So their new commercial for the iPad focuses on the fact that so many people use it for productivity, so why can't Apple create a decent, first-party pressure sensitive stylus, so we don't have to deal with expensive, clunky, third-party solutions.
If the argument is that Apple should build one, but not include it by default, specifically for people who need one, I guess the response is "Why bother?"
IMO Apple should integrate appropriate sensors and release an API for stylus makers or create it as an accessory themselves. I've bought two iPads since its initial release, and they work very well for me for some light browsing, but in order to integrate it into my workflow it'd have to become better at note taking.
I loved the MS Courier concept, it's too bad they instead created a solution that does everything, but nothing really well - you can either have desktop OneNote that only works with a stylus or mobile OneNote with nowhere near the features you'd need. Apple's iPad apps tend to have exactly the features you need except stylus support - so there's that.
He has often said that he thought something was stupid. More often than not, at the time he said these things, he was right. He once disliked the entire idea of the tablet, because the technology hadn't matured enough to deliver a positive experience for the customer. Long after he criticized tablets, he introduced the iPad to the world. It doesn't mean he's a hypocrite, it just means that the technology matured enough to change his mind.
Its hard to argue that Wacom technology isn't sufficiently mature, and there is clearly a market for such a thing. Art and note-taking apps are wildly popular. Both would be significantly enhanced by the presence of a true touch-sensitive stylus.
Apple didn't intend for the iPad to be a content creation device, but now they seem to be embracing it as such, because that's what many customers want to do with it.
If a person never changes his mind about anything, that person has stopped learning.
But, some people, need more precision than a human finger allows. They use an object with a finer point than our fingers. But, the rest of us are okay with just finger painting. The paper was designed to be large enough for fingers to use.
It would be nice to sometimes use a different input method on paper when the finger won't cut it. I see nothing wrong with having more than one input method. There is no right or wrong way.
Ship it without a stylus. Require that all apps be usable with fingers. Make a sweet pressure-sensitive stylus available for extra precision. Everyone wins.
Here's the thing, it's not the stylus that is the problem. It's the dependency on a stylus. There is a difference between doing it, and doing it right.
The reason iPad styluses have fat tips is that they have to simulate a fingertip, which is the only thing that an iPad can sense. The tradeoff is that an iPad is faster and more accurate at sensing fingers than other tablets.
Wacom has released a pressure-sensitive stylus for iPad. I have not tried it though...not much of an artist.
Wacom fucked up this particular product, because they opted to use a large rubber tip. It might be more precise than a normal dumb stylus, but its still terrible. Trying to write like a normal person, or draw thin lines is absolutely horrible with a fat-tipped stylus.
The current iPad has a capacitive touch screen, that's why the current styli use a large tip, the stylus isn't replicating a pen, its replicating a fingertip. That's why they all suck. Its hard to write / draw with your finger, so until we stop making styli that replicate fingers, note taking and drawing on the iPad are going to be suboptimal.
Inductive, actually, which is why the stylus doesn't need to have a big fat tip.
Wacom also make a stylus for the iPad, which obviously has to be capacitive rather than inductive. I think it has batteries in it and sends tip pressure information to the iPad over Bluetooth.
(How the inductive sensing works: You have some conductive loops behind the display, and in the pen there is a ferrite rod with a conductive coil around it together with a capacitor to make a resonant circuit. You pass an alternating current at approximately the resonant frequency through some of the loops; it couples to the pen circuit by electromagnetic induction, the pen circuit resonates, and for a short time it produces, by induction again, a signal in all the other conducting coils behind the display. How much signal depends on the position and angle of the coil in the pen. If you have enough loops behind the display you can work out where the pen tip is accurately enough to draw with it. The capacitor in the resonant circuit is variable and adjusted by the tip pressure, and small changes in the resonant frequency produce phase changes in the signal that comes back, so you can measure the tip pressure too. Similar technology is used in some interactive whiteboards.)