"Who wants a stylus? You have to get 'em, put 'em away, you lose 'em. Yuck! Nobody wants a stylus. So let's not use a stylus."
-Steve Jobs
-Steve Jobs
> It’s right out of the Steve Jobs handbook: something you don’t offer is a
> terrible idea, until you offer it yourself, at which point you explain why your
> solution is the first to get it right.
There are all sorts of reasons not to offer a particular feature or product at time X, and then subsequently offer what appears to be that exact thing at time Y.
Not to mention that the feature or product at time Y might be significantly different or better than the compromise you might have cobbled together at time X.
The comment simply refers to the black-and-white way in which Steve used to frame these things. IIRC, he said many of the same things about Intel chips, keyboard shortcuts, expandable RAM, and so forth.
Except the Jobs' quote you replied to succinctly explains why a stylus is a bad idea as the primary input method on a small pocket device.
A 12.9 inch iPad Pro is not a "small pocket device".
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface-...
Surface 3, no.
http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-KP701E2-Intuos4-Art-Stand/dp/B00...
There have been 3rd party pens and they were terrible and unnecessary. The multiple inputs, sensors, etc. will probably make this Apple stylus pretty useful. In this case, maybe Apple is the first to get it right.
This stylus is an optional accessory with a very specific use case. A fundamentally different thing.
Oh, a stylus, right? We're going to use a stylus? No.
Who wants a stylus? You have to get them, put them away, you lose them, yuck. So let's not use a stylus.
We're going to use the best pointing device in the world; a pointing device that we're all born with - we're born with ten of them. We're going to use our fingers. We're going to touch it with our fingers. And we have invented a new technology called multi-touch..."
The important part of the quote in this context is that Jobs was obviously referring to the stylus being the primary input device for the iPhone being unacceptable.
"It's like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it." - Steve Jobs
edited to add -
"as soon as you have a stylus, you're dead." - Steve Jobs
It's pretty clear he meant "when you see a device can only operate with a stylus, it's a bad product."
This is basically Apple saying "let's make a Surface with a bigger screen and do it the Apple way".
It's weird seeing Microsoft participate in it.
Other than size, there's not much that Android tablets need to respond to, there's already been large high-end Android tablets with great pen input (no angle detection, but they're all Watcom class).
What I think was most interesting here was the incessant pitch that this is a productivity device not a media consumption device.
For the full experience you're looking at:
$800 for the pad
$100 for the pencil
$170 for the keyboardcase
And we're in low-end laptop territory without necessarily cannibalizing their laptop business, but it fires shots across the bow of also increasingly popular Chromebooks which are around this price point.
Edit: for people confused, I meant a low-end Apple laptop not a Windows machine, which are much cheaper. This is priced to barely overlap with the bottom-end. The pricing ensures the two segments are partitioned.
My Chromebook cost about 20 percent more than the keyboardcase alone, and I'm writing this comment on an i7 laptop with 8 gigs of RAM and a GeForce video card, which cost less than the pad and case. I get that there's some appeal in entering the Apple ecosystem, but for my needs, I don't think it's a "shot across the bow" of very many actual, full-featured laptops that I'm allowed to actually install stuff on.
(edit: Aaaand while I was looking up my laptop's specs, everyone else made the same comment as I. Leaving here in case it helps.)
The price point is more like (a little under) the at-release Surface Pro than popular Chromebooks (its a little cheaper than the Chromebook Pixel, but that's not really the big seller -- the popular models are at the low end.)
Both by form factor and price, this seems more to be competing more with the big "pro" tablets that the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 (slightly cheaper) and the Surface Pro (3 was slightly more expensive at release, 4 probably will be too, 3 is slightly less expensive right now) than Chromebooks.
And the Pro 3's pen/drawing experience has received pretty good reviews after some early software jitters.
Also the Surface stylus isn't in the same league. So you'd have to compare to something like the N-Trig stylus which is an extra $50.
Cheaper? Yes, though I'd say the Apple ones are better quality (especially looking at the keyboard cover).
The Surface Pro 3's pen is an N-Trig... Yeah, so not $50 more, included right in the box. And it has reviewed excellently by artists.
> Yes, though I'd say the Apple ones are better quality (especially looking at the keyboard cover).
