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fiftythree.com

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>"artisanally crafted" (grammar)

Did an artisan craft it? No, it looks to me mass-manufactured to spec by someone or something who doesn't have a say in its design or the ability to individualize it. You mean "made of wood," but that's the most you can squeeze out. Please don't try to steal the thunder of actual artisans.

> "unique built-in eraser" > "unique sensor lets you flip Pencil to erase"

Yeah, the crappy Wacom knockoff I bought in 1998 had the same thing. Wacoms have the same thing. If you are like all the other, most popular, long-existing things, you are not a unique thing.

If they're delusional about this, what else are they delusional about? Why would I spend money to support hubris? Because I'll have some minor extension of my abilities within a double-walled garden?

Aim higher.

I think they're selling this as a product for tablets. I haven't seen a capacitive stylus for tablets that supports erasing from the other side. I believe they're taking the type of product that has existed with Wacom-type tablets for a while and bringing it to the portable capacitive tablet world, with a tablet many consumers -- including many artists -- already own.

The Samsung Note stylus supports an eraser if I'm not mistaken as does the Surface stylus.

That being said, the carpenter pencil shape is not one I'm overly fond of.

Those styluses are also about 1/2 the price of Pencil.

I mostly meant capacitive styli. Pencil is kind-of a hack in this way.

Actually I went and did some searching and even found a few roundups of dozens of styli and didn't find any with an eraser for iPads/regular Android devices. So I think you're right.

The Surface Pro has had this since its release.

They aren't taking the type of product that has existed with Wacom type tablets and bringing it to the portable capacitive world. This is going to be terrible in comparison.

Its impossible to make a capacitive stylus that isn't like drawing with a giant, cumbersome crayon.

>> Its impossible to make a capacitive stylus that isn't like drawing with a giant, cumbersome crayon.

Which is why I think Apple needs to offer a version of the iPad with a Wacom-style digitizer.

Steve Jobs' famous quote "If you see a stylus they blew it" might apply for UI navigation, but it doesn't apply for a lot of other use cases, including the ones that Pencil is trying to address.

> Steve Jobs' famous quote "If you see a stylus they blew it" might apply for UI navigation

I don't even think it's all that true in that case either. Jobs' stylus ban did serve as a useful forcing device: with a stylus available, pre-iPhone developers of touch UIs tended to fall back to producing bad ports of the WIMP concept, complete with buttons of minute size. But at the same time it would certainly have been possible to produce a good smartphone/tablet UI that was stylus-enabled. In fact I think you could, for example, port the original iPhone's UI to a stylus-only basis fairly smoothly. You'd need a couple of extra physical buttons for call accept/reject and other instant-response actions, and you'd need some alternatives for the few places where two-finger pinch/spread gestures are really important, but otherwise it would be a pretty straightforward port with, I think, a very usable result: only slightly less appealing than the finger-touch original. Overall it seems pretty similar to Jobs' ban on cursor keys on the original Macintosh, which probably helped make early Macintosh software more Mac-native but was rolled back without difficulty later.

Agreed that the lack of proper stylus support is an increasingly glaring lack in the iPhone/iPad line, the largest iPads in particular.

>> I don't even think it's all that true in that case either.

I don't disagree, that's why I used "might" as a weasel word.

All good. Weasels are beautiful, intelligent creatures. ;)

A Double entendre if ever I saw one, leave it to the greatest salesman of the 21st century!

I've used one that worked like a pen. It had a small plastic disk at the tip that swivelled so it would keep contact and not slip. I never found out who made them though. It didn't feel like a giant cumbersome crayon though.

I've used one of those and I found it to be an equally terrible experience. Not sure if they fixed them, but the first few generations of that product left scratches on the screen.

Recently came across this on kickstarter : http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/227221698/truglide-apex-... - says it has 2.4mm tip (also says 5mm some other place - but that too is equally small) This one is w/o the "disk"

HTC made one like that

Probably an Adonit Jot. http://adonit.net/jot/classic/

Wait, what?

It's a marketing page. They took an existing product, and (assuming it works, which is a safe assumption based on their other products) made it simple and beautiful. Most successful companies do this.

You don't have to buy it. I use Paper, though, and I can't wait to get my Pencil in the mail.

Marketing is not an excuse for incorrect claims.

I don't think they lied. Like someone said below, "artisanal" is used for everything now. It's become more of a marketing term. It may not be right, but don't blame 53 for this.

> "artisanal" is used for everything now. It's become more of a marketing term.

I don't think these 2 concepts are unrelated, nor do I believe one excuses the other.

> It may not be right, but don't blame 53 for this.

I disagree. I don't care if a million other companies are doing it, if it's incorrect then it is still incorrect, whether they were the first or the thousandth.

That's like saying don't hate the player, hate the game. Fuck that. Every person who writes marketing copy like this is partially responsible for creating the sea of cognitive bullshit we all have to wade through every day. It's gross.

See also: "welcome to adjective", or "where adjective happens" slogans.

It's not hard to write honest copy with a good product. There are a mountain of accurate descriptions that work in place of 'unique, artisanal'.

Artisanal, Reluctant Branding Pioneer, Dies at Age 474

He is survived by his wife, Organic, and their two small boys, Natural and Green, as well as his cousin Hipster, though the two had fallen out in the '70s and were no longer on speaking terms.

http://www.thewire.com/entertainment/2012/05/artisanal-reluc...

Groovy!

While marketing is not an excuse for incorrect claims, any text on a salespage is assumed to be copy. Copywriting by definition, is persuasive (biased) and meant to influence you to buy the product. I think this sales page is pretty good.

> Marketing is not an excuse for incorrect claims.

You must be new to planet earth. ;-)

Just because a harmful activity is widespread, doesn't mean it's okay to do it.

> made it simple and beautiful

Which product has been simplified? Presumably not a pencil :P

>"Each Pencil has a unique character that will subtly change with years of use" > it's made of wood and wood has grains on it.

In the age of plastic, wood becomes unique and interesting. I'd love to see more components made with a beautiful wood casing rather than unfriendly plastic.

Wood was pretty interesting before the age of plastic, too.

> it's made of wood and wood has grains on it.

or that the wood will degrade over time too. I don't want wood. I want metal, unbreakable metal.

artisan is used to sale everything from string cheese to dunkin donuts sandwiches these days. Singling these guys out for using it seems kinda silly.

The term for breathless marketing is "Modern Wank".

did you just coin that term? it's pretty apropos!

Sounds like what the Solaris folks were saying to the Linux people years ago.

aren't you being just a bit... pendantic?

Please get the joke, please get the joke.

now you're just rubbering it in...

It's marketing. They are going after the Apple iPad crowd.

This type of marketing speaks to that crowd as its similar to Apple's.

Most people that have an iPad and want to do writing on it, have likely gone through at least a couple of stylus's or even more to find one that works well for their needs.

I would say I am one of these people so I find this product useful. Will I buy it? Don't know yet but the marketing is effective for their market.

Initially I thought it was a simple parody piece "pencil" "paper" ... har-har.

Wasn't until I saw the component break down image that I realised it was for an actual product.

Completely agree that "artisanally crafted" means that an actual person manually engaged with the item to create a unique form. If it was cut by a computer running a machine then it definitely doesn't count.

The video is a brilliant piece of marketing - they are selling not the product called 'pencil', but the life-style/idea of a genuis artisan. Buying the product will make you become what you've always wanted - creative, expressive, artsy.

It uses the same tactics as apple marketing copywriting - don't sell the product, sell the life-style the product implies. I bet it's working, because i also felt great watching the video.

Or perhaps i m now overly cynical about all marketing.

Maybe I'm stupidly jaded, and it's one of the things that has steadily pushed me out of the Apple ecosystem, but this trend for overly emotional marketing of stuff, especially in the hipster end of the market, grates enormously. This is like a sort of tech-etsy.

It's got to the point I can't actually take products like this seriously without getting annoyed by them going on about artisanal wood carvings. Like the owning of the object itself is more important than what you're supposed to do with it . . .

I must say the video is most definitely over emotional no to mention it made me sea sick with the over use of shaking. The product looks great and interesting.

>It's got to the point I can't actually take products like this seriously without getting annoyed by them going on about artisanal wood carvings. Like the owning of the object itself is more important than what you're supposed to do with it . . .

i agree with you on your point but it also has upsides, design was forgotten and every electronic device we owned was either matt black or white (think of all the VCR's, home audio, laptops). So now that a sense of design has returned we rebel against it 'being' hipster. Its a delicate balance i guess.

