Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Hard to know how far this will go to solving what people want in this type of product. The lag is pretty clear in the video - don't underestimate how much this will frustrate you in reality. Watch the scene where the student is writing very carefully just to form simple letters in a short word.

In my experience, two things matter with styluses on the iPad - precision and responsiveness.

With a view to replacing all the scraps of notes and sketches I have lying around, I bought a stylus recommended by an Industrial Designer friend and gave it a crack on my iPad: http://adonit.net/product/jot-pro/ ($45 including shipping to Australia)

I've used that stylus in some sketching app I can't remember and Penultimate (which has some palm avoidance settings that are somewhat but not completely effective). The stylus itself is well made and the little tip piece works well enough. For rough wireframe sketches and largeish notes, it all works fairly well.

But if you want to annotate your drawings by hand, I think you may find it frustrating. Writing text is pretty weak. My stylus sits largely unused and I'm sketching on paper as much as ever.

In stylus demos, ignore any moments where they circle part of a map, or underline something, or sign their name. Looks lovely, but none of that is especially hard with a cheap stylus and a sketching app, nor will most people be doing a whole lot of it.

Pay special attention to the moments where they try to write in any small detail and watch for the thinness, quality of the lettering and responsiveness to the pen. Did you see the collaborative drawing of the Sydney Opera House? For almost everyone, that's what the drawings will probably look like - a bit of a rough mess.

The collaborative features might appeal to others, but at no point in my work/home life am I usually sharing a drawing space with a colleague. I'm rarely excited at the idea of someone messing with my garden layout drawings or idea wireframes! If I'm dealing with wireframes for a client project, it's usually not on an iPad.



Hey Prawn,

You are making some very good points, sounds like you are particularly familiar with the issues at hand. RE the operahouse stuff - the student that did that were going for a 'ken done' look - very scribbly:) I'd say the pen performance when dealing with small detail is very decent - not Wacom Pro decent but not far off. Might org a video to show the performance. By the way we're drawing up a list of internal testers, can I interest you in trying out Collusion and telling us what you think?

Cheers,

Rob CEO - Collusion


Happy to help you test if you want. I'm in Adelaide.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: