The Apple Pencil; a lot of semiconductor content in something so small | Hacker News Reader

The Apple Pencil; a lot of semiconductor content in something so small

chipworks.com

83 pointsingve47 comments

To jump on the Wacom/N-trig bandwagon, I also think that the logic should be in the device.

In the 80s, Wacom developed a technology that is basically a grid of wires being a transceiver antenna, that does highly accurate positioning of an RFID-like induction coil (sometimes 2 or 3 in the same pen, one for each set of functions).

Thats it, the pen is basically RFID tags. No battery, no logic, no weight, the pen can be shaped nearly like anything (although early ones were a bit bulky).

N-trig developed their own variant of this technology, and Microsoft just recently bought them, to further integrate their technology into the Surface line.

The only problem I have with current Surface pens is they require an AAAA battery, instead of powering it like you would with Wacom's RFID-like signal.

It's awesome, but if it weren't for patents, we would have pens on every device with a touch screen now. I use wacom styluses for work, and mind, they're egregiously fine, but wacom is trying to protect their own interest with the cintiq series.

It's about time there's some active competition in the field.

The new X1 Yoga, shipping with a pen, makes me think it's actively the best device for notekeeping just besides the Microsoft Surface (and comparatively cheaper to booth).

I only wonder if they improved on their pen accuracy though.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro3-s...

I also found the 256 pressure levels offered by n-trig to be generally insufficient for artistic work (for comparison, even the cheapest wacom tablet has 2k).

That being said, it's awesome that we're finally getting a pen in these devices, and not some toy that you need to use with a glove.

The pen on surface pro 4 has 1024 pressure levels instead of 256.

Do you have direct experience with it? Any improvements in the tracking quality of slow lines?

This is how the S-Pens on the Galaxy Notes work, they pull the power they need wirelessly from the phone/tablet.

http://www.androidauthority.com/break-it-down-how-does-the-s...

This stylus technology also convinced Samsung to buy 5% of Wacom.

I think this pen is a passive device, so I wouldn't call it RFID. It may be more reasonable to compare this to an anti-shoplifting tag.

I think the 'logic' and 'electronics' should be in the device rather than the pen (or pencil in this case). My reasoning is that the pencil should be something light/cheap/disposable that you can lose and not worry about it.

Given the Thunderbolt connector, Apple probably prefer to put as much as possible in the pen to increase the profit on replacements.

Phone plans have gotten to the point where no lock-in is a compelling feature. What's keeping Apple at the point where people don't mind lock-in?

If it were possible, why wouldn't Apple do it? It's because with current techonology such devices are inferior to this.

>If it were possible, why wouldn't Apple do it?

There are a lot of things that are possible that Apple doesn't do. Apple's solution to a problem isn't necessarily the best solution available

I was actually hoping that Apple would use some haptic electrostatic feedback for the stylus... making the whole experience less like writing on glass.

How's it different from active pens that graphics tablets have been using for some 20 years now?

EDIT: Yes, wacom mostly uses passive pens. But active pens are not new, Wacom has been shipping them for a few years, too, as has been the competition. Cf. the pens of the Surface and Yoga notebooks.

It doesn't appear to work much like a Wacom stylus at all. Wacom styluses are fairly passive, dumb devices, basically an induction coil in a plastic case.

This appears to be a rechargeable, active-sensing device.

I don't think this is unintentional. iPad Pro and Apple Pencil is Apple's warning to Wacom: we are coming for you.

> I don't think this is unintentional. iPad Pro and Apple Pencil is Apple's warning to Wacom: we are coming for you.

spot on. i've heard that designers at apple are so fed up with the crap that is any wacom tablet because wacom doesn't innovate in any way anymore. their devices are clunky, ugly pieces of plastic. if not for public release, they'd be making the pro/pencil for their own.

let's see what wacom does, now.

