11 ms·

I think they're selling this as a product for tablets. I haven't seen a capacitive stylus for tablets that supports erasing from the other side. I believe they'

by dag11 13y ago

I think they're selling this as a product for tablets. I haven't seen a capacitive stylus for tablets that supports erasing from the other side. I believe they're taking the type of product that has existed with Wacom-type tablets for a while and bringing it to the portable capacitive tablet world, with a tablet many consumers -- including many artists -- already own.

bane 13y ago
The Samsung Note stylus supports an eraser if I'm not mistaken as does the Surface stylus. That being said, the carpenter pencil shape is not one I'm overly fond of. Those styluses are also about 1/2 the price of Pencil.
- dag11 13y ago
  I mostly meant capacitive styli. Pencil is kind-of a hack in this way.
  - bane 13y ago
    Actually I went and did some searching and even found a few roundups of dozens of styli and didn't find any with an eraser for iPads/regular Android devices. So I think you're right.
asadotzler 13y ago
The Surface Pro has had this since its release.
phaus 13y ago
They aren't taking the type of product that has existed with Wacom type tablets and bringing it to the portable capacitive world. This is going to be terrible in comparison. Its impossible to make a capacitive stylus that isn't like drawing with a giant, cumbersome crayon.
- slantyyz 13y ago
  >> Its impossible to make a capacitive stylus that isn't like drawing with a giant, cumbersome crayon. Which is why I think Apple needs to offer a version of the iPad with a Wacom-style digitizer. Steve Jobs' famous quote "If you see a stylus they blew it" might apply for UI navigation, but it doesn't apply for a lot of other use cases, including the ones that Pencil is trying to address.
  - leoc 13y ago
    > Steve Jobs' famous quote "If you see a stylus they blew it" might apply for UI navigation I don't even think it's all that true in that case either. Jobs' stylus ban did serve as a useful forcing device: with a stylus available, pre-iPhone developers of touch UIs tended to fall back to producing bad ports of the WIMP concept, complete with buttons of minute size. But at the same time it would certainly have been possible to produce a good smartphone/tablet UI that was stylus-enabled. In fact I think you could, for example, port the original iPhone's UI to a stylus-only basis fairly smoothly. You'd need a couple of extra physical buttons for call accept/reject and other instant-response actions, and you'd need some alternatives for the few places where two-finger pinch/spread gestures are really important, but otherwise it would be a pretty straightforward port with, I think, a very usable result: only slightly less appealing than the finger-touch original. Overall it seems pretty similar to Jobs' ban on cursor keys on the original Macintosh, which probably helped make early Macintosh software more Mac-native but was rolled back without difficulty later. Agreed that the lack of proper stylus support is an increasingly glaring lack in the iPhone/iPad line, the largest iPads in particular.
    - slantyyz 13y ago
      >> I don't even think it's all that true in that case either. I don't disagree, that's why I used "might" as a weasel word.
      - leoc 13y ago
        All good. Weasels are beautiful, intelligent creatures. ;)

by dag11 13y ago

bane 13y ago

The Samsung Note stylus supports an eraser if I'm not mistaken as does the Surface stylus. That being said, the carpenter pencil shape is not one I'm overly fond of. Those styluses are also about 1/2 the price of Pencil.

dag11 13y ago
I mostly meant capacitive styli. Pencil is kind-of a hack in this way.
- bane 13y ago
  Actually I went and did some searching and even found a few roundups of dozens of styli and didn't find any with an eraser for iPads/regular Android devices. So I think you're right.

asadotzler 13y ago

The Surface Pro has had this since its release.

phaus 13y ago

They aren't taking the type of product that has existed with Wacom type tablets and bringing it to the portable capacitive world. This is going to be terrible in comparison. Its impossible to make a capacitive stylus that isn't like drawing with a giant, cumbersome crayon.

slantyyz 13y ago
>> Its impossible to make a capacitive stylus that isn't like drawing with a giant, cumbersome crayon. Which is why I think Apple needs to offer a version of the iPad with a Wacom-style digitizer. Steve Jobs' famous quote "If you see a stylus they blew it" might apply for UI navigation, but it doesn't apply for a lot of other use cases, including the ones that Pencil is trying to address.
- leoc 13y ago
  > Steve Jobs' famous quote "If you see a stylus they blew it" might apply for UI navigation I don't even think it's all that true in that case either. Jobs' stylus ban did serve as a useful forcing device: with a stylus available, pre-iPhone developers of touch UIs tended to fall back to producing bad ports of the WIMP concept, complete with buttons of minute size. But at the same time it would certainly have been possible to produce a good smartphone/tablet UI that was stylus-enabled. In fact I think you could, for example, port the original iPhone's UI to a stylus-only basis fairly smoothly. You'd need a couple of extra physical buttons for call accept/reject and other instant-response actions, and you'd need some alternatives for the few places where two-finger pinch/spread gestures are really important, but otherwise it would be a pretty straightforward port with, I think, a very usable result: only slightly less appealing than the finger-touch original. Overall it seems pretty similar to Jobs' ban on cursor keys on the original Macintosh, which probably helped make early Macintosh software more Mac-native but was rolled back without difficulty later. Agreed that the lack of proper stylus support is an increasingly glaring lack in the iPhone/iPad line, the largest iPads in particular.
  - slantyyz 13y ago
    >> I don't even think it's all that true in that case either. I don't disagree, that's why I used "might" as a weasel word.
    - leoc 13y ago
      All good. Weasels are beautiful, intelligent creatures. ;)