To be clear, I'm definitely in favour of good design, but good design can often speak for itself.

This is the big differentiation, for me. Good design does speak for itself. Marketing bullshit ("An artisanally crafted tool"-these are most certainly not handmade, it's just bullshit) just cheapens the whole thing. It's like explaining the punchline to your joke. Copy like this just ruins a lot of the design for me. Marketing copy hyperbole has been a problem since the 60's. After 50 years it's gotten to where marketing copy is essentially meaningless.

I disagree that there was ever a lack of sense of design - apart perhaps from the humble PC. Home audio and VCRs were black because it was "cool", not because the designers couldn't be bothered.

Even in the world of computing there was design before the iPhone came out - the Silicon Graphics workstations particularly spring to mind. Lenovo/IBM laptops have always had a very strong design - albeit not the graceful/sleek brushed metal of a modern Apple product.

I agree. Much of the copy on that page is simply comical. For instance, the marketing describes the Bluetooth pairing process as "as easy as falling in love."

I don't understand how companies can publish copy that is this absurd and expect people to do anything but laugh at them.

I actually thought that it was advertising a real pencil! It made a swell parody, although still a cool product.

I sort of thought that for a moment too. But then I realised that this was HN so they're likely actually selling some kind of technology that I'm too uncool to know about. So they're talking about "Pencil" and "Paper" not pencil and paper as I understand it. Of course with their super cool, new age design website, actually finding out what they're talking about requires watching a video or something. Simply stating what something is and how it fits with pre-existing things is far too uncool.

From what little I know about Bluetooth LE, pairing is radically simplified - there's even a "Just Works" mode for app-level communication without pairing.

It's Bluetooth - Love Edition

Most marketing isn't targeted at the niche of crotchety, critical, cynical HN readers. I would guess the majority of the greater Apple demographic would hardly bat an eye at the copy.

I don't think so. "Each Pencil has a unique character that will subtly change with years of use." That's likely too much for any demographic.

Hipsters love wabi-sabi.

The only person I've ever heard gush about wabi-sabi is Jack Dorsey

I'm a software engineer with a CS degree and over 22,000 karma on HN. I actually liked that part! I like things that show wear over time for two reasons. First, it communicates how people use it. The wear patterns create some context, so the object feels familiar as soon as you see it. Second, designing a product to wear well means it can stand up to some abuse and isn't a victim of planned obsolescence.

On the other hand, "as easy as falling in love" is definitely over the top ;)

> wear well means it can stand up to some abuse and isn't a victim of planned obsolescence.

so making it out of wood, which chip easily, is designing it to wear well?

The brushed aluminium is probably better than the wood.

Well, that's fair; falling in love is not very easy.

You got this offended at a nice, aesthetic product? I for one, love it. I like the design. All this fuss about the word "artisan", who cares? It's marketing.

No. Not at the product; at the effusive, over the top, false in places - absurd in others, marketing copy.

I care.

It's a bit silly to allow the marketing to influence you in a positive OR negative manner.

That's the point of marketing. What is silly is being a poseur, like many people on HN, and pretending you are above all this. Different people just respond to different styles of marketing.

The point of marketing is to influence him in a negative manner?

My point is that if you're letting a marketing decision come between you and a great product, you're shortchanging yourself.

Have you never seen or heard of political advertising? Any form of marketing which creates comparisons tries to create a lesser impression of the thing which isn't being peddled.

And my point is that some very smart people work in marketing. People who think they can avoid being influenced are delusional.

I'm just glad they didn't use the word "Gorgeous".

At some point I imagine my son will see his wife doing something beautiful, illuminated by a golden sunrise, and when he tells her she looks gorgeous, she'll say "What? Like a fucking app or something?"

I know this is an unpopular opinion among the tech elite, but I absolutely consider the aesthetics of a device to be as important as what you're supposed to do with it. I'm glad that the electronics / software industry is moving away from the "functional is ugly" paradigm of pre-2000 to a more balanced approach of form balanced with function.

It'll pass. It's just a marketing trend.

While I agree, its like all marketing (and having a degree in marketing makes me more jaded). It's no different than a group of friends having fun after popping a Coke can, or women being attracted to Axe body spray. They're selling a stylus - and trying to make it an experience, and have failed in my opinion.

And I need to create a filter so the word "artisanal" never appears in my browser

How do you even draw any conclusions about their failing? I am amused that some HN commenters judge the efficiency of the product marketing using their personal take on aesthetic qualities. No-one except the company has the data if their strategy is working. I guess some just like to bash 'hipsters'.

Don't you think they[company team] did user experience tests, A/B copy tests, product tests, customer research? Do you think that they are utterly incompetent and didn't think about the 'over-the-top' factor?

I think if you're feeling really cynical you might believe the company share the opinion I've originally expressed here, but know that they are merely exploiting a very lucrative market through this approach. I happen to believe in this case they are sincere, but sincerely annoying :).

For those shopping for a Pencil type device, their site might be really effective.

In my opinion they have failed at creating an experience, it just comes off as ridiculous - marketing a stylus like this. I might still buy the device if I ever needed a quality stylus, it's interesting, it's just pretentious marketing. So product may not be a fail, but artisanal positioning is.

I thought this was some sort of parody until I saw the electronic guts near the end. A pencil made of wood with an eraser that writes on paper. I didn't realize it was a "Pencil" that writes on "Paper".

> Like the owning of the object itself is more important than what you're supposed to do with it

Welcome to the world of consumerism. Where we've long produced more than we need and without manufactured desire the high-gear economy would collapse. Companies can't market products anymore cause we all have too much. Instead the market "an experience".

This is wonderful and beautiful. I don't want to knock it. I'll probably buy one and love it.

If you like this, also look at the demo video for Adobe's project Mighty/Napoleon, a pen and drafting tool combo that is pretty incredible: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/17/adobe-xd-mighty-napoleon-...

What I think is sad about both of these products is that they are tied to specific apps. These closed ecosystems get to be more powerful instead of becoming tools on top of which larger things can be hacked together. I don't blame 53 or Adobe for that: making open hardware with open standard communication is probably incredibly hard, and getting it to interact with a tablet operating system through anything other than your one app is perhaps impossible.

But it's still sad.

With the growing popularity of hardware hacking, it's only natural that developers will start making our own physical tools the same way we write our own software tools. Unix makes this easy by providing abstractions like pipes, sockets, etc. for getting small programs to work together using common interfaces.

What are the OS-level abstractions that will make it easier to build, combine, and reuse our own hardware tools? The current methods for using device drivers, detecting wireless devices, or sharing them across a network are not very open to reuse and sharing.

What is the way forward where we can use something like this pencil with its smart palm rejection and erase, hack together our own physical drafting tool, and plug them both in to existing software by writing a little adapter?

It makes me wonder whether we need to go back and steal some of the bits of plan9/inferno: a single abstraction around sharing both data and devices, a natural way to multiplex input and output streams, and transparent network sharing of everything.

One of the most insightful comments I've read on HN. Love your idea of taking the Unix approach to hardware - don't know enough about hardware hacking to know if that's doable but I like the idea!

The current trends in mobile apps, and smartphones pushed such "silos" of functionalities not open to other devices, forget hacking. It's time for someone to develop an open source hardware and make all the protocol open, and maybe call it "finger"..

Edit: on the other side, we have Rasperry, Arduino etc..

I wouldn't assume that Adobe's Mighty will only work with Adobe apps. It is in Adobe's interest that it works with as many apps as possible.

You should expect to hear more around this when Mighty ships.

(Disclosure, I work for Adobe).

Ooh, truly good news. I will be very interested to see how it works on other apps in iOS.

Don't assume there won't be an SDK for Pencil, too.

"the FiftyThree team would like to release an SDK that would allow third-party developers to also take advantage of the device"

http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/19/fiftythree-pencil/

Great, but there needs to be a guarantee that you are free to develop any kind of application, even a competitor to Paper.

Why would you even say that? It makes no business sense for them to disallow competitors with their eventual SDK because they will still be selling much more expensive hardware to those people.

With an SDK they can only sell more products, whether that is apps, hardware, or both.

Where they should limit their SDK use is in branding — they probably wouldn't want poor quality or badly designed apps advertising (or even using) the Pencil SDK. It would reflect badly on their product. So they need to maintain control in those cases.

