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Comment by pvg | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs was quite right that a stylus is not great for a small portable device with a touch screen. It's clunky, you can easily misplace the stylus and you can't have multi-touch gestures. There are lots of specialized tasks that are better with a stylus but there are a lot of specialized tasks that are better with a combine harvester.

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I have a Galaxy Note and you can pry the stylus from my cold dead hands. I love it. The Apple Pencil feels clunky to me - it's so big you can't comfortably do art with it.

The iPhone popularised capacitive touch.

His comments on styluses should be seen in light of the technology of the time (Newton/Maemo/Palm OS/WinCE etc) whose input was stabbing at a resistive screen.

(That's not to repudiate finger input being superior to pen for many interactions but styluses of 2019 use vastly different tech to those of 2007.)

His comments on styluses should be seen in light of the technology of the time

I think his comments are general, not about the technology of the time. He's arguing that direct manipulation is better than not-that. That's been a central tenet of UI-stuff for a very long time.

I'd say Steve Jobs' public comments should be seen in light of his main role as a product pitchman. When the 9.7" iPad was the only model available, he criticized the ergonomics of smaller models by Samsung, claiming that "you'd need sand paper to sand down your finger" to use them [0].

Meanwhile, he was overseeing the development of the 7.9 inch iPad Mini, which wouldn't come out until late 2012.

[0]: https://www.itproportal.com/2010/10/21/steve-jobs-wrong-abou...

One thing I've noticed since getting an Apple Pencil is that I tend to use it even for general tasks, so I would tend to disagree.

I'm sure there are also some people who drive a combine harvester to work and find it an optimal commuting vehicle.

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