httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrEB9xGGcLQ&feature=player_embedded
Ten One — purveyor of beautifully designed Apple accessories to the tasteful and handsome — has announced an iPad 3 compatible, pressure-sensitive stylus. Codenamed “Blue Tiger,” the wireless pen could be just what artists have been waiting for.
Whenever an artist friend sees my iPad, one of the first things they ask is “Can you use a pen with it?” The answer is always “Weeeellll, kinda…” They clearly see it as an all-in-one answer to Wacom’s Cintiq tablets, whereas the truth is that drawing on the iPad is a little like painting with a twig.
Ten One’s Blue Tiger (likely to be called the “Pogo something” when it ships), which uses Bluetooth 4, is supported by iOS5. From the Ten One blog:
Bluetooth 4.0 devices don’t need to pair with your iPhone or iPad, they just connect and work. Also, the battery life is dramatically better – think months or a year on a single coin battery.
We’ve developed the first pressure-sensitive stylus for iPad that uses Bluetooth 4.0.
The Blue Tiger has pressure sensitivity, palm-rejection, and Ten One has already made available an SDK so that developers can make their apps compatible (please, download it, Photoshop Touch team, pretty please).
But coolest of all is that the pen has a multi-colored LED in its side button, which lights up with the color of the ink you have selected. That alone might sell it to me.
The stylus doesn’t have a launch date, but as test units exist, and Ten One is canvassing developers, my hope is that it will be sooner rather than later. And as for price? Seeing as the smallest Cintiq goes for $1,000, then it almost doesn’t matter.
[Thanks, Jenny!]
