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Artist Creates Pad for Inking on iPad

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We’ve heard of gloves, we’ve heard of socks, we’ve heard of all kinds of things that allow Inkers and artists to work with Digital Ink on the iPad. Now we’re seeing someone try to make some hay out of this. John Basberg has artists in mind with the design of his Artist’s Pad. It essentially is a piece of cloth (an amalgam of several textiles actually) that goes between your hand and the iPad screen, keeping those stray Ink marks off the capacitive screen when a part of your hand touches the screen.

Basberg is asking folks to signal their interest and when he finds 1000 folks who want one he’ll start production. The Artist’s Pad isn’t just a flat cloth, but is designed to curl your pinky around a portion of the cloth so that it moves easily with your hand.

All well and good, and certainly its a solution. Given that the latest Inking app was (as of last night) at the top of the App Store’s charts there is interest in Inking on the iPad (as there will be with other slates in the future. And why not, the size of the device is perfect for note taking, drawing, sketching, etc… But in my opinion, these stop-gap measures, while offering a solution, serve mostly to point up the fact that the cost of developing the hardware and software solution to work on slates of this size are more than folks doing the work want to invest for what they see as a very limited market opportunity. Maybe that will change, but I’m not holding my breath.

Via Yanko Designs

10 Comments

10 Comments

  1. Raphael Malikian

    04/21/2010 at 7:31 am

    Great idea, but I think an even better idea is for 1000 or more of us to band together to help fund a group of engineers to retrofit our ipads with wacom digitisers. Not THAT’S something I’d be really interested in.

  2. Gavin Miller

    04/21/2010 at 8:57 am

    May come in a bit more expensive for parts Raphael, but we hear you! :-)

  3. Fred

    04/21/2010 at 9:06 am

    Ten One Design developed an app called inklet to provide palm rejection to the Macbook Pro pad. Could it be possible to develop some software for the iPad? or Apple is simply blocking this tech?

  4. Joe

    04/21/2010 at 10:43 am

    Patent? How about a detection mode in which a single touch does not get interpreted as a ‘draw’ command, and if more than one contact point is observed (hand plus makeshift stylus), register only the top-left contact (for right handed people) as the pen.

    Seems like that would work at least for for standard note taking.

  5. Antimatter

    04/21/2010 at 3:37 pm

    What ever happened to our devices conforming to our needs, rather than our needs conforming to our devices?

    • Nameless

      04/21/2010 at 10:58 pm

      Agreed 110%.

      It seems like other people are buying things because they’re hip/cool/fashionable now, and Apple tends to be all of those things (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

      As for me, I don’t have a lot of money to spend. If I’m to part with a single cent, I expect the product to be something that provides actual value to me and allows me to use it exactly as I want it to without any kludgy workarounds.

      In the iPad’s case, they were so close, but forgot the Wacom pen. Too bad for them, because I’m not going to reshape MY life around THEIR product just to join the cool club.

  6. Brett Gilbertson

    04/21/2010 at 4:01 pm

    +1 antimatter… It is amazing the lengths people are prepared to go to to try and make this work…. Just get a tablet PC already ;-)

    It’s good to see that there is such drive for inking though…!

  7. Ben

    04/21/2010 at 6:38 pm

    Wouldn’t a fingerless glove work just as well, or better?

    • acerbic

      04/21/2010 at 6:52 pm

      I’d say leave the pinky covered.

  8. Chad Essley

    04/23/2010 at 5:03 pm

    I actually had a conversation with a friend who is a diehard apple fanboy. He recently purchased the Ipad, and was saying that he was going to try and write a bluetooth driver for the wireless Wacom bamboo, so he could draw in the mobile version of Autodesk Sketchbook.

    I had to laugh, because that program doesn’t even support pressure! In fact, no mobile app does for the iphone.

    After all his frustrations, with not being able to use a stylus on his ipad, and having to buy a special adapter just for usb, I told him look: Just buy an old Motion M1400 from ebay for $200! It’s a six year old device that has an awesome screen, built in Wacom tablet, and runs a real OS! It.. it even plays flash.

    :-)
    C

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