Regardless, having blind hate for a company no matter what they do is just as naive as performing blind praise for another company no matter what they do.
It’s basically the negative version of being a fanboy (which according to a term coined by Beerbaron sometime back, is a ‘hateboy’).
Looks interesting, but is it just me or is the artist in the video making sure to move the stylus very slowly? I´d like to see the accuracy when quicksketching something… Regardless, competition is always good. Wacom can´t rest on their laurels.
@AceD
“blind hate”? Well you are certainly welcome to project whatever narrative and outlook you want, but its a bit intellectually dishonest to do so. Your hypocrisy has been noted however, using extremes such as “blind hate” to interpret posts you don’t like makes you the subject of your own criticism.
Agreed, though I wouldnt say what Apple is doing is competition at this point. There’s a bit of irony at play here since Steve Job’s hated the idea of a stylus. Apple would need for the workflow to be on the main OS, not a mobile based tablet. Additionally there is the issue of multi-platform status, so far wacom isnt tied to any one OS… so when you are in a studio environment being able to use a wacom on either PC, Mac or even linux makes it more appealing. I know a few creative specialist who need to work on multiple OS when they are going around demoing for studios, and wacom still lets them flip between mac and pc.
Wacom might have to wait a little bit longer before they start feeling the pressure from others though. One of the reasons why wacom only sells lower end components to others is because they themselves dont want serious competition for their tablet/cintiq line. So when we see these devices with wacom digitizes, they usually only go up to 256 levels of pressure and lack the kind of tilt input you get with proper wacom tablets.
It should be interesting though… Sony has decided to get into the professional art arena, UC-Logic (taiwanese) continues to pump out cheaper digitizers and now that Microsoft own’s N-Trig (Israeli based company) + their partnership with autodesk & the hololens, we might end up seeing more R&D going into creating a wacom competitor for the same market as well. Its all going to take some time though.
Well I’m left to wonder if someone does have at least a certain level of blind hate for Apple when they do things such as trying to find hidden ulterior motives in the shape of the new Mac Pro (which Apple did in their attempt to innovate on fan-based cooling) and referring to people who buy Apple as engaging in some pseudo religion or perhaps even simply calling them iSheep (which I know the latter is a popular term on other websites).
I’m not a major fan of Apple by any means, but I acknowledge that they have actually done cool things with product development.
Another view:
(fast sketch, groovy line @ 2:45)
Pen battery full charge for only 12 hours of use???
“hidden ulterior motive”, another colorful phrase you decided to project into the conversation and on others. Ace, do you realize you are the one creating these issues (and narrative) you are complaining about? Cut it out, your reading comprehension is abysmal. It’s becoming tiresome.
As for the “religion” part, are you deaf and blind? Do you have selective reading issues? I already lamented the fact that people keep ignoring the fact that Apple themselves referred to their user base and marketing approach as cultish, religious, evangelist based…ect…and its been very effective for them. These are NOT my words. What part are you having trouble grasping? Do you even click on the sources I link to? Seriously
. If you cant do that, nor be objective in the information presented…then please just stop responding.
Technology Evangelism is a tongue-in-cheek term. You don’t seem to get the joke. The anecdote by Kawasaki refers to the earlier days of Apple when the company was struggling, but still had its die-hard userbase which was jokingly referred to as a cult. Every popular brand has extreme fans that will camp out in front of the stores when the new thing is coming out. The vast majority of customers aren’t anything like that, and Apple would be stupid to consider its customers to be religiously attached to their brand.
Regarding criticism: People do tend to defend their brands/products of choice (whether it’s Apple or not) because that’s defending their choices and, by extension, their identity. I’ve seen you get defensive when someone points out what a pile of junk Maya is. That doesn’t mean you’re in the Autodesk cult (although you probably are and you will enter hell for it). By the way, if you disagree with anything I say, that’s just your confirmation bias talking (SCNR).
It doesn’t really matter to me as to what context the term ‘evangelism’ is used in as far as tech. products, it’s actually slightly annoying to be honest.
Take Unity’s website, they literally have a top bar entry labeled ‘evangelism’. When is a tech. product so special that people take its propagation to the level of it being a sort of ministry, it’s a piece of software, not the gospel.
Okay, it’s tongue in cheek, but I still find the very use of that term for software kind of iffy.
I know your argue for the sake of arguing OCD is in overdrive today, but you cant be seriously suggesting his bragging that whenever the media said something negative about Apple, he would sick his list of “evangelist” at them knowing full well they will attack & harass the people involved. But yeah, totally “tongue in cheek” right? Its laughable you try alter what was said and done in the documentary as a “tongue in cheek” term. But hey, there’s still them happily referring to them and their brand as the cult and a religion… but lemme guess you just nitpick and find one piece of an over all point you think you can write off assuming it cancels out the whole of it.