They shouldn't allow "any kind of app." They should allow "any kind of app that meets their standards for quality."

But "Pencil" probably won't work with Adobe apps, am I right?

the older and more experienced I get I increasingly see that pattern: those who don't really know/understand Unix, vi or Lisp seem doomed to reinvent them, typically poorly, more expensively, more convolutedly, more bureaucratically/monopolistically, etc. Not to say they're perfect in all ways, or 'complete', only that I've lost track of the number of times where someone went with a much more complicated/expensive/indirect/expensive solution when they would have been better off with something provided/encouraged or exemplified by the patterns of Unix, vi or Lisp.

>>What I think is sad about both of these products is that they are tied to specific apps. These closed ecosystems get to be more powerful instead of becoming tools on top of which larger things can be hacked together.

There are a number of high-end stylus makers that offer app developers SDK integration with their tools:

https://github.com/Adonit/JotTouchSDK http://www.tenonedesign.com/t1pogomanager.php http://www.hex3.co/pages/developers http://us.wacom.com/en/developerrelations/ios

And many drawing apps have taken advantage of them, such as the professional-level Procreate app, which allows one to use any of the pressure-sensitive styli listed above interchangeably.

I understand this, but it doesn't solve the problem. Imagine if someone said: "the developers of grep have come out with an SDK so that other text-oriented programs can integrate text matching!" The idea of grep-as-library is great, but it doesn't replace having pipes so that you can use grep with arbitrary programs, most of which have no idea they're being used with grep.

To build larger abstractions on top of these things, we need looser coupling. I want to draw and erase with Pencil, but use a manual dial to set the pressure because I do very precise architectural drawings. I want to draw with Pencil but use Mighty to make my lines snap to a grid and some other French Curve thing I hacked together with some dials for snapping to curves. I want to use two Pencils at once on two separate iPads and draw together with someone. I want my LeapMotion to understand my hand gestures to rotate data in an Excel pivot table and project it into a graph.

Yes, I want crazy things. But abstractions work to build crazy, unexpected text-oriented programs in Unix. So what are the abstractions we need to build arbitrary crazy programs with UIs and hardware peripherals?

Yes, this is like the old DOS days where e.g., your games had to be programmed with your specific make of sound card or you would have no sound (or PC speaker only). What we need is an OS-level API that allows apps to be mostly agnostic about what device is giving the input. And device manufacturers won't need to release app integration SDKs -- just code the OS driver.

And then we have windows all over again? I'm not sure that SDKs are that much better, but windows drivers have been the cause of many wasted hours...

Many OS's/PC's can even get laptop trackpads right, and we've been making those for over a decade: and shipping tens of millions. Apple gets it right, because they write their own drivers and OS.

I don't have high hopes for abstractions on pressure-sensitive styli.

Pencil isn't designed to only work with Paper. Anyone who is interested in an SDK for Pencil should let us know what they are thinking about.

business AT fiftythree DOT com

I would love to see Windows Surface drivers so I could use this with Photoshop.

Surface already comes with Wacom's digitizer technology so you can get pressure sensitivity and all that good stuff. You probably just need to buy the stylus.

He may be talking about the RT models, which lack the digitizer of the Pro but still have the ability to run RT versions of apps like Sketchbook Pro

Sketchbook Pro is a desktop-only app; you are probably thinking of the metro version of Sketchbook Express.

Microsoft's own Fresh Paint app is another one that could benefit from this. One thing to note is that all of the Bluetooth styli released so far on iOS are exclusive to Apple's platform. An exception is Hex JaJa, which is cross-platform between iOS and Android, but it's not a Bluetooth stylus either - it utilises high-pitch sounds delivered via microphone.

They also lack Photoshop, though, correct?

Apparently there's an 'Express' RT version of Photoshop, might be what they're referring to?

Yes, I was simply saying it'd be nice to use this stylus on Windows with Photoshop because of its physical/aesthetic characteristics. It doesn't add much technically over the Wacom stylus, might even be slightly inferior, but it will feel different in the hand.

definitely inferior. No pressure sensitivity, which is odd because it does at least sense on/off pressure (to do palm rejection).

I hope Notability takes advantage of this. I'm a scientist and I use my iPad and Notability to take notes on research articles. I would love to use Pencil's features for this.

On a separate note, I can't believe the poor quality of apps available to scientists. Papers, the citation manager, can't run a release to save their lives, is expensive, and not impressive. I use it because it's better compared to the rest, but still not great software. Their iPad note taking is horrible compared to notability, so my PDFs are scattered between the two apps. It's a giant mess and waste of time I rather spend on research.

The new Mendeley iOS update is a vast improvement over their previous version. May be worth a look

The obvious choice is procreate! I was a studiopaint die hard, now I only draw in my freetime (which is much better), and settled on mypaint a few years ago.

I don't own a tablet yet. But procreate, Paper, and the various stylus available are now very tempting.

I am just as happy now to watch the ipad market undertake the design market, as OS9 and NT did against IRIX. Watch us do more with more accessible consumer tech.

I wonder if the eraser could be used in more complex (if less elegant) apps such as AutoDesk Sketchbook or ProCreate to invoke a menu instead of erasing.

Just document the protocol.

Unclench, already.

Pencil isn't designed to only work with Paper. Anyone who is interested in an SDK for Pencil...

I can't help it, this makes me think of joke engineering documentation for everyday items.

I didn't realise it was a real product until near the end. I was thinking "Jeez guys, Penny Arcade did this joke four years ago!"

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/9/

Wait, this is a real product?

I too was fooled by this line, I did a CTRL+F for iPad on the page and nothing came up so I thought it must be a joke... then I saw the apple app of the year logo and got confused...

> Pencil isn't designed to only work with Paper. Anyone who is interested in an SDK for Pencil should let us know

Tech quote of the freaking year.

Wait -- you set up an entire system of metaphor, and then the most fundamentally associated of these doesn't work together? Even with the beautiful product videos to convince me of how well this skeuomorphism will complete me? I mean, not to be a naysayer, but you must have had interoperability in mind. Right?

(or is it actually truly an echo of an xkcd joke here?)

Napoleon is a really neat marriage of software and hardware. It's one of those rare things that's both new and familiar.

Mighty, meanwhile, he actually described as "cloud pen". Please stop. I need a great pen for a tablet. I don't need it dependent on your hosted services. It's driving me crazy how the cloud, an enabling technology, is being crammed down our throats as a feature in and of itself.

While it is not dependent on the cloud, it does leverage it to do things such as copy and paste between apps / tablets, and storage of assets for the pen.

(Disclosure, I work for Adobe).

That's full blown derp. Computers managed to do inter app copy and paste for how many decades before anyone though it would be sensible to send local data over the internet to another app on the same device?

The NSA wins again.

I agree on the apps part, but you're missing the "between tablets" part of this particular situation.

When you have poor APIs to work with you have to start thinking out of the box.

Quite literally outside the box, in fact.

But then the box never gets fixed.

That's a bit like saying that someone creating a web browser means it will never be as part of the OS.

It's pretty natural in a new niche for there to be experimenting before it settles down to a standard. Either the OS makers pick it up and we get standard API's in Android and iOS, or someone organizes a standards effort for the vendors to get behind. But standards committees are slow and negotiating a new standard isn't what you do when you're trying to ship 1.0.

Hardware abstraction is like the Holy Grail in the test and measurement world. Things like the IVI have been implemented but have not gained traction. Once you have a feature that is slightly different than other instruments what do you do? Least common denominator in feature set has been the solution so far. Not saying a way for OS-level abstractions isn't bad, but there are niche areas in computing that have tried and failed at solving this problem.

"Pencil is the most natural and expressive tool for getting ideas on Paper"

I thought this would be some kind of parody at first...

you are not alone in this.

Yeah, I thought this was a Web page advertising an actual pencil.

I thought that the whole HN userbase was going along with the joke.

Good 'ol Poe's Law (the other way around this time)

It took me until they started describing USB port when I realized that this is not a page making fun of shitty iPad accessories, but an actual shitty iPad accessory.

Genius, in my opinion.

Naming their products on such a broad term effectively establishes them as the "category killer" -- a competitor will never be able to find a name that's more effective[1].

[1]: http://www.igorinternational.com/process/silk-naming-consume...

I thought this was making fun of all of the useless products that are marketed with these flashy web pages.

