SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD/iWORLD 2013 –
We’ve seen dozens of kinds of styli released over the last few years for the iPad, in order to make drawing and painting easier onscreen. While none have been quite perfect, the new Adonit Jot Touch might just be one of the best attempts so far, utilizing some features not seen before in other stylus options.
I have no idea what it’s like to try to use an iPhone when you have super long fingernails, but I have seen a bunch of women try to stab away at their screens like they’re Freddy Krueger. Your fingernail is not a stylus, but it could become one very soon.
Tech Tips is making a new product that will turn your fingernails into a conductive stylus, so you can stop looking so weird when you’re trying to send a text message.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 –
When it comes to styluses for your iPad, there’s quite a few options, but none are quite like the Connect, Pogo’s newest stylus that they’re showing off at CES this year. The Connect is a pressure-sensitive stylus with some unique features that set it apart from the rest.
The Pogo connect lets you rest your hand on the iPads screen while drawing, something that can come in handy when using the stylus for extended periods of time. Because of this, your hand won’t get sore trying to rest it on the bezel to avoid unwanted input from your wrist.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Let’s be honest, iPad styluses are pretty boring. I’ve tried to use a few different models, but the problem is you always have to take it with you and then you forget about it because you’re so used to using pens.
It’s nearly impossible for me to get excited about styluses, but LunaTick’s new Touch Pen is the first stylus I’ve seen that’s actually made me think a stylus could be useful.
Apple has always been against the stylus and touch-based devices that require one for input. Its iOS operating system was designed specifically for fingers — not pens, and Steve Jobs once said “if you see a stylus, they blew it.” But that hasn’t stopped the Cupertino company from working on one of its own.
A new patent application published by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office last week shows Apple’s work on an “Active Stylus,” a revolutionary new multifunctional stylus that’s designed to overcome the common problems with existing solutions.
Believe it or not, Christmas is almost here, and we’ll mark this midwinter festival by getting together with friends and family and continuing to drink and eat far too much.
Meanwhile, we also buy gifts for those same friends and family members, whether they want them or not. Luckily, we’re here to help, and if you follow our festive advice, your gifts just might make it into the “wanted” category.
Today, we’re looking at last-minute stocking stuffers. To be honest, if you still haven’t finished your Christmas shopping, you should really be out hitting the malls today. But seeing as you’re here reading this instead, here are a few ideas.
Believe it or not, Christmas is almost here, and we’ll mark this midwinter festival by getting together with friends and family and continuing to drink and eat far too much.
Meanwhile, we also buy gifts for those same friends and family members, whether they want them or not. Luckily, we’re here to help, and if you follow our festive advice, your gifts just might make it into the “wanted” category.
From now until Christmas, Cult of Mac will be putting together holiday gift guys full of ideas for the special ones in your life, no matter what their interests or your budget. Today, we’re looking at gifts that cost less than $30. Yes, that means you are cheap, and — seeing as you still haven’t bought anything despite it being almost Christmas — lazy.
Microsoft Surface is supposed to be Remond’s answer to the iPad. It’s beautiful and has a cool keyboard. But the reviews for the Surface RT were pretty underwhelming. We played with it too and though it was cool, but definitely no iPad killer.
The common consensus in the tech world is that we’ll have to wait till Microsoft releases the Surface Pro with full Windows 8 before making a judgement on Microsoft’s dreams of squashing the iPad. Well, things aren’t looking too promising because Microsoft just announced that the Surface Pro will be available in January 2013 except it’s going to be expensive, like holy-crap-I-just-blew-$900 expensive.
Adobe announced a major update to its Photoshop Touch iPad app today. Version 1.4 of Adobe Photoshop Touch brings a number of improvements, most notably iPad mini optimization and pressure-sensitive stylus support. As a premiere content creation tool for Apple’s tablet, the addition of stylus support means that artists can edit and manipulate images in greater detail.
Paper is an iPad app which proves that you don’t need to add bells and whistles to your software if it’s well designed. Unless your app is a bell and whistle simulator, I guess.
But Paper, which won fans with its ultra-simple interface and amazingly natural brush-and-paint engine, really was a little too stripped down. The new v1.2.1 fixes that, adding custom color palettes and a very sweet new color mixer, plus support for a pressure-sensitive stylus.
Hey, sucker? Did you buy an iPad 3 and an Adonit Jot Pro stylus recently? Then you’re one unlucky feller: not only has Apple released the iPad 4, but Adonit has updated its stylus.
Try not to cry.
HEX3's JaJa is one of the first pressure-sensitive styluses on the market, and it is also the most unique. Instead of using low-power Bluetooth 4 to talk to your iPad, it uses high-frequency sound. This not only lets it work with the iPad 1 (or any capacitive-screened device whether iOS or Android), but means that the battery lasts for weeks.
