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Comment by kenferry | Hacker News Reader

Sorry about that! The thing is, a tablet is very well suited to the whiteboard, and we find that the whiteboard _really_ helps for this kind of working collaboration.

It makes it very natural to gesture and discuss visually.

Understudy works in proportion to how good of a connection it fosters. You really want the tool to vanish, and to forget that you're not really in the same room. For non-work stuff, like talking to my parents, the phone does decently at that for me, but for trying to collaborate videochat is not very effective, in my experience.

Understudy's whiteboard/videochat does do it for me.

(As far as Android vs iPad – well, have to start somewhere! Also, I worked at Apple for 7 years, so it's definitely the environment where I'm quickest.)

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What about a web app? Whiteboard and video chat works great there, and it's a huge market :)

ADDITION: After all, this is what Khan of Khan Academy does (he uses a wacom though, but then it's a end user decision).

I tried to tutor my niece in math using Google Hangouts and various whiteboard apps, but drawing with the mouse / trackpad was pretty difficult. Now we use Understudy and it works great, if I do say so myself.

You and your neice could both buy monoprice drawing tablets for the cost of a year of understudy. And it would be usable for any learning.

If the whiteboard is the central theme, why are you marketing to a capacitive screen? This is a sincere and humble question.

As opposed to starting with the MS Surface?

Well, I'd say the central theme is human connection, and then the question is what you need to make that work.

All I can say is that the iPad's screen seems to be over the hump for this! We have beta testers, and they honestly seem to be doing great. You can see a few tweets they've made at https://twitter.com/understudyapp . You might also be interested in this video of it in use - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrdjKvka558 . If you look at it _statically