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Comment by city41 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what the pencil means for Wacom? It looks fantastic, and from my naive perspective looks like it'd be just as capable as a high end Wacom tablet. Any artists here who can chime in?

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I haven't tried iPad Pro nor Microsoft Surface, but Wacom has a texture on the surface which makes a lot of difference when drawing and painting. Even Cintiq has a layer of that on it. Even if they've solved 'drawing on glass' (which should be shit compared to textured surface), there's still that whole issue of proper apps to draw in compared to iOS.

Some screen protectors add a bit of grip, so it feels more like paper and less like glass under the pen.

reference?

In my studio with 12 or so creatives, none have shown any interest in trading out their Cintiqs for an iPad Pro + Pencil + Duet (or some other screen sharing app), despite having a few around the office and many of them having played around with them. That said, I could see many artists that don't like to tether themselves to an office liking the iPad Pro very much.

After I got an iPad pro, I bought three pencils and gave away my Wacom tablet.

Three pencils for one iPad pro?

One for each ear, and one for his hand.

haha

I tend to forget one at home and one at the office. So I keep one in my briefcase just to be sure. I accumulated the other 2 over months. Trust me, spending $100 on a writing utensil pains me a little, but not so much it precludes doing what it takes to get the work done.

You could have lied and said you actually use two at once. I had a professor that could do that with chalk once. (His lectures were to information what costco is to groceries.)

Then there's this creative technique: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-R98esPRPb60/UG8k0zB1dAI/AAAAAAAADi...

On the Surface side, there's Gabe from Penny Arcade, who's kind of informally become their artist advocate. If the Pencil's fidelity is as good as the Surface's -- and I wouldn't expect it not to be -- it seems like it would be perfectly capable.

That said, the Surface also works because it can run full versions of programs like Photoshop. I don't know how that plays out on iOS.

I have played around with the apple pencil at the apple store, and it's unbelievable - it's the best stylus I've used, ever - and I tried all of them.

It was the first time where it genuinely felt natural - like I was writing on paper.

Can't run Photoshop, Illustrator or zBrush on it.

Wacom has nothing to worry about from Apple.... MS on the other hand though.

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