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Comment by tripngroove | Hacker News Reader

As a visual designer, I have to disagree. Trying to work on an iPad is a complete waste of time. Sketching/prototyping by hand is orders of magnitude faster than on an iPad, and it wouldn't even be worth it to try to produce anything resembling deliverable work. The required depth of interaction, breadth of options, and fine-grain control just isn't there.

For musicians, I think it's a different story because the iPad usually augments an existing setup; it can be integrated with other devices to fill a specific need that can be solved by a touch interface into highly customized software. In this case, the iPad is actually allowing totally new interaction that wasn't possible before. This is much more useful than the visual designer's case, where previously established modes of interaction are simulated in an interface they weren't designed for.

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I, and quite a few colleagues, find it really good for ideation, and not too shabby for finished work. David Hockney's recent exhibition at the Royal Academy featured iPads heavily. Anecdotal, perhaps. My point was that to say that iPads are just for consumption is wrong.

So much is dependent on the app. It's hard to discuss the iPad without tacitly including the entire associated software ecosystem (without really being conscious of the scope of that oversight).

I agree with your main point, and I have no doubt that as the medium continues to expand, the quality of the software and interaction will also grow.

Just curious, what visual design apps are you using / would you recommend?

Paper from FiftyThree[1] is very good. Omnigraffle is a useful tool to, but pricey. Photoshop for ipad looks promising too. Matt Gemmell recently wrote a blog post about using the iPad from a UX designers point of view[2].

[1]http://www.fiftythree.com/paper [2]http://mattgemmell.com/2012/05/02/ipad-productivity-apps/

>As a visual designer, I have to disagree. Trying to work on an iPad is a complete waste of time. Sketching/prototyping by hand is orders of magnitude faster than on an iPad, and it wouldn't even be worth it to try to produce anything resembling deliverable work.

YMMV. Other's have no such problems. Not to mention that it can also do wire-framing, it has tons of apps for professional photographers when combined with the camera connection kit (from going through your shoot to check for keepers and apply keywords, to tethered shooting), and when painting or sketching you can export your graphics work in PDF, PNG, layered Tiff and other formats to finish off on your Mac.

>For musicians, I think it's a different story because the iPad usually augments an existing setup

Same thing can be for visual designers/illustrators/information architects/writers etc whatever. Parent said it can be used for creation, not that you have to ONLY use that from zero to finished output.

to finish off on your Mac.

I think you just reinforced the parent's point.

@nhangen

>I think you just reinforced the parent's point.

No, I just said that ONE of his points is YMMV-kind-of-correct. What I'm saying overall is that this doesn't make working with the iPad a "complete waste of time" --it just makes it complementary. Not to mention that people have created works entirely on the iPad too (like several "New Yorker" cover paintings).

I also address this in an other part of my response: "Parent said it can be used for creation, not that you have to ONLY use that from zero to finished output."

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