Yep. I bought one for my wife – an illustrator. I enjoyed it so much I bought one for me (UX/front end dev) and am Craigslist-ing our Wacom Cintiq and Intuos. The Cintiq lag is awful, while the disassociation between screen and tablet of the Intuos was always “best of a bad solution”. Personally, I always found the “give” in Wacom’s styli to accommodate pressure sensitivity too much for my liking, but my medium of preference was always lead holders; I suspect those who prefer painting, pastel or other softer medium might have the opposite opinion.

It’s not perfect, there’s still some lag in different apps. Wacom also had a slightly better “tooth” on the drawing surface. The omission of an “eraser” can be annoying, though I would imagine less so for artists who wouldn’t use the eraser on a drawing implement anyway. The various buttons on both the Wacom tablet and the pen were also really helpful, though a bit overwhelming. Wacom also has a variety of nibs for different feeling brushes. My TL;DR the Wacom is a more productive and perhaps more capable tool, but the iPad Pro + Pencil combination is the closest any technology has come to replicating paper & pencil.

When you compare the costs $799 for the cheapest 13" Wacom Cintiq vs $898 for the iPad Pro + Pencil it’s going to be a no-brainer for a lot of artists who aren’t deeply entrenched in a Wacom workflow.

You've heard?

Wacom has a patent on passive, induction-powered styluses: http://www.google.com/patents/US7358964

>I don't think this is unintentional. iPad Pro and Apple Pencil is Apple's warning to Wacom: we are coming for you.

That was my first thought when Apple unveiled iPad Pro. It's directly pointed at Wacom's customer segment. And I think that Wacom is s* their pants.

Apple might be the only real contender against Wacom. They have a strong connection to graphic designers etc., both design and functionality-wise.

> iPad Pro and Apple Pencil is Apple's warning to Wacom: we are coming for you.

They'd need the pro software to be a threat at all.

> iPad Pro and Apple Pencil is Apple's warning to Wacom

I see it as a response to the MS Surface, which people really like, including myself.

Most obvious is there's no massive induction coil. Looks like the apple pencil has a battery.

EDIT: Here's a Wacom. Coil for positioning and powering. One at each end because there's an eraser function.

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Graphics+Tablet+Stylus+Teard...

If the battery on the Apple pen is non-replaceable, you are essentially renting the hardware.

I'm sick of devices that work for 2-3 years and then die because the batteries aren't field-replaceable when they degrade.

Do your devices really stop working after two years? Batteries definitely degrade, but in my experience with Apple products, they only become unusable after around five years...

2-years is the low end for how long Lithium-Ion batteries last. They last anywhere between 2 to 5 years in my experience.

Batteries are NOT uniform, they will last varying amounts. Therefore, field-replaceable parts are important. Many of my laptops (I manage at work or at home) are on their 2nd or 3rd battery for instance.

Field-replaceable batteries is good, long-lasting design. Apple however does not like this idea on any of their products. In general though, Apple's support seems to be around receiving broken parts, replacing their batteries at "Genius centers" and mailing them back.

So I'm not really criticizing Apple here. But their innate design ties customers to the Genius bar for support for the simplest of hardware faults (ie: this battery issue).

Yeah, Apple really sucks with respect to repairability. They won't sell spare parts, and the authorized repair shops only swap major parts (a single key cap is broken? You need a new keyboard!)

It's ridiculous that I can get spares for a 40€ coffee maker, but not for a 1000€ laptop.

So like the pen the MS Surface has had for a while?

[NB I have a Surface and many Apple devices - so I'm not particularly biased against/for Apple].

Will be curious to see how many levels of pressure. Wacom Intuos pro claims 2048 levels. Dynamic range is important. I've spent several thousand hours writing visual synths on top of various Wacom tablets, which feels amazing! Have only had a few hours with Apple Pencil, but feels promising.

Tilt is also very expressive. Imagine a joystick with 5 degrees of freedom. Couple that visual targets on the pad to instantly change contexts.