Then I realized that they were actually serious.

I might have hit the wrong arrow, not sure but sorry if I did.

And yes, I also had a hard time telling if they capitalized Pencil and Paper just to parody apps and products overriding common words, or if there really was something behind.

I am on a phone so I skipped the video, and it would have really helped to have a big 'this is a bluetooth accessory for your phone/tablet/computer'. Because I am genuinly intersted in the product, it's really something I've been waiting for a long time, but the 'parody' feeling hasn't quite faded yet.

The music also gave me that feeling. Apple-style advert to the Nth degree. You'd think we were watching a time lapse of a baby gestating or the universe expanding.

Most products on iOS seem to be self parodies.

Yea--me too. As a former Carpenter, I always found Carpenter pencils awkward. They were inprecise. Yes, finish Carpenters are required, on many jobs to be within 1/16 th on an inch. I know this pen is for cpmputer art-- which I still have a hard time accepting. And I know Boris Whatever is pretty impressive, but for myself it's still 2H pencils, with soft and hard erasers, and never drawing-- just shadowing.

Didn't help that most of the features they describe are found on a real pencil.

Amazing what a difference capitalising two words can make..

I'm a paper user. Here are my pros and cons:

Pros: - easy to get started or back into drawing - easy to sketch UI concepts and send them around - easy for my daughter to play with

Cons: - fixed canvas size; you can scale an are a tiny bit but not much - no layers - customer support has shown an indifference to existing technogy (with pressure and palm detection) even for the styli they support. - customer support seems to have a (IMO) arrogance in how they respond to things on the forums. - including the upgrades makes Paper 2x as expensive vs Procreate which has more drawing fools and the abity to customize and save my own tools.

It was a good app to have and my daughter still uses it. But for my own doodling or quick UI concepts at work I switched to procreate. The wacom creative (http://intuoscreativestylus.wacom.com/en/) stylus was on my Xmas list u until I saw the adobe tool mentioned. I'll be checking that out.

I wonder why so few people complain about the speed.

I tried to use Paper and while I love the results I can get (nice-looking drawings even if you are not artistically inclined), I can't stand the slowness, and the fact that I can't properly dot my i's.

I switched to Upad for all my tech drawings. It works great, and is very responsive. No, my drawings do not look as cool, but at least they get drawn.

I noticed that too when I colored things fast. It was fast enough for most things. The most frustrating speed issue for me was when painting with watercolor brush where the variable speed changes the effect of the ink.

Thanks for the tip re: Upad! I'll check it out.

I hadn't heard of Upad before. The screenshots look nice, especially if it really does work well for handwriting. Just yesterday I tried doing some mathematical note-taking in another app (already forget which one) and it was pretty bad.

Sadly, the support links leave me with little confidence in the product. The "PockeySoft Web Site" link is actually a youtube video, and "UPAD Support" takes me to a 404 (http://www.pockeysoft.com/upad). If I remove the path on that URL, most of the images on the resulting site are broken. If their site is that broken, and the app hasn't been updated in 11 months, it sure gives the impression that the app has been abandoned.

Perhaps it has — but for the moment it works great, and for the amount of money that you have to pay for it, who cares if it will work a year from now?

I use apps like this only rarely. I don't want to have to hunt for a new app every time I decide I need this functionality.

Hmm, that's unfortunate since my biggest use case would be able to have a large canvas that I can move text around on. What's the syncing like? Is there some way I would be able to access my images via a desktop or web interface?

No access to images and you can only email an image or export a collection to pdf via several channels: Google drive, computer sync, iBooks.

My problem with Paper is the undo/rewind function. It really is frustrating to use and often doesn't work as intended. There is a long thread on their forums about it but they insist this is a minority problem and they know best.

I get the feeling that much of the development is focussed on concept over function.

Then there is the price gouging. You can't blend unless you buy their stylus. And their 'active' stylus doesn't even have pressure sensitivity even though they claim they have been developing it for over a year. All you get for your $50 is palm rejection, blending, and a novel eraser functionality.

I think I will stick with my simple Bamboo stylus which I already own and doesn't require charging and lament not being able to blend/smudge.

I also own Bamboo Paper, and Procreate - while I have gripes with Paper's business practice, I can't get the same results with either of the other products. The watercolour, pen, and pencil are superior in Paper. I can't even get an effective watercolour in Procreate at all.

Whoever directed that video needs to go back to film school.

I understand that you're trying to "highlight the product", but causing nausea in your customer isn't the best way to do that.

Not sure why this is downvoted, he's completely right. Too many start up product videos nowadays are directed with shots all over the place. I hate it when I see it in movie trailers, but they can at least explain themselves as not wanting to show you too much of the movie. No excuse in a product video that doesn't need to rush itself.

Wow, that was even more nauseating than the Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield.

I thought, "Oh, that's kind of interesting" when it first tracked the pencil and I thought it was done. Nope. It followed for the rest of the video. I started feeling nauseous, and I don't even get car sick.

I didn't get that feeling, but the "Hm... I wonder if anyone is getting nauseous watching this" thought did cross my mind.

I thought it was cute.

Cute but nauseating.

Like when you eat too many kittens, hate that.

I've been in every kind of car, on large boats, small boats, in helicopters, in 2-seater planes and every other type of plane and never once I have ever gotten motion-sickness.

Watching that 72 second video right after lunch made me feel queasy. And I still have no idea what the product does other than draw things on a table.

The difference between 'motion sickness' (which I don't suffer from) and 'simulation sickness'[1] (which I do).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_sickness#Simulation_sick...

Yeah I had to stop watching that video. The shaking about effect was horrible. Can't understand why anyone would have thought that was a good idea.

OT, but interesting that you get nauseas in the video, but not in real life.

Do you also by any chance get nauseas if you played First Person Shooter games? I know a coupe of people that do, even tho they don't in real life vehicles.

I don't get nauseas watching videos/playing games, but i do get nauseas on real life vehicles.

Also felt nausea from watching the video... Was really bad idea.

Did anyone else read this at first as a very well executed parody website explaining all the benefits of using traditional paper and pencil? I sniggered when I read "Our adaptive palm rejection instantly knows whether it’s your hand or Pencil touching the page." It took me some time to realize that this was a real product...

Yup, I'm using my status indication adaptation to uniquely and fluidly demonstrate a situation of synchronistic agreement has been established between your cognisization and mine. With it's motile upper sections and manipulable terminal section it's the perfect vehicle to deliver not only indications of agreement but many other natural gestures drawing you in to an incalculable world of novel experiences.

[pbhjpbhj raised his hand.]

Half the items I see on kickstarter I think are parodies, especially with the high design stock music, ideation sketches on the wall and the animated group brain storming sessions. But hipsters are soft targets full of much self-importance and wow.

Yet another product that expects EVERYONE to own an iPad. W-T-F? Try this. Control + F, search for "ipad". Nothing. Search for "apple", nothing. Search for "android". NO-THING. What's wrong? Is the iPad the definitive standard and everyone is now born with one?

Sick.

It says "Paper" all over it, and Paper already requires an iPad. Requiring an iPad would be redundant. Edit: Also at the bottom they actually mention Apple once, in tiny print in an image lol

So? I didn't know anything about that "Paper" app before. Anyways, I guess you don't get what I mean.

When I was reading that page I wasn't sure whether they just misspell paper, misspell it on purpose to make a parody of these marketing websites, or whether that should be something else. Only the HN thread told me that apparently it's an iPad App (for sketching I purpose). Especially when the app has such a common word as a name at least a link or something wouldn't hurt...

Honestly, I read the whole page and I have still no idea what this is. It says it is a Pencil which works with Paper, both pencil and paper with uppercase letters which seem to indicate that they mean something else then a carpender pencil and a peace of paper to write on, so does the price and that you can load some battery and connect to something unspecified with bluetooth.

Could someone tell me what this is for and why they have a beautiful website which doesn't tell me what the product is for?

It's a bluetooth smart stylus for iOS devices, especially tablets, which integrates with their existing graphic design app "paper".

The reason it's non-trivial and potentially interesting is because it doesn't just rely on the limited resolution of the capacitive touch screens of iDevices, it has its own sensor which improves on that. If it were just an ordinary capacitive stylus it wouldn't have the precision to be very useful for drawing or even hand writing.

> It's a bluetooth smart stylus for iOS devices, especially tablets, which integrates with their existing graphic design app "paper".

