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Comment by dhruvmittal | Hacker News Reader

Apple's been incredibly anti-stylus in the past, if I recall correctly. Didn't Jobs say something along the lines of "if your tablet uses a stylus, you're doing it wrong" at the genesis of the iPad? Although we've seen that isn't necessarily the case, I can't see Apple eating their words in this case. Especially not with the success and visibility of Samsung's Note line.

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Apple hasn't been anti-stylus, Jobs was. And the stylus he was referring to was the resistive Palm-type stylus, not a pressure-sensitive, digitized pen with side button(s).

Jobs has also stated a belief in one thing, and then contradicted it later. Take the original iPhone screen size, for example.

> Apple hasn't been anti-stylus, Jobs was.

Also, I think he was against stylus UI. Somehow, I don't think he would be pro for the compromised capacitive stylus experience you get on the iPad.

I think the "resistive" thing wasn't Jobs, but Apple fans defending his word as gospel.

But yeah, iPhone screen size.

"If you expect the iPod to do video, you're mistaken".

"You don't need copy and paste if you do the UI right".

"It's like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it."

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/08/jobs-if-you-see-a-stylus-...

Of course we had to see this quote into context. Before the iPad was released most tablets pretty much required a styles to be useful. Reason was the used pretty much the same Windows UI as on the desktop (with the small close-boxes on windows for example). Those tablets could pretty much only be used with a stylus. Before Apple released the iPad there pretty much weren't any tablets that could be used completely without a stylus.

Yes.

And this refers to the interface.

In the past there were touch interfaces that were fiddly and required a pen to interact.

Jobs believed that was a poor interface.

For example, the new Office 365 for Windows still has loads of awkwardly sized buttons and drop downs, making it difficult to use via touch.

Some reviews have pondered how seriously MS is taking touch interfaces. But maybe this is why the Surface Pro comes with a stylus...

Upvote for you sir! Exactly, you don't need a stylus to run the Win8 UI. A touch interface should be designed with a finger as the primary interface in ind, which was what Jobs was talking about.

A Pen is just an additional tool to make the tablet experience better in various use cases, just like a bluetooh keyboard.

While I agree with your comment in general, did you really need to make the launch of the iPad an event of religious proportions, as in "the genesis of the iPad"?

Sorry about the nitpick, but stuff like this gets on my nerve.

I'm not actually a fanboy or anything- I used a first-gen iPad for about a week once and hated it, but I won't deny that it redefined the word tablet. Perhaps my language was a bit clunky; I was reaching for a word to convey the importance of the original iPad in shaping tablets and genesis was the best I could do after midnight.

"Genesis" just means a beginning or origin.

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