3 ms·

Because every other tablet pc/tablet with a integrated pressure-sensitive stylus is much better than anything released thus far for the iPad by third parties.

• snowwrestler 13y ago
  Samsung and Microsoft license Wacom digitizer technology for their stylus tablets. It's not just that they provide a stylus--the tablet itself has additional capacitive sensors. Apple would have to totally re-engineer their touch sensor to accomodate that. The reason iPad styluses have fat tips is that they have to simulate a fingertip, which is the only thing that an iPad can sense. The tradeoff is that an iPad is faster and more accurate at sensing fingers than other tablets. Wacom has released a pressure-sensitive stylus for iPad. I have not tried it though...not much of an artist.
  • phaus 13y ago
    The digitizer is actually a separate layer in most cases. There are lots of products that have both a digitizer and a capacitive touch layer. The lack of a digitizer isn't what makes the iPad more responsive. If Apple wanted to do it, it would be trivial. Wacom fucked up this particular product, because they opted to use a large rubber tip. It might be more precise than a normal dumb stylus, but its still terrible. Trying to write like a normal person, or draw thin lines is absolutely horrible with a fat-tipped stylus.
    • snowwrestler 13y ago
      I think the large rubber tip is not optional, as the iPad sensor is looking for a particular shape: a fingertip.
      • phaus 13y ago
        Right. It was never debatable whether or not the current iPad has a digitizer. It doesn't. I'm just saying if they are starting to embrace productivity, they should have added one. The current iPad has a capacitive touch screen, that's why the current styli use a large tip, the stylus isn't replicating a pen, its replicating a fingertip. That's why they all suck. Its hard to write / draw with your finger, so until we stop making styli that replicate fingers, note taking and drawing on the iPad are going to be suboptimal.
  • gjm11 13y ago
    > the tablet itself has additional capacitive sensors. Inductive, actually, which is why the stylus doesn't need to have a big fat tip. Wacom also make a stylus for the iPad, which obviously has to be capacitive rather than inductive. I think it has batteries in it and sends tip pressure information to the iPad over Bluetooth. (How the inductive sensing works: You have some conductive loops behind the display, and in the pen there is a ferrite rod with a conductive coil around it together with a capacitor to make a resonant circuit. You pass an alternating current at approximately the resonant frequency through some of the loops; it couples to the pen circuit by electromagnetic induction, the pen circuit resonates, and for a short time it produces, by induction again, a signal in all the other conducting coils behind the display. How much signal depends on the position and angle of the coil in the pen. If you have enough loops behind the display you can work out where the pen tip is accurately enough to draw with it. The capacitor in the resonant circuit is variable and adjusted by the tip pressure, and small changes in the resonant frequency produce phase changes in the signal that comes back, so you can measure the tip pressure too. Similar technology is used in some interactive whiteboards.)