro, the Pencil is an active stylus. If I recall the early previews correctly, the iPad Pro polls the Pencil at double the rate compared to a passive stylus. When you use Pencil with an older iPad, it only functions as a passive stylus. It's possible the more recent version of Notes is optimized for this doubled polling rate. Increased sampling should result in smoother lines.

Regardless of how they do it, as long as it looks good, and you can't feel the lag, I'll be pretty happy with it.

I should be more clear. You can't use the Pencil with an older iPad even as a passive stylus, so what I'm comparing is an actual passive stylus on an older iPad in Notes with that same setup in other software. This combo produced a ton of stair step effect, except in Notes where you can see that a smoothing algorithm is being applied (you can see the stair step initially visible and then smoothed out an instant later).

So my point is just that linearity tests (slow line drawing to check for wobble) should NOT be done in Notes and that any tests done there aren't giving a fair comparison against the Surface Pro digitizer. I'd recommend Procreate, but it's not available on the in-store demo units.

I tried out the Apple Pencil at the store within the the Paper 53 app. It was cool, although I did notice perceptible lag with certain strokes, so I was surprised when I read comments about the lag being virtually nonexistent. I didn't realize until later that Apple's Notes app was the app that most people had been testing out the pencil in, and I didn't think to try this app out at the time.

I just tried out a normal stylus on my iPad Pro within the Notes app, and I was surprised how little lag there was! I imagine using the Apple Pencil would be even better. I hope other apps will work to fix lag that exists in their apps.

Paper is just a really laggy drawing app, yeah. And I agree that the Notes brush engine is where the latency has really been cut. This is kind of disappointing because a lot of us were hoping that they'd managed to cut lag in the input stack itself vs the competitors (impossible to judge right now).

 

[Brien]

I would've wanted it with a mini or a regular iPad. I realize apple optimized it for the big tablet first.

I would be shocked if Apple didn't add support for the other iPads (and possibly even the iPhone +) in the next year or two.

 

[AppleRobert]

I can draw to the extent of a stickman, yep that is how bad my artist skills are.

I liked the pencil very much though when I tried it at my local Apple store this morning. I just doodled around and enjoyed it because I have never done it before on a prior tablet. And I used it to open weblinks in Safari instead of using my finger.

 

[Atomic Walrus]

Okay, more in-store testing results. Did the linearity test in every app I could. Notes is definitely masking it, but it still seems good in other apps. I'm sticking with my original assessment that the linearity is better than Wacom Penabled but not as good as the Cintiq (current gen shows no visible error at any stroke speed).
Linearity, best to worst (my opinion obviously):
Cintiq > Pencil > Wacom Penabled > SP4 > SP3

I also tested for a really specific issue with capacitive digitizers, which is that linearity and accuracy decreases as you add more contact points (say by resting your other hand on the screen). I've heard this reported with N-trig systems, but I never tested for it specifically on the SP3 or 4. While this effect was present when drawing passively (with a finger), hand contact with the screen had no effect on the accuracy of the Pencil.

My iPP arrived today so I also tested a couple things with a passive stylus. It's not really representative of the Pencil performance, but it can tell us about the capacitive digitizer itself (running at 1/2 the sample rate and without the benefit of the precise contact point of an active capacitive stylus)

-The linearity for touch/passive stylus is surprisingly good, better than any capacitive touch digitizer I've seen. This would have to be true because the increase in polling rate alone wouldn't be enough to significantly improve the accuracy.

-To test lag I used Autodesk Sketchbook on the Surface Pro 1 (Wacom Penabled) and iPP (passive stylus again). Contrary to what I said originally, I think Sketchbook is using the same brush engine on both platforms so the brush latency should be more or less identical and any differences will be hardware/driver/OS products. Recording at 120fps I found that the iPP had what looked to be half the latency of the Surface Pro 1.

-I did the lag test with OneNote as well, but in the process I discovered that the Windows and iOS brush engines are not the same. The Windows and Android versions do very little interpolation, which means that fast curves degrade into a series of straight lines. The iOS version has more lag, but produces perfectly smooth curves. I don't believe this data is useful because of the differences in brush engines.

-Procreate is very responsive on the iPP with just a passive stylus. . I'm generally impressed with this app and can't understand why it's not available on the demo units, especially considering how often it was shown in early hands-on demos. I'd really like to hear from people who have the Pencil and are using Procreate.

On a more general note about latency: Art apps shouldn't use vsync, but generally seem to. Maybe you can't even turn it off on iOS? Even Windows forces vsync at the desktop level (can be disabled in full screen software like games, but this doesn't help point programs. If you aren't familiar, vsync stops screen tearing but introduced lag, and IMO this trade isn't worth it for drawing/writing.

 

[pat500000]

Apple pencil isn't that great...I tried it today...and it was lagging. There was a small delay before the letter appears.

 

[Atomic Walrus]

Apple pencil isn't that great...I tried it today...and it was lagging. There was a small delay before the letter appears.

Just curious, which app were you using? Some are far better than others. Even in the best case scenario (Notes, Procreate) we're only talking about an improvement vs. the competition, not the removal of lag which Apple's hyperbolic marketing might suggest.

Personally I think the missing piece of the latency puzzle is more general. Mobile device makers need to look at how the competitive PC gamers approach input lag, which is a problem that involves the entire input/processing/output chain. Common culprits:
-V-sync (this is a big one)
-Slow display hardware (display lag can vary from ~5ms to over 100ms depending on the hardware, and getting high visual quality with very low lag is more expensive).
-Slow input hardware. Let's assume they've done what they can in this area.
-Software filtering/interpolation. I'd lump laggy brush engines in with this.
-Unresponsive CPU governors (CPU doesn't ramp up fast enough after going idle, causing lag at start of input event. Android has trouble with this, don't know if it's an issue with their OS or ARM architecture).

I'm not sure who it helps to post those points here, but I already typed them I guess.

 

[pat500000]

Just curious, which app were you using? Some are far better than others. Even in the best case scenario (Notes, Procreate) we're only talking about an improvement vs. the competition, not the removal of lag which Apple's hyperbolic marketing might suggest.

Personally I think the missing piece of the latency puzzle is more general. Mobile device makers need to look at how the competitive PC gamers approach input lag, which is a problem that involves the entire input/processing/output chain. Common culprits:
-V-sync (this is a big one)
-Slow display hardware (display lag can vary from ~5ms to over 100ms depending on the hardware, and getting high visual quality with very low lag is more expensive).
-Slow input hardware. Let's assume they've done what they can in this area.
-Software filtering/interpolation. I'd lump laggy brush engines in with this.
-Unresponsive CPU governors (CPU doesn't ramp up fast enough after going idle, causing lag at start of input event. Android has trouble with this, don't know if it's an issue with their OS or ARM architecture).

I'm not sure who it helps to post those points here, but I already typed them I guess.

I used one of the adobe app, apple standard note...and forgot what else I used it with. There was a delay in input as I tried to draw...and write something.

 

[harriska2]

I used a bunch of apps and noticed no lag. But then I'm not an artist. The ipad felt like a wide legal sized pad. Really big. I wonder how apps like Inspiration (Mind Mapper with big canvas) or an atlas program would look like on the iPad Pro.