“Regarding criticism”: Sure some people do defend brands they have emotionally tied themselves, and yes it is silly (which I have never disagreed with) but thats not what was being questioned. Unfortunately it seems like your main goal is to continue the creepy trend to just find ways to wave your epeen around certain members of this forum every time they have a dialog with someone else. You are going way off course with your personal crusade and characterization of me. Try to keep it on track will ya?
Agreed, and annoying would be an understatement. The term might have become tongue and cheek for some but its rooted in a serious market domination strategy by Apple. See:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Macintosh-Way-Guy-Kawasaki/dp/0673461750
"The Macintosh Way is a “take-no-prisoners guide to marketing warfare…”
Their best or worst innovation, depending on how you look at it, is their marketing machine/warfare. They wrote the rules in how to build brand loyalty, attack the competition and how to speak to peoples emotional state and identity. Its effective, powerful and to be brutally honest, a bit scary. The “im a mac, im a pc” campaign is a classic example of this, but it goes further back with their destroy/break free from IMB commercial, 1984.
Are you suggesting that Apple is quite literally a church/religion, that its users are quite literally cult members and that its technology evangelists are quite literally delivering a gospel? If not, then you might want to entertain the idea that these characterizations are JOKES, tongue-in-cheek terms, humorous in nature and not to be taken serious.
“Technology Evangelist” is a real job these days, employed by numerous companies (none of which are actual cults) and the job is marketing.
Unfortunately it seems like your main goal is to continue the creepy trend to just find ways to wave your epeen around certain members of this forum every time they have a dialog with someone else.
This is an open forum thread, if you want to have a dialog with someone such that nobody else weighs in, take it to PM.
You are going way off course with your personal crusade and characterization of me.
I just replied to one of your posts. I think it might be your confirmation bias that made it appear as part of an imaginary personal crusade. 
"The Macintosh Way is a “take-no-prisoners guide to marketing warfare…”
#shotsfired
I’ve been watching various YouTube videos demoing the thing. The nib design on it looks a lot better than Wacom pens for tilt. My Intuos 4 has tilt, but it doesn’t even remotely feel like shading with the side of a pencil when trying to use it that way. It does look like there is some lag, but it doesn’t look deal breakingly bad. Using rulers and things to mask is pretty neat too.
Seemed cool to me at first, but then I watched it again and realized that it is kind of a gimmick. If you watch carefully, it looks like he had to make a couple attempts to shift/move the ruler, so that made me less impressed off the top… then I started thinking about it and it is just a clunky visual way of doing simple tasks in photoshop (or whatever app you happen to be using). In most apps the same can be accomplished by simply holding shift and there are way more efficient masking tools (like layer masks, but if you wanted to do something literally the same as the demo (simpler than a layer mask), you could just use one of the many marquee selection tools to form simple linear masks.
I respect your opinion as an artist (your work is fantastic), so I am not saying you are wrong, but personally I prefer a more substantial pen/stylus. I have had two tabletPCs with Wacom digitizers/styluses and I have to say that I much prefer the way the Wacom stylus from my Cintiq 24in Touch feels in my hand. Obviously I am making an assumption by thinking the Apple pen is closer to my other tabletPC styluses, but I think it is a pretty fair guess (seem to have extremely similar form factors and they most likely weigh about the same). As for the way the pen works using tilt and so on, I think that is a software trait more so than the pen. You can customize the sensitivity of the tilt and the way the pen pressure works (soft to firm) in the tablet settings for the cintiq. Then you can customize brushes in photoshop to get similar results. I just made a brush in photoshop just to test out my theory. It uses projection + tilt to change the shape of the brush (wider and elongated in the stroke direction when tilted) and to also control a texture (the depth, and therefore texture amount, is more visible when using tilt) and then the opacity is controlled by pen pressure. Like I said, seems to yield pretty much the same results.
Again, as a piece of tech, I don’t think they are breaking the mould, it’s just another tool. It’s the artist’s hand that makes all the difference, not so much because of a stylus. On a positive note, with what now appears to be a ton of pen-input attention and competition, hopefully pen tablets will finally become more affordable for everyone!
I’m just looking at it from the point of view of potentially replacing a traditional sketchpad; eg taking it to the zoo or coffee shop and sketching. For real work, especially 3D Work, I will probably always prefer a desktop PC.
For tilt I mean you can’t hold a Wacom Pen like a traditional pencil:
I can create brushes in software that give me the stroke that looks like tilting a pencil on its side, but the Wacom Pen itself always feels like a pen, not a pencil. If you try to tilt it the way you hold a pencil, the nib doesn’t even make contact. The Apple Pencil appears to be more like a pencil (hence the name I suppose). Whether it actually works well and feels natural is another story of course. Comparison shot of the nibs:
I’m personally not a big Apple fan. They burned me really hard in the past (to the tune of aprox $2,000 + time lost) however, that was a long time ago. That said, I’m excited to see how this plays out. I hope it works out well for them and more so, I’m hopeful that they force other manufacturers, who have already covered this same territory, to do a better job.
I have a Lenovo with a Wacom built in. It works, pressure is great. BUT the Lenovo is big and clunky, isn’t good at all for drawing on the couch, and being that it’s a Wacom, yes it works well, but as usual it is never perfect on the edges of the screen where menu’s often reside. That AND most Windows based applications are not optimized for pen input, so it’s always set up in laptop mode, or it has its screen flipped around to accommodate a better external keyboard and mouse when it’s parked on the desk, because you still need good hotkey control for sculpting in 3D or painting in 2D. External Menu application software could help but they are far from ideal solutions. AND while it’s as big and clunky as a standard laptop workstation, they couldn’t find room or add a little more size/weight to throw in a full fledged Nvidia GPU, etc. And none of the other current or recent convertibles in this range do either which is crazy. When I have the machine at home, at the desk, I plug it into a custom DIY EGPU so that I don’t need a second desktop machine at home (it just barely cut it for my 3D workstation needs with the desktop GPU/PSU addon), but this thing is on it’s last legs, getting old and was always less portable than I thought it was going to be, it’s just more portable than a desktop for traveling, however you only ever use it in your room, never at a coffee shop, not comfortable…
I’ve been very excited about the future of the Microsoft Surface Pro series, however, I’ve long come to the conclusion that my dream, portable, art workstation + the software/interfaces that drive it, are just not marketable enough for any of the devs to fully, 100% come together and nail it. I really hope Apple sees huge, huge success with this, and gets things to change, but quite frankly, I doubt that they will but I’d be happier if I turned out wrong and the Apple Pencil was a huge success, it would be great for computing and for artists alike.
That said, in it’s current form, an Apple iPad Pro, without a full fledged OS like Win 10 or OSX + touch, and the full range of applications that run on both systems (Photoshop, Blender, Unreal Engine etc. etc.)… without that, I don’t really have a current use for this stuff.
I actually rationalized this down to the point where if I’m not able to sculpt and do full fledged texture or photo-retouching work on the go, then I might as well just carry around a pen and a simple, cheap, and very light/portable, battery-less sketch pad.
My dream machine is something like a Surface Pro 4 + built in Nvidia GPU (intel HD is ok’ish and better each time but it really doesn’t cut it for heavy work, and with the prices they want for these things, I need it to not only replace a tablet, I also need it to replace a powerful desktop and a powerful laptop and none of them quite get there). Heck I’d spend more money than they are asking now, if it was a one device fits all, that was workstation powerful and suited to last 3 years of daily use. No one is close to this, and I can’t personally afford/justify a desktop workstation/new monitor + a less powerful but still capable laptop for portable Unreal Engine work + as well a very expensive portable Photoshop/Sculpting full OS tablet (like the Wacom companion which is too big and clunky or the Surface Pro 3 which is close but doesn’t have an absolutely perfected pen or dedicated GPU or even a way to easily plug in an external GPU when at home at the desk…) + a pricey smart phone with a good camera… that just comes out to too much redundancy and way too much cost every 2-4 years.
Seriously at this point, I want two devices, a great computer that covers everything 100% and a decent smart phone. I’d love the portability of a great laptop and or a great full fledged tablet, but both are over-priced and if you get everything it’s all insanely expensive and redundant. It’s a problem with no current great solution, and I think about it in depth at least twice a week, it drives me nuts. EDIT: And since a super, desktop powerful, workstation isn’t feasible in a Surface Pro tablet body it would be great to be able to use the Surface as a Cintique for when you get home and plug it into a dedicated workstation box, or perhaps just plug it into a dock that directly extends it’s processing, GPU, ram, storage, etc…, these options also, currently, aren’t available outside of the Wacom Companion, which again, is a big clunky thing that doesn’t do portable all that well, form factor is way too big/clunky. The other think-able/reasonable but currently non-existant option is a Workstation Calibur laptop, fully equipped with raw power, and a built in wacom in the monitor and really, really good CPU/power options so that you can ‘effectively’ (not just in theory) switch between long long battery life and raw power when a plug is available (this is harder than you would think on most devices), but anyways, that would at least be a complete, all in one option, yet there isn’t a market for it, and they don’t exist, the companies who used to persue this, have all but given up and before they did give up on the idea, they weren’t doing it with workstation calibur guts, always, mid-range machines with no GPU’s… made no sense.