You have absolutely no basis for claiming that the Apple pen and cover are superior. Literally nobody has reviewed them, you haven't used them, nobody you know has used them, and you didn't even know they existed two hours ago.
So yes, I have a basis for claiming that - one based on the hardware used and direct experience with the competition.
Nope, scissor-switch. It is mechanical.
They used to sell one called the Touch Cover which is likely what you're describing, they don't anymore (discontinued, years ago).
> the Apple one is already better.
Because, why? You haven't used the Surface Pro 3 (as evidence by your own posts), you haven't used this (as evidence by the fact that nobody outside of Apple has), and you keep making basic mistakes about how both work.
This is like the N-Trig remark all over again.
I know, I was saying that the Apple one was better based on my experience with their Dome Switches vs my experience with the Surface keyboard.
You fail at reading comprehension. Just because you can't read, don't blame me.
(Really, you do have sysadmin access, if you care enough. My iPhone has a profile on it put there by my [big, enterprise-y] employer, which gives them the ability to do pretty much whatever they want—including side-loading applications. I'm surprised nobody has used the "corporate-owned device" method to build an App store yet.)
Do you mean this? http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/it/management.html
I see no mention of being able to side-load apps.
That means a machine like my primary work computer is like 8 low-end laptops. This new iPad is the cost of 2–3 low-end laptops.
For drawing on a screen of any size, especially a 12" one, the stylus makes plenty of sense.
Marketing just pushed styli (?) and hardware keyboards out, the latter is something I really miss on my phone...
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/08/jobs-if-you-see-a-stylus-...
He specifically refers to the iPad in the actual quote. Anyone claiming otherwise is simply wrong or a revisionist, though such sorts seep out of the woodwork whenever Apple cedes prior claims, rephrasing and adding unspoken criteria to somehow make it prescient and relevant, seen throughout this discussion.
The original stylus comment was for a 3.5" pocket phone. Previously, things like Palm Treo or Windows Mobile devices required a stylus to touch the resistive sensing screen. That is the baseline.
Anybody taking the quotes out of historical context is just trying to incite an argument and pretend they are better than Tim Cook. Nobody is better than Tim Cook.
And then at the launch of the iPad - "if you see a stylus, you blew it".
- Steve Jobs, after the 2010 iPad introduction.
He felt that Modes obscure the immediate discoverability of functions and they keep you from pushing your design to ensure you can use something without left clicking or pulling out a pen. It should just work.
IMHO these non-discoverable items are a barrier to use. Screens are big enough that buttons can be drawn on them, and even with text.
You'll notice that they introduced this stylus for the iPad Pro, and not for the regular iPad. This stylus is for a specific pro user that actually needs a pen input.
The apple distortion field is running at maximum.
See also (from this same thread): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10192958
- The whole of Twitter right now
But, this is just an accessory. See also: beats headphones, smart case.
Unlike the comedy "smartphone" attempts of 2005 which Steve Jobs was alluding to, you may still freely use your fingers.
Ignoring the fact that it's all moot now, I was doing GPS navigation, multitasking, audio streaming, and rudimentary video calling on some of those "comedy attempts" from 2005-2007 and I did a lot of it with my fingers as well. The iPhone improved on the touch aspect quite a bit but it's not as if it wasn't missing 10 other things that were common to smartphones of the time.
And that only makes sense. It's good business to focus on the things your competition isn't doing as it allows you to target different parts of the market.
* Blatant copies of some Apple product
* Rough prototypes of some future Apple product
The stylus pressure and buttons was a sensor on the stylus that was sensed by the tablet.
The screen or surface didn't have any sensors.
Of course, he would... I bet all iPads in the future will have an optional stylus. Hopefully, the phones too.
http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-i-don-t-really-...
So it's an extra feature. This differs from earlier touchscreens that required a stylus and the strength of 10 mighty men to get that cheap touchscreen to register.
This is for a much larger screen, and it is an accessory and not the primary input device.
But yeah, lets not let the facts get in the way.
Stylus noun, plural styli [stahy-lahy] (Show IPA), styluses.
2) any of various pointed, pen-shaped instruments used in drawing, artwork, etc.
3) Computers. a pen-shaped device used on a display screen to input commands or handwritten text or drawings. Compare joystick (def 2), mouse (def 4).
But yeah, lets not let the facts get in the way.