Such a simple and short explenation! I wonder why they don't mention iOS devices, the word stylus or the word app on their website.

Before watching the video, I thought this was a parody

Can any artists on HN comment on how useful styli are with tips this thick? I suspect the added thickness is required for capacitive touch screens, but I always thought my fingertip was far too thick for accurately initiating thin lines or dots (e.g. in games like Draw Something). Something like this seems like it would require far less erasing:

http://www.wacom.com/en/us/everyday/bamboo-stylus-feel-samsu...

*edited for clarity

For drawing, you can get away with larger tips, but I cannot understand how can people use those soft-rubber tips for capacitive screens, where the center-point of contact is actually moving as you scrub the screen. For comparison, I use a Wacom Intuos 5 large, and I'm already noticing that the pen tilt affects the position of the cursor (a 45' angle moves the point up to 0.5mm in the direction of tilt).

I saw several people taking notes with those pens though, but the note-taking applications offer a large "writing" area where you can write text as big as 4cm in height. I honestly cannot write efficiently at that size.

The "Pencil" here also has such a large tip that clearly covers the area of contact even if you use it with the short side up. I assume you will be able to figure out the point of contact after a while, but I would have chosen a normal pen design, not an "artisan pencil" at all.

Useful for sketching but any real work is going to be done with an actual drawing tablet like the ones Wacom makes.

The added thickness is to compensate for the fact that the iPad touch screen has a reasonable distance between sensors. You cannot get pixel-perfect accuracy on the iPad touch screen, and a pointed stylus would make that extremely apparent. So instead the trend is for larger tips, to encourage users to bump up their line thicknesses and to obscure the lack of pixel-perfect accuracy. Think marker, not pen.

It's my understanding that the inaccuracy is not due to the distance between sensors - but rather that Apple/etc have configured the sensors to only respond to contact points over a certain size (to reduce interference from power supplies and other imperfections)

Consumption device, not a creative device.

It's certainly plausible that touches that are small enough are ignored, although I don't know if that's actually true. But even if it is, that doesn't change what I said.

> Consumption device, not a creative device.

Do you honestly believe that? Are you just burying your head in the sand, or do you actually think that all of the people out there happily creating things on their iPads don't count for some reason?

> Do you honestly believe that? Are you just burying your head in the sand, or do you actually think that all of the people out there happily creating things on their iPads don't count for some reason?

People working around the significant restrictions preventing content creation are the exceptions that prove the rule, in my opinion. I'm glad they're able to do it, but the iPad certainly wasn't designed to enable it.

> but the iPad certainly wasn't designed to enable it.

That is the biggest load of bullshit I've heard all day.

I have a couple thick-point styli. I hate 'em. I just got a fine-point Adonit Script, which is not without its problems (no pressure sensitivity, not much app support yet) but oh man I can actually DRAW with the damn thing instead of scrawling with a big crayon.

That said I'm still finding myself just reaching for a traditional sketchbook and a cheap pen when I want to do some quick drawing, and opening up the laptop to run Illustrator when I want to do Serious Work.

Pencil seems like an fairly interesting idea, but it's priced in a really odd way. The $50 price point puts it well out of reach consumer and hobbyist users. Despite this, Pencil and Paper are not as robust as, nor ate they priced comparably to, professional digital drawing tools like Wacom's system.

Pencil precludes the casual demographic who just wants to doodle in their free time or take notes with its high price, but does not cater to the group of elite professionals who would be willing to cough up a substantial amount of money for drawing tools.

I just don't understand who this is for.

I don't think a $49 price point is "well out of reach" for consumer and hobbyist users.

I would argue that it is. What portion of iPad owners have ever spent any money on software or peripheral devices? Probably less than half. Now, what portion of them would be willing to shell out $50 for a stylus? I just can't imagine that a non-negligible proportion of iPad owners would be willing to spend that much on an accessory.

Also keep in mind that the current price point is "introductory" and will increase in the future.

Selling high-end accessories to Apple users is an existing market. There's whole companies focused on that, for instance twelve south (http://twelvesouth.com/).

Artist equipment is very expensive, and $50 is less than you'll pay for a decent water color brush. The last one I got was about twice that expensive, and I don't even use it anymore. I use Paper. If it works as advertised, Pencil is a steal.

The gigantic tip and the lack of pressure sensitivity guarantees that this stylus won't work any better than the ones you can buy from amazon for a dollar.

It sure looks like its well made, but take a look at the end of it and explain to me how writing/drawing with it isn't going to be a horrible experience?

Now, what portion of them would be willing to shell out $50 for a stylus?

This is an irrelevant question, because most iPad owners would not spend even a single dollar on a stylus. A better question to ask is what percentage of iPad owners would spend, say, $20 on a stylus but not $50? I suspect that the $20 to $50 jump is not that large for most people who are actually willing to pay for a stylus.

How about the other $829 it would cost me to replace my 64GB iPad 2 with 3G? It's a niche product. I have a $10 stylus that works well enough with the 2. If I wanted a real drawing solution, I'd look at something with an actual WACOM digitiser, like a Surface Pro or similar.

Anecdote: I've paid more than 100$ in styluses for the ipad just to find the one that would work good enough for note taking. precision would be great, but it's really speed and reliability (your letters are not skipped when writing too fast or too angled). If this products clears this too points better than the other styluses, I'd fork the 50$ and forget about real pencils and papers for the rest of my life (until the battery runs out, the Paper app crashes and lot of other likely things)

Did you find one you're satisfied with for note taking?

There are a few that look promising in the $20-30 range (Adonit Jot Pro, Musemee Notier V2, etc) and $90-100 range (Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus, Adonit Jot Touch 4, etc), where the more expensive ones are pressure sensitive.

Writing small print quickly and small, precise diagrams seem enough different from illustration and drawing that it is difficult to tell from the descriptions which products would work well.

You might checkout the Jot Script. I had this same dilemma and just ordered. Unable to speak to it first-hand but looks good.

Oddly enough, the expensive styluses seem to be cheaper than buying a moleskine notebook every month or so at $15+ a pop.

I was very disappointed with the Jot Script. It frequently skips. See this video of a replacement "non-lemon" writing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBEGJJNVAjw#t=68

Anyone use a Galaxy Note day to day to take notes in meetings? Half my notes are diagrams and sketches; I don't understand why reviewers always gloss over the stylus as unnecessary and quote (a wrong) Steve Jobs.

I disagree. The price point is perfect. Not overly expensive, but not "cheap". $50 is in the perfect range where you can get one as a gift for any family member.

I'd never buy one, mainly because my handwriting is atrocious and I'm not anything close to an artist. That said, I can think of a bunch of people that would love this.

When it's for an iPad, which is $300+? I don't think $50 is out of reach.

I will never understand the stylus-on-capacitive-screen thing. The lag, the limited accuracy, the interpolation of your movements, it's all very opposite to the idea of a stylus as an input. I'm glad others find it useful, but every stylus I've ever used on a capacitive screen has immediately struck me as, to me, worthless.

Seems like this company should be an insta-cquire for Apple any day now. They display Apple's core values more than any other company I know (outside of Apple).

Since it's Bluetooth it seems to be a great way to get probably close to 100% accurate palm detection which has always been the most annoying part of stylus usage on iPad for me. Genius.

Isnt't it ironic that the cofounders actually came out of Microsoft R&D. They were among the Courier team, for those who don't know. Courier was a pre-iPad tablet device with amazing untapped potential.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlpftPSuXe4

Sigh, and now it's one of select demo apps in every Apple store. It alone almost made me buy an iPad. Way to go Bill Gates shutting down Courier, well done.

Sorry, are you saying that had billg not shut down Courier, Microsoft would have made the iPad?

Its rather like the Winklevoss twins - if Microsoft could have invented the iPad, they would have invented the iPad.

The Courier looked far more like it would've found an actual market than Surface RT.

The question is really how much of what leaked was functional versus what they hoped it was going to do.

If you look just at the journal parts of the video, the parts Paper can duplicate, most of them are not in Paper at all. Paper is just a special type of drawing app.

No, they're saying had billg not should down Courier, Microsoft would have made Courier.

That's just a concept video. Paper can't do most of what is shown in the journal parts of the video, so I'm guessing they were no where close to making Courier a reality.

On the other hand, Apple is surprisingly anti-stylus. Perhaps they feel it represents a barrier between the user and machine, or maybe they feel it differentiates the iPad from the stylus-based tablets that came before.

