Wednesday, September 9, 2015

A killer app for the new iPad and stylus

Unlike the ghost of Steve Jobs, I am super-excited about the new huge iPad with pencil (or "stylus" for English speakers).   There are surely plenty of art apps that will be great on this device, but for me the killer app will be white-boarding.   At NVIDIA I used shared white boards a lot and my far-seeing boss had me try a wacom cyntiq. 

It was awkward because of clunky software (not wacom's-- the shared whiteboarding software), but wacom had the hardware nailed.    It was a good enough experience I felt like I saw the future.   I have been using the new shared whiteboarding app from limnu and really like it-- I use it to take quick notes on my phone when I am without a pencil.   But my finger is big, and the phone is small.   This shows how much I can get using that:

A screen shot from the limnu app on an iPhone 6+
 It's very usable on the iPad mini (I have posted those on the blog before) and I far prefer it to a "real" drawing program when just messing with ideas.   I have been hoping the Windows 8 tablets would take off because their hardware is great (and so is Windows 8 on mobile-- I loved my windows phone!  I am still wondering why it didn't).  But the new iPad and stylus will make this app perfect for me!   The size is something like we see in real portable whiteboards like this 8.5" by 11" one.   And it looks like the Apple stylus will give finer control than most real white board markers.

It's cool that there is still hardware that can invented that I can hardly wait for!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The Wacom 13HD Cintiq offers a 13.3" drawing surface and 1920x1080 resolution. It's a wonderful gadget with some nice UI hardware on the edges. It's a peripheral that must be plugged into a computer, and costs about $800. The iPad Pro offers a 12.9" surface and 2732x2048 resolution. It has no other UI hardware. It IS a computer, and starts at about $800. With the $100 Apple Pencil, that's $900. The Apple combo is very attractive, but a lot comes down to just how the UI works. Wacom has had years to really nail down issues like latency, parallax, satin-smooth pressure response, and so on. I've wanted a Cintiq for a long time, but if the iPad/Pencil version works as nicely as the Cintiq, that might be a better choice!