Wacom tablet also supports multiple stylus's, in which case you have two semantically assignable 5dof joysticks. I don't know if multiple Apple Pencils are supported.

I noticed that pushing down too hard with the Pencil causes distortion in one spot of my iPad's screen, presumably where a chip is just a little too close to the surface. So it's probably not a good idea to press (nearly) as hard as you could a Wacom stylus.

As an aside, what kinds of visual synths have you worked on? I just added (basic) Pencil support to my iPad sequencer[1] and it works quite well! (With a few caveats[2]...)

[1]: http://composerssketchpad.com

[2]: http://beta-blog.archagon.net/2015/12/05/ipad-pro-plus-penci...

Looks pretty cool. Will check it out. Oddly, I have an App that crashes only on the iPad Pro, so I cannot return the favor. :(

Have you posted on stack overflow? I have a question, but that may be a better place to ask.

Here's is my app, circa 2005: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXlkzZubHnM I used to VJ a lot. Here's the app in action at Thump Radio, circa 2001 (for a clear view, goto 0:40 sec): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W1jmovV5SM

EDIT "only"

Oh, I see! I didn't realize that "visual synths" were a thing — I thought there was a musical component to it. That's fascinating! Are you planning to release something like that for the iPad Pro?

"Have you posted on stack overflow" — do you mean regarding my slow motion issue?

>> "Have you posted on stack overflow" — do you mean regarding my slow motion issue?

Yes. Was wondering if you tried capturing UITouches on a nil view to get global coordinates. Just a stab in the dark, since I'm fully occupied on an Apple Watch project.

> Are you planning to release something like that for the iPad Pro?

Short answer is Yes! I'm starting from the ground up by rewriting the underlying functional ontology, called Tr3, which will be open sourced under MIT license.

What do you mean by writing visual synths? I've never heard those words combined together and I'm curious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXlkzZubHnM

very cool

>Imagine a joystick with 5 degrees of freedom.

why 5? all six - substituting pressure for z - minus roll?

you have both roll and pitch.

The reason I said roll isn't counted is because I meant rolling the pen along the long axis (like the way it would roll off of a table)[1] - that I presume isn't being tracked? (If you hold its orientation and pressure and location of tip constant, but kind of roll it between your fingers, that wouldn't cause a detectable change would it?)

Is that what musesum meant though by 5 axes? namely x/y on the screen, pressure on the screen, and 2 of the 3 of pitch, roll, and yaw?....

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=airplane+roll&source=lnms&tb...

translated to cartesian coordinates. position x, y; tilt x, y; and pressure. No yaw, which would be twisting the pencil.

There's also twisting (yes, it's a true 5 axis). But you have to buy the more expensive "art pen". See: https://www.wacom.com/en-us/store/pens/art-pen

Notably, some pens support additional pressure axes (for example, the "brush pen"). These are general-purpose sensors can be mapped freely.

I'm not aware though of any pen that supports truly 6 axes, but I suspect it's not a technical limitation.

[edit] I actually dislike the art pen because of the way it's handled: it's too fat.

Thanks. Didn't realize Wacom had one of these - has been a while. Yeah, I preferred the thinner "classic pen" https://www.wacom.com/en-us/store/pens/classic-pen

One trick is to use the eraser as a tip and to cover the tablet with a neoprene skin stretched tight. The result is a really light and spongy stroke. Has a very sensual feel.

Have you have ever used the "flex" nib? I wonder if anyone found some "use" out of it that couldn't be done by just pressure feel adjustment.

> Have you have ever used the "flex" nib?

Tried it once. I suspect that if you spent thousands of hours drawing that the haptics would make a difference.

thanks - what you call yaw I called roll, by analogy with the shape of a pencil versus airplane.

So what is the difference, functionality-wise, between an Apple Pencil and a Wacom Stylus?

The Wacom Stylus works on PC and Mac OSX Pro, and therefore has access to actual software.

"Design wins." Who talks like that? Oh, a "patent and technology partner."

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