Think about it. Cheap-ish, but powerful, custom built desktop workstation + Surface Pro + Smart Phone. That’s a huge cost but it gets you power + some portability, still need to buy a regular wacom tablet/or a cheap knockoff for the desktop for when the Surface Pro doesn’t perform well enough to cut it. And when you want to do moderately heavy Unreal Engine work on the go, you are still left without a fully adequate workstation Laptop… Alternatively, get a powerful laptop workstation, pay a small fortune for it (skip the desktop altogether), and you are still without a good sculpting/photoshop experience on the go and would need another dedicated device and then also a phone and by that point you aren’t quite portable and the cost is huge/redundant. Also, setting up an external wacom with a Laptop isn’t something you can do comfortably just anywhere, it’s fine for setting up at a secure office or a friends desk and then later taking home but anywhere else, and it isn’t comfortable.
Anyways, enough of a huge rant. Good luck Apple, do great things with this, I’ve lost all hope that anyone else can/will, if you nail it at some point, you’ve got my money and support. I’m also still holding my breath for the Surface Pro 4, hope they improve that pen where it needs it, it’s close to perfect, other than that GPU/CPU dock or ability to use it at a touch/pen monitor at home or a built in GPU or just a super powerful CPU+Intel HD, etc.
I’m curious why nobody has mentioned Samsung’s S-pen which is an actual Wacom digitizer+pen for their Galaxy Note and Tab devices. It has been available since last year.
Good point! Those are great with something like Sketchbook Mobile for sketching and digital painting anywhere, couch, cafe, break-room, etc. (experience isn’t perfect, but it’s do-able). At this point, I don’t see what much more the iPencil + pro setup is going to provide that the long-running Note style devices you mentioned don’t already do, and in multiple form-factors. And actually, there are some pretty decent 3rd party pens for iOS devices already, so you could already do this stuff on iOS. (perhaps the iPencil will do effectively more in the future with new software and or cloud based remote control but, yeah, that this point, it’s just a better version of a pen, that only works with the pro version…) Personally though, without full fledged Windows/OSX, (unless something major changes with software), I’d rather rock a regular sketchbook with pens and markers.
I’m not terribly interested in the Apple Pencil, but I’m hopeful that it’ll push Microsoft to stay competitive with their Surface tablets. I’ve got a Surface Pro 2 and it’s a seriously great little art machine, I use it for hobby and professional work quite often. My main concern with the Apple device is the tiny amount of memory, no serious art can be done with that little ram. I suspect their next revision of the device will be a little better, though.
While there’s been increased flexibility and mobility with devices like tablets, it’s worth remembering that there’s still not really an adequate replacement for good ol’ pen and paper. In fact, there was a recent survey (admittedly non-scientific, but there was still a reasonably large sample size of 4000) of designers wherein a large majority (64%) still prefer to do concepts and brainstorming on paper. I know I certainly fall into that same category… especially for design, but also for character concepts, story development, and environments.
I’ve been trying find a device I can use instead of pen and paper for drawing, trying both the iPad and currently a Windows Tablet (i’m using it as i type), but honestly they both have their issues. The iPad Pro despite looking like a nice portable device, id still have concerns over things like folder management and multi-tasking, and the Windows Tablet is cool, but both the OS and many apps lacks proper touch design, even with Windows 10 and I’ve found the combination of touch and pen input to be still messy. Also, if you don’t like Adobe than the software choices narrow somewhat considerably, whereas the iPad at least has solid offerings for drawing like procreate.
Although i like the concept of digital drawing, after years of experimentation I would have to surrender to pen and pencil for brainstorming and quicker concepts. I would be interested in trying the iPad Pro though, or switching to it from my Windows Tablet. They design products IMO better than anyone else, and take privacy and security more seriously than other companies.
There is so much fanboy crap in this post I can’t even.
Apple is most definitely a tech company and they do have great tech and in some instances are ahead of the curve anyone who does’t see that have some kind of Apple hate blinders on. There is so much technology in their OS alone.
I understand if you don’t want to pay for their stuff, but stop spewing this cult garbage like it’s fact. It’s not, it’s just an opinion.