Regardless, styluses seem to be one of the few tablet accessories that you can buy in almost any electronics store except an Apple store.

The web site misses one obvious sentence: "Pencil is a ...". I spent 60 seconds on the web site, did not understand what the heck is this thing, and closed the web site. Will never open again I guess.

watch the video

Watched 40 seconds. Don't have sound. Understood nothing.

How hard is it to understand? It's an iPad stylus.

You probably aren't the target market.

Videos (normally) run in realtime and unless you want to miss something by skipping, you have to watch from start to finish - ie: in the video creator's timeframe.

Maybe I'm a control freak, but I want to scan a few paragraphs at a speed that suits me rather than be 'forced' to sit through a promo video from end-to-end.

It's the same reason why I'd rather read a tech article than listen to a podcast.

Does pencil provide any additional drawing resolution or pressure sensitivity? Genuinely curious. Didn't see any mention of those on the site, but I saw a battery required and wondered if that did more than power the eraser.

As someone who has done a decent amount of digital art, this is a far inferior solution to existing Wacom products. Not only are there issues with using such a large "pencil", but the iPad simply doesn't have the ability to differentiate between different levels of pressure like the Intuos or even the much cheaper Bamboo tablets.

Is there anyone who has used one of these who can comment on the amount of lag? The website makes a lot of claims about almost everything except lag. High accuracy (claimed) is nice and all, but it really throws you off if you're drawing a curve and what's showing up on the screen is precisely half a second behind your hand!

Low latency is crucial for a stylus. Absolutely crucial. It's what separates tools from toys.

I like the whole idea of well-crafted products, but in the end this is nothing but a crappy, laggy, low fidelity finger-simulator/crayon. Writing any text with it is probably clumsy, and certainly impossible to do as well as with any other pencil on paper.

Pass. Apple needs to get out something with a proper active digitizer so that all these satellite companies start making nice pens that also work well.

Tell me it's not Apple-only. Tell me it's not Apple-only...

crosses fingers

Oh, bugger. It's Apple-only.

Why's that a big deal?

If you really care about a stylus on a tablet, a tablet with a real digitizer seems to be a much better choice -- and there are some good, reasonably priced non-Apple options out there like Samsung's Note series of products, the Surface Pro, Thinkpad Tablet 2, etc.

It's a big deal because they are interested in the product and it requires you to have an iPad...

It's not that there are no comparable products - there are. It's more that I thought this particular implementation, at this price, looked really interesting.

So apparently this is a device to be used with iPads. Would have been nice if the company put that somewhere on the product's webpage.

Paper is the only "entertainment" app I actually installed on my iPad. (I don't have games, news or social media apps.) On its own, Paper is already a very interesting experience. The content is simple but provides tons of possibilities.

I also own a Wacom stylus that I never use. Pencil seems to solve the main issues of a stylus: being able to rest your palm, to erase easily, and to keep it close at hand (by snapping it to the iPad cover).

It's a perfect example of software / hardware synergy.

We asked for Android support and this is what we get instead?

http://support.fiftythree.com/customer/portal/questions/8218...

It is that surprising? When you have limited dev resources it's smart to focus on the platform that would garner the most attention and profit.

Exactly, grandma needs her new Christmas present!

The thing is the Android market is much bigger. Maybe history will repeat itself?

* Company makes a great innovative product on iOS * Competitor gets to Android first, embracing the platform * Company finally releases an half-assed Android port with iOS look and useless back buttons while Competitor is already established on Android

=> After the Android launch failure, Company publishes numbers comparing iOS and Android sales and claim "See, no profit to be done on Android!"

The number of android devices is much bigger but because most of those devices are at the extreme low end, especially in tablets, the market for Android software and accessories is much smaller.

Has this happened? It does make sense to me and seems like a good opportunity for a competitor but I can't think of a case where a very popular iOS app lost out to an android alternative.

Didn't they just raise a $15m series A funding round?

I don't think this is to do with limited resources, I suspect the real reason is around fragmentation and whether / where the market is for Android. Fragmentation is a real issue and most of the things being done to improve it don't feel like they'd help an app like Paper where I suspect that they're doing some fairly low level things to get it to behave the way it does.

That applies doubly for Pencil - do they really want to try and get their hardware to work with every shitty bluetooth stack on every cheap Android tablet? It the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was selling by the bucket you could see why that might be an appealing market, but that's very different to the Android tablet market. They're only supporting five out of the seven iPads that have been made...

The last comment says We are being very careful while building our company, so it’s not merely a financial issue.

Fuck 'em. Someone should clone Paper on Android and take all the market share before the original developers port it. If this happens with enough iOS-only apps, the developers will start learning.

Learning what? I suspect they already know that the world is full of angry, immature, entitled people.

Learn that there is a much bigger market out there than the hipsters and Apple fanbois using iOS devices. The first step might be to spend some time outside San Francisco and wear looser jeans.

It might be bigger but is it more profitable?

This comment is a very ineffective way to disprove anu_gupta's point. :)

Maybe starting from this https://code.google.com/p/markers-for-android/ and improving.

IMHO a Wacom tablet, costs less than 50$ and you can find them for as low as 20$, is a better alternative (more levels and the stylus is more precise)

A guy politely telling the posters that the company is focused on iOS, but offering a job opportunity to someone to port to Android? That seems completely positive to me.

notice he isn't offering a job to work on an android port. He is offering a job to a top developer who is up for the challenge. But since there is no budget allocated to it ("there is not specific android job listing"), then this new top developer will work on iOS for awhile.

If you're hired to port a system to a new platform, it may not be a bad idea to spend time working on it on the current platform(s). Especially since iOS <-> Android conversions aren't always straightforward. If they developed it in Objective-C using Apple's supplied libraries for GUI, network IO, etc, they'll be doing less porting and more rewriting. From then on they'll be maintaining two code bases, not just a fork that replaces certain segments with Android specific patches.

That video made me a little dizzy. it was a fun effect, highlighting the pencil in the middle of the shot, but I had to turn it off.

"Pencil is the most natural and expressive tool for getting ideas on Paper"

iPad + Pencil + App = most expensive expression tool I know too !

To me, latency is by far the most important issue here, and I don't see any mention of it on the page. Compared to my Wacom tablet, touch input is just too laggy to use in anything but the most basic drawing and note-taking tasks; is Bluetooth better or worse? (Judging by my existing BT devices, I'm gonna have to guess "worse".)

Explains why they prevaricated on other Bluetooth styluses: http://support.fiftythree.com/customer/portal/questions/1461...

Safe to say this is the only one that will be supported.

Awesome scrolling effect on the Pencil in the Crafted For Creativity section.

The script for the scrolling effet: http://www.fiftythree.com/js/pencil.js

Ah! I didn't see it happen on Chrome, so I missed it. Went back with Firefox after I saw your comment and now I get it. Very nice.

Obnoxious is more like it.

Gutted it's only for Retina & Mini (i.e. not the iPad 2) [1] devices as well :( This would have been an amazing Christmas present for my wife.

[1] http://shop.fiftythree.com/ (System Requirements at the bottom)

The iPad 2 does not support Bluetooth 4.0, unfortunately.

It probably has a noticeable latency, like most touchscreen inputs. The video just shows silly camera/pen movements and no actual drawing scenes.

What really struck me about Pencil here is that they're marketing Pencil as a durable good.

The idea that someone's marketing a computing device without hoping I'll throw it away in 12-18 months is really inspiring.

On the other hand, it only works properly with a single brand of tablet.

I wonder how well something like this would work for doing math.

Say, for example, a word problem, or a proof. You often need more than one sheet of paper for a problem, but if you're using a notebook, it becomes painful to try to concentrate on what you're doing while also flipping back to the previous page to look at something you need.

If you work the problems on separate detached sheets, you have more flexibility, but you end up with separate detached sheets :).

A computerized tablet interface could solve all these problems and automatically organize the finished work for you. But it would have to not SCREW UP all the symbols you'd be writing.

Has anyone here successfully used Pencil or any other stylus/tablet combination for doing math?

Surface Pro (or any windows tablet with a wacom-like stylus) with Onenote addresses all of these issues.

Especially since you can easily screengrab portions of the screen (e.g., a relevant theorem from a pdf) and 'print' anything to any onenote page, it's really clean and easy to get all relevant content in one place. It also makes your handwriting and printouts searchable. I also really like using the webcam to take pictures of whiteboards/lecture slides to annotate on top of (really helpful for 'old school' classes or Professors that don't share their slides).

Pencil was just announced today, so nobody will have used it yet.

You might want to try Adobe Ideas and a stylus for this; it offers a huge, scalable canvas that you can scroll around in.

I actually laughed out loud when I scrolled past the exploded view of its innards. Best use of parallax scrolling I've ever seen.

This is the only example of parallax scrolling I have ever liked.

Some suggestions for pressure sensitive tablets

http://cintiqcompanion.wacom.com/en/?country=us&language=en

Microsoft Surface's use Wacom digitizers as well, see http://www.penny-arcade.com/2013/09/26/the-surface-2

Samsung's Note series also has a good digitizer http://www.samsung.com/us/topic/galaxy-note-10-1-2014-editio...

Wait, so this is a thing?

It's not some sort of tongue-in-cheek joke about our reliance on technology?

Geez, Poe's law even applies to marketing...

Looks interesting. I must have missed the part where they explain with which tablets and apps this pencil is compatible.

No, it's clearly stated that this pencil is compatible with Paper. Paper is an iOS app, therefore this product is compatible with the iPad family.

See the Frequently Asked Questions at http://shop.fiftythree.com/

It's compatible with Paper, the iOS app. I didn't get it at first either, but then it clicked.

Took me awhile. Not having an iPad, I had no clue what "Paper" was until 5 minutes ago.

After using a Surface Pro for a year with a real stylus and its excellent digitizer, I wonder how so many people can be so happy with something so inferior. iPads are a joke for input.

I watched the video, and although it is pretty cool, I have a couple of issues with it:

1. It's a bit fat, not skinny like a pencil. I generally don't like fat pens.

2. The point is pretty large and blunt. This suggests it is hard to locate it precisely. I've done professional drafting work in the past, and having a nice sharp tip to control exactly where the mark goes is important.

iPads do not play nicely with fine tips.

> Our adaptive palm rejection instantly knows whether it’s your hand or Pencil touching the page. Rest your hand on the screen, write from any angle. No calibration or setup. You’ll forget you’re creating on a tablet.

Does anyone know if this works with iPad gestures enabled?

All of the other apps promising palm detection/rejection (like Penultimate) require you to turn off iPad gestures.

My pencil is paper compatible also.

Am I the only one who at first thought this was a joke, i.e. making fun of our crazy hyperbole by marketing a real pencil?

No, I thought that too. In fact, I was disappointed. I thought it might go on about how useful a pencil still is. Some sort of comparison thing.

Personally, in my IT capacity, I still love going to meetings, seeing all the non tech people with their various electronic toys, and I get out a pencil and a pad of note paper...

Weakly amusing, true, but it also makes a semi-serious point. Im a tech guy who will not waste money on technology for the sake of it. I like to see real benefit for the money spent. On top of that, during such meetings, Im never the one who holds up proceedings taking notes. Kind of help ram the point home.

This has to be my favorite HN comment ever... bravo 53, for this gold alone:

"Pencil isn't designed to only work with Paper. Anyone who is interested in an SDK for Pencil should let us know..."

Oh my, we've come full circle. I look forward to next learning about Bookmark's SDK and it's integration with Bound Book

Only 30 times more expensive than this: http://www.cableandcase.com/products/stylus-touch-screen-iph... Is it 30 times better though?

"If you see a stylus, they blew it"

- Steve Jobs

While relevant, to be fair he meant as the primary method of interacting with and navigating a handheld device, as in needing a stylus to scroll through your email, make calls, etc. This 'pencil' is simply for painting and drawing on a tablet, arguably a different scenario.

I Agree. I just could not resist posting this quote. :)

Actually Pencil looks nice and I always wondered why Apple did not release such a device itself.

Refer to the quote that you posted earlier.

Probably that was the reason why Apple did not have the courage to do so, but it is obvious that it creates additional value for some people. Especially designers and illustrators, I think.

Also relevant to any student that does math and has to write equations (every person in the 1st world.)

Also relevant to every student who needs to read a book and highlight passages and annotate (every person in the 1st world).

Also relevant to every person who wishes to draw a diagram to communicate their idea (every person in the world).

I don't think it's a lack of courage preventing them. I imagine that they genuinely believe in the statement.

I would say that quote is not relevant at all.

I think he also said he'd rather die than launch a 7-inch tablet.

As long as we're reminiscing, I don't remember Apple ever actually launching a 7-inch tablet have they?

8" 4:3 screen = 34% more real estate than 7" 16:9 screen.

He didn't seem to have a vision for tablets replacing pen/paper notebooks. The tech is here and prices are getting low (e.g. dell venue pro 8 with a stylus for ~$400); soon mainstream consumers will go fully digital and trash physical notebooks. Apple still can capture this opportunity, but they need to get past this idea that stylus==bad.

I'd guess the first company to get a 10" tablet with a good notebook application and stylus for under $300 will be the big winner in the classroom for the long run.

Is this pressure sensitive?

No, it does not seem to be. But, I'm not sure why it's not pressure sensitive. It seems like that is something that they could have added using the bluetooth connection. I'm guessing that functionality would have made it too expensive or fragile.

Then, there is no point in buying this particular pen at all.

That's my reaction too. Without pressure-sensitivity, how is it different from any other capacitive stylus? The palm-detection and the eraser? That's kinda weak.

It's unfortunate that Apple is so devoted to purely-consumer hardware and that other companies lack Apple's dedication to quality. The Galaxy Note's hardware makes this kind of system look like a children's toy... but then you're stuck with Samsung software.

Palm detection is pretty big for drawing.

Does it require a dedicated piece of hardware, though? Can't any multi-touch system do palm-detection or does the capacitive touchscreen get too overwhelmed by the whole palm to detect the little point of the stylus?

A cheap solution for palm rejection is to just pick up some cotton gloves from the local dollar store.

The Galaxy note's pen is also quite weak. I tried the Lenovo Tab 2 and Galaxy Note 10 because I wanted to replace my notebook I bring to meetings, but I was left unsatisfied and I returned both of them.

The Galaxy Note 10 requires some "training" to use, as the pen is not as responsive or sensible as a Wacom Intuos tablet, and the Samsung apps simply suck (Papyrus is the only Android drawing app I would actually consider). I write pretty fast, and I will definitely not slow down for inferior technology.

The pen is also ridiculously small, which becomes a pain to use after a while. The good thing is that you can have several Wacom-compatibile pens that you can "steal" from other brands. I opted for a Toshiba tablet pen (http://www.ebay.com/itm/Toshiba-GENUINE-Stylus-Tablet-PC-Pen...) because is much more comfortable to use. The pen from the Toshiba Exel Write also looks decent, but never tested it personally. The classic pen from the HP laptops is also "good enough", but it's not compatible.

The Lenovo Tab 2 was quite similar, but the responsiveness of Win8 in general (compared to the Note) makes a lot of difference. The Tab 2 is actually much more close to what could replace paper.

Both of these tablets also unfortunately lack tilt sensors, which would be nice to have for an artist. Like I said previously, I also own a couple of Wacom drawing tablets (intuos 5, several pens, a bamboo touch large, etc). If you have ever drew, you know that controlling pressure alone is not enough, tilt is very important. Nobody seem to have exploited the axial rotation yet, which I use a lot to control stroke size in addition to tilt while drawing lines with a soft pencil.

My biggest put-off tough is still the glossy screen. Whereas I can doodle anywhere with paper, in any position; I had to slightly tilt the tablet to get the office light reflection off my eyes in so many cases.

I'll stick with my notebook and Pilot DR 0.3 for some more months before re-evaluating again..

While it may not be mechanically pressure sensitive, Paper has a really smart algorithm for drawing pressure. It's not a 100% substitute but it's noticeably better than the majority of sketching apps - stylus or not.

Saw the upvotes, opened the link, watched the video, came back to HN comments, saw many people confused and criticizing.

I have to ask, why so many upvotes then?

Could it be that people here upvote even before opening links? Or just because everybody else seem to think it's a good idea to upvote?

Or that there are many more people upvoting than commenting? And that generally the impression is favorable?

I almost upvoted because I thought this was a joke and it seemed funny. Thankfully I scrolled to the part where they mention USB inside the "Pencil".

There are already pressure sensitive pens that are supported in multiple apps, not just Paper, like the Pogo Connect. Seems actually bad for the ecosystem to have another separate pen with yet another SDK. Some apps will support one, some others.

I feel silly about this, but did anyone else also get seasick from watching that video?

For most of the way through this, reading about Pencil and its compatibility with Paper, the palm-rejection technology and the super-handy eraser on the rear, I thought I was reading a parody advertisement.

If you don't need the eraser and battery worries, I recommend http://www.studioneat.com/products/cosmonaut

The cost of purchasing moleskine notebooks each month has gotten out-of-hand ($16+ per). As a previously die-hard paper/pen guy, I've attempted to make the move over to iPad based note taking only to find its abilities completely lacking. There are great apps and stylus hardware, but even when tightly coupled to overcome the iPad's lack of hardware support.. it leaves much to be desired.

You see companies like Jot and 53 having to invent far too much in attempts to solve this problem. A shame for otherwise great tablets.

I have mixed feelings about this.

I wish Apple would just get it on with having some form of integrated active digitizer builtin to the iPad. After playing with MSFT Surface Pro and even Samsung S-Pen, it's obvious to me that these are superior solutions to all these third-party workarounds for iOS. And this is really a locked-in third party solution...

Anyway, I think iOS eco system is ripe for more accurate artist/drawing tools and it seems they should be able to support both types of input (touch & pen)...

Bluetooth but no pressure sensitivity? Pressure sensitive stylus is the closest thing that emulates drawing on "paper".

It's a beautiful stylus, but not a very practical one.

Pencil looks really cool!! but that video made my stomach turn a bit. As someone who used to edit videos, I can't image working on that, I would have puked for sure.

I really had to come into the comments to see if this was satire or not. Paper, Pencil, Book. I swore this was a joke, even after I saw there was an actual price tag!

/r/SomebodyMakeThis works!

http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/comments/cgkoz/smt_...

I made this pic several years ago trying to express what I thought styluses could be. http://i.imgur.com/yLuh8.png

Although it looks cool... for my tablet... It doesn't bring the collaboration I still seek. I often work remote and do screen sharing of my laptop. I have a wacom tablet that allows me to draw on my computer screen which is then being shared to my team. It would be great if I could use my existing iPad and something cool like pencil to do my drawing and have it display on my computer so my remote team can see it.

These product vids are ripe for a funnyordie parody.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6905817/every-tech-commerc...

Wow, another website featuring a product that is Apple-only and almost actively hides the fact that it only works on a single platform.

I watched the video and scrolled to the bottom of the page. I don't know what they're selling - is it just the stylus thing? Does it work with every app, or just their one? Is it only for ipads, or can I use it on an Android? Then I noticed they spelt "ginkgo biloba" wrong on the sketch underneath the video. Twice. And then I closed the tab.

I knew the "Buy Now" button would link to a Kickstarter page. Kudos to the FiftyThree folks for proving me wrong. This looks like a great product.

I'll buy one as soon as they port it to Windows (because seriously, doing real work on a device that doesn't even expose a filesystem? I'm clearly old-fashioned).

Is that software that it works with (apparently called "Paper") going to stay free? I see it's free as of today: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-by-fiftythree/id506003...

It's free, but you have to buy the individual tools with in-app purchases: see the list on the left of the iTunes link.

It's not super clear from their website but if you buy Pencil, apparently you get the tools for free while you have the stylus connected.

Awwww, I got Evernote's Jot pen that takes them forever to ship (still didn't arrive). This is really tempting, but how many styluses a man really can use. I really love what they did here.

On the other hand, Samsung Note and Surface are places if you really need to use stylus. I thin Surface is especially strong there.

Someone kill me.

Ok so I'm going to end up buying this. However I feel like I'm due a refund on the Bamboo stylus I bought from Studio 53 when I originally started using the Paper app. The Bamboo stylus was so laggy it was unusable. Hopefully the Bluetooth stylus will work as advertised.

The tip still gets me. I just have a hard time with the thick tip where I can't see my connection to the 'paper'. I keep wanting to try out the Adonit Jot http://adonit.net/jot/touch/

It's not clear to me which benefits are from the new stylus and which are built into Paper.

For instance I don't see how the smudge with finger is actually a Pencil feature.

What are the differences compared to just using a regular/dumb stylus?

A normal stylus is dumb and only does a line. This stylus allows for change in depth.

What makes it interesting is that they are able to distinguish between the 3 different types of input. Most apps can't tell the difference between a finger and a stylus. This one can.

In addition, this stylus knows which end you are using. I suspect that this is accomplished using an accelerometer and the orientation data is transmitted to the tablet via bluetooth.

Reminds me of a prototype I had seen a few years ago, Conté, after the artists crayon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDqT_oKM7j8

This is probably the first time I've ever thought that a scrolling-aware content page has actually added meaningful functionality to the page without being in the way and annoying. Really nice work there.

Paper is one of my favorite app on ipad. Pencil looks innovative and promising . But I was using the app effectively with stylus, also palm detection is something which can be done at application level.

Just bought one for Christmas. Not for me, but my dad who is addicted to his ipad (hes got the TV turned on in the background by habit, but he is actually consuming content on his ipad on his couch).

Why do all websites have the same design? It's boring and lifeless?

Microsoft addressed most of the issues addressed in this thread twelve years ago when it launched XP for Tablet PC with "ink as a first class citizen" data type in the OS.

I've never heard anyone using finger input to do smudging. That's so obvious but so smart. I don't know how I haven't heard of that before.

I don't understand all the negativity in this post. This product is a work of art. This layout/presentation is making Apple stop and take notes.

All I want is a tablet that has the line fidelity of a pen or pencil, not a crayon. If I can record my writing/drawing with voice-over, even better.

I wonder how many types of "tools" we will get that work with tablets. I'm still hoping someone comes up with a electronic airbrush.

Dangerous. Fifty-three employees will use them 6 hours/day, only a fraction of Paper customers will ever try one once. Anti-dogfooding.

Nice idea and execution. The video makes me dizzy :P

The shaking on the video is so disturbing that I had urge to close the video. It does not how to shake for all the video duration.

Am i the only one who thinks its too damn THICK? Aren't pencils and styli supposed to be slim and easy to hold in your hand?

This looks really cool, but what really blew me away was the way the pencil dismantles as you scroll the page down.

Absolutely beautifully done.

I am confused, is this a parody of the current "Not as cool as a pencil" iPad ad, or is this a real product?

Paper is the only app I've ever used that makes me wish I had a bigger tablet than my iPad 2 (because I love it).

It doesn't ship to Germany. I was ready to buy an ipad just to give this a go for my note taking needs though.

So this is basically a stylus that feels like it's made of wood? Or it is made of wood? That's about it?

Anyone know of some open hardware that does this same sort of thing and works with existing software?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper

They're both super cheap and open. With the right skill and a few plugins [0] you can create stunning pieces of content [1].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint (Not to be confused with MS Paint) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Triumph_of_Death

[I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself.]

Cool if you like writing with a log.

This is so wonderful and amazing....

Makes me wonder what the Rembrandts and Picassos would have thought of such a device and whether it encourages or prohibits artistic expression. I can imagine it certainly does on the tablet medium, but in general I wonder if there is any aspect of artistic creativity gained or lost when moving away from traditional mediums.

David Hockney has certainly embraced it as a medium.

http://www.wired.com/design/2013/11/hockney/

So, uh, it's a stylus, right? Cause I can't tell for sure from that page...

wow that camera was annoying.

Yes, yes it was. I was feeling a bit woozy near the end and had to just stop watching. Big monitor here, didn't like the movement.

Wait how is this better than Surface Pro? Seems like it has the same features.

It is far worse than the Surface Pro, not even in the same league, but hardly anyone uses a Surface Pro.

"Capacitve screens are so great, you don't need a stylus anymore"

Sigh.

Did anyone else notice that this site somehow causes IE to crash?

A pencil you can use to shake the world and play violins, nice.

I still can't figure out if that page is satirical or not.

I was ready to buy it.

But no. I'm in Italy so screw me :-/

I absolutely LOVE the paper app. This is so cool.

Still too thick.

thank you! Good to see i am not the only one

this looks amazing.

Too bad I'll never buy one.

Enjoy your ipad toys, I'll go continue not having pencil on my nexus. :(

No pressure sensitivity?

The Russians used a...

It's just lovely

would've loved some iPad 2 love

Satires please. hehe

meh

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