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Comment by Yaggo | Hacker News Reader

Fully agree with Jobs. Hand writing recognization may have sounded fine idea, and is rather easy to properly implement, but the thing is that hand-writing is dying skill. Although I learnt to hand-write in childhood and did it for 15 years, nowdays I absolutely prefer typewriting (keyboard). My one-yeard-old daughter will be native typewriter. Speed recognization doesn't currently work (good enough), and if it did, speaking cannot fully replace typing because of privacy issues etc.

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There's one reason I'd want a stylus on the iPad (or any other tablet device), and it's not for handwriting.

It's for sketching. Diagrams, wireframes, or just a squirrel in the park. Give me a simple sketching program - think Painter Light. Let it synch to a repository on my desktop. Let me use the tablet as an actual tablet via bluetooth when I'm actually at my desk.

I would probably pay bank for that.

You can get stylus' for apple's touch devices, I recently ordered one for my iPad.

It's called a Pogo Sketch

I plan to use my iPad for doodling and whatnot of a night time in bed, aswell as reading and general media consumption - its really my "bed time" screen device.

The Pogo sketch works pretty well with the ArtStudio app. I can even get some "brush" effect. (No pressure sensitivity. I think it's all a software trick.)

Art Studio tapers from the start and to the end of a stroke over time of the stroke. So a faster stroke looks thinner, as more of it is drawn within the tapered times. Quite a few line strokes look quite pleasing due the effect. It's very neat.

I have the Pogo stylus. The problem with it, or rather with ArtStudio, Sketchpad, Brushes and all the stylus note-taking apps is the same: you cannot rest your hand on the screen. It registers touches from the hand instead of the stylus. That makes all of these apps pretty much useless as far as I am concerned: it is quite inconvenient to draw or write using these applications, even though some of them are extremely impressive otherwise. This, frankly, boggles my mind - granted the screen sensor API is closed, but is it not possible to do velocity distribution thresholding on different touch events, or maybe something more sophisticated, a Kalman filter or something, to distinguish these touches and ignore the 'stationary' ones?

I use a SmudgeGuard with my Wacom Cintiq - I suppose the same thing would work for the iPad. I haven't received my iPad yet to test it out.

EDIT - link

http://www.smudgeguard.com/

Thanks, I will try it. Application-level solution would still be preferable, I think, and is an interesting problem, aside from the immediate usability benefits.

cheap way to solve that problem is just to wear one of those gloves with holes cut out for the fingers... I use my bicycling gloves and they work great. I don't think we need to use fancy technology to solve this simple problem :-)

I would love it if it had digital ink. Handwriting recognition means nothing to me but the ability to digitally add handwritten notes would make me buy the iPad. I was disappointed with the cancellation of the Courier.

If the iPad had digital ink and the ability to digitally markup documents with ink it would be the killer educational device.

Concur.

I block print, and carry a notebook everywhere. So, having something that I can use in my "accustomed fashion" that would also be searchable via handwriting recognition would be a big win.

I also work in an industry where drawing geometric shapes are commonplace (chemical modeling). Yeah, you can do it with your finger, but sometimes the detail work is important and one's finger is a bit broad. Thus, working with a fine point/stylus would be an application win.

Is this a big enough market segment to matter? Not at this instant, because they're selling every one they make with NO difficulty. Would be nice to see something once the sales ramp down a bit, though.

You can do handwritten notes on the iPad, I've seen it done. A coworker uses iAnnotate and a stylus to make handwritten annotations in pdf files. Looks like it works pretty well.

The thing is that typing works fine for text. But as soon as you want to draw a diagram or a formula or whatever, you're way better off freehand.

I'll have to check this out. My first reaction is that since it isn't part of the operating system like digital ink is with Windows Tablet PC Edition then it's not as flexible or as usable as I'd like. Thanks for letting me know about this app.

Another concurrence, also about the Courier. I don't like typing on a touchscreen, and I actually enjoy handwriting - I think people underrate the degree to which it aids information retention and clear writing.

Do handwriting interfaces have more traction in China, Japan, and Korea?

For what it's worth, the iPhone has one there.

I know they don't in Korea. Hangul lends itself to typing.

Because Hangul is an alphabet.

I've noticed that a number of personal translator devices (still a popular category of device, despite the capabilities of cell phones) have handwriting interfaces.

(The "in Korea, handwriting interfaces are for old people" meme is struggling to escape, but I need to keep telling myself this isn't slashdot. People are actually intelligent here)

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