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Comment by ruswick | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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