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VolcanoMouse

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 22, 2012
1
0
Hello, folks,

This might be an incredibly stupid question: my apologies, I am not at all tech-savvy. I'm looking for a stylus + software combination that would give my MBA trackpad some tablet-like capabilities: I want to sketch a bit in GIMP. For software, I've played around with Inklet, which seems reasonable for the price.

Styli are more difficult: the cheapie PogoSketch stylus that's sold with Inklet sounds like it works, but most reviews say that it's not very sturdy or ergonomic. Slightly nicer styli, like the Wacom Bamboo Stylus or the Targus Stylus are marketed for the iPad. While they never explicitly say they would work on, say, the touchpad for a MBA, specs for the Targus do say that it would work on "all capacitive touch surfaces."

And lastly, TenOne, of course, implies that one should only use the Pogo Sketch with Inklet.

Guess it comes down to two questions, then:

1. Would an iPad stylus work on my MBA trackpad/is the trackpad a "capacitive touch surface"?
2. Does Inklet really only work with one brand of stylus? That seems a bit silly to me, but I am incredibly ignorant, tech-wise, and perhaps I expect too much.

I hope all that makes sense and that I haven't posed too silly of a question. Thank you very much!
 

ZZ Bottom

macrumors 6502a
Apr 14, 2010
829
258
Can't comment on inklet, but yes any capacitive stylus will work on the glass trackpads. However, unlike a tablet drawing board (like wacom bamboo), the mouse cursor will always pickup from where it left off. Inversely on a drawing tablet if you pick up the pen tip and place it in a different corner, the mouse cursor will reappear in that point on the screen. Not a big deal, but if you are accustomed to a drawing tablet, the trackpad + pen will not feel right.
 

kjid

macrumors regular
May 3, 2011
103
1
I can imagine clicking isn't very accurate trough the pen surface. I bought a wacom stylus to use with my ipad as 2ndary macscreen as pen tablet, but i ended up buying a intuos 4 large (which is worth is) :eek:
 
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gentlefury

macrumors 68030
Jul 21, 2011
2,866
23
Los Angeles, CA
Since the MBA touchpad is capacitive it should work fine with an iPad stylus. Wouldn't be all that great tho, since any pressure would equal a click.
 

Beanoir

macrumors 6502a
Dec 9, 2010
571
2
51 degrees North
I have a Wacom Bamboo stylus that I use with the the iPad and also my iPhone. Its one of the best stylus I have used.

I have tried it on the tracked on my MBA and it works very well actually, no accidental clicking at all. The only problem I find is the trackpad isn't really big enough as a surface, but it works.
 

Great2bnate

macrumors newbie
Jan 11, 2016
5
2
Can't comment on inklet, but yes any capacitive stylus will work on the glass trackpads. However, unlike a tablet drawing board (like wacom bamboo), the mouse cursor will always pickup from where it left off. Inversely on a drawing tablet if you pick up the pen tip and place it in a different corner, the mouse cursor will reappear in that point on the screen. Not a big deal, but if you are accustomed to a drawing tablet, the trackpad + pen will not feel right.

Right, but that's where Inklet comes in.
 
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Boyd01

Moderator
Staff member
Feb 21, 2012
7,636
4,528
New Jersey Pine Barrens
Interesting idea - never occurred to me. But I have a Jot Dash stylus that I use on my iPhone sometimes so I just tried it on my 2013 11" MBA. Worked fine, aside from the cursor issue mentioned above. However I had to push really hard to click the trackpad and activate a tool like the paintbrush in photoshop. It felt like it could be a problem to apply so much pressure to a small area of the trackpad (the Jot Dash has a small tip).
 

sracer

macrumors G4
Apr 9, 2010
10,271
12,994
where hip is spoken
I have used the DotPen (powered capacitive stylus with a fine tip) with Inklet on my 11" MBA with great success. As @Great2bnate implied, Inklet has a mode that allows the trackpad to be a relative representative of the drawing canvas. When running in that mode, if you place the pen tip 1/3 down from the top and 1/3 from the left on the trackpad, the draw tool starts drawing 1/3 down 1/3 left on the image canvas. Pick the pen up and place it at the bottom right corner of the trackpad and drawing stars at the bottom right corner of the canvas.
 
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