I have been testing one out for a month or so now, and some big apps have now added support. So how does it do?
Why buy a whole new stylus and carry it around with you when you could just buy a little capacitive tip to slip onto the top of your biro/ballpoint pen/pencil? That’s the thinking behind Stylus Caps.
Noteshelf, the iPad’s best handwritten note-taking app, is now even better. V7.0 adds new pens, customs colors and support for pressure-sensitive styluses. If you already own Noteshelf, you likely already downloaded it with great excitement over the weekend. If not, what are you waiting for?
The Nomad Brush Flex is the latest in Nomad’s line of capacitive touchscreen brushes. That’s right — brushes. When you’re painting into an app like Brushes or Procreate on the iPad, then you really do want to use a stylus os some kind. And if you’re going to go to the trouble of using a stylus, why not make it a brush?
Wacom might be letting every other pen maker bring touch-sensitive styluses to the iPad first, but at least its regular dumb iPad styluses are amongst the best out there. And if you have ever hefted your Wacom Bamboo stylus and thought “This is almost perfect, but I wish it were a little stubbier,” then I have good news:
Wacom has made a stubby stylus. What’s more, it transforms into a long and slender stylus. It’s called the Bamboo Stylus Pocket.
It seems so simple: Press harder, get a thicker, darker line. But drawing on the iPad has been – in pressure sensitivity terms at least – little better than using an Etch-a-Sketch. Now, at last, we’re seeing the first pressure-sensitive styluses for the iPad. Very, very soon you’ll be able to buy the new Bluetooth 4 Pogo Connect for your iPad 3.
You lucky thing. The summer’s over, or nearly over, and you’re already planning on heading back to school. Just like last year, you will begin this year fresh and full of energy and enthusiasm, only to be ground down by the man. Luckily, we’re here to help with advice on the best apps and gear to get you through the year and into next year’s summer vacation with the least effort possible.
So sit back, relax and take a look at the Cult of Mac back to school/college superguide.
It’s taken a while, but finally the pressure-sensitive iPad styluses are starting to ship after a long, long time in development. Now Adonit, the company behind the hot, hot Writer jeyboard case for the iPad, has launched its Jot Touch.
Yes, that’s “launched” as in, “you can buy it right now,” as in “$99 and ships in 1-2 days.”
If Crocodile Dundee had been a digital artist instead of a hardened Aussie hunter, and if you had pulled your iPad stylus out in the middle of a heated argument somewhere in NYC, then he would have said this:
“Call that a stylus? That’s not a stylus… This is a stylus.”
And then pulled out the JaJa, an iPad stylus that is not only pressure-sensitive (with 1024 levels), but manages to communicate its intent to your iPad without a cable, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or any other radio protocol. How the hell do it work?
If you carry a stylus for your iPad, it’s fair to say you like writing (or at least doodling). And – by extension – it’s likely that you also carry a pen. Now one of our favorite styluses – – the metal-mesh-tipped TruGlide from Linktec – has been turned into the Duo, a single stick with a different writing technology at each end.
The Motive Stylus solves one of the most annoying problems of carrying a stylus for your iPad: Where do you put it? We have seen magnetic styluses which snap onto the Smart Cover before, but none does it quite so securely and unobtrusively as the Motive, which actually folds flat.
With pens, there are really only a few designs — fountain pens with nibs, ballpoints and felt-tipped markers. Anything else is pretty much just a variation on those. But with iPad styluses, pen designers seem to be going crazy with brand new ideas. One of these is the GoSmart Stylus, and at first look it seems like a terrible idea. Pick it up and use it, though, and you’ll be hooked.
“If you see a stylus they failed.” That might be everybody’s favorite Steve Jobs quote about touch screens, but the fact is the finger is terrible at both drawing and writing — just look at your kid’s scrawlings up on the refrigerator door if you don’t believe me.
If you want to make pictures and words that the rest of the world can recognize as such, you need a little help. Luckily, iPad accessory makers also ignored Jobs’ complaints and set out to fill the world with wonderful iPad pens. Here are the best you can buy.
You might like to think that Cult of Mac deputy editor John Brownlee is a beacon of intelligence in the world of Apple news, but sometimes he can be as dumb as the rest of us. Example: When staying with the Lady and I recently, John came to meet me in a local bar.
I pulled out my brand-new, just-bought Wacom Bamboo stylus to show him, and mentioned that it had a super clean, easy-glide tip. I handed it over and watched as John absent-mindedly stabbed the virgin rubber repeatedly onto the filthy, sticky bar table. Thanks a lot, John.
If I had had the Hand Stylus, though, I needn’t have suffered. The biggest feature of the Hand is its retractable tip, but there’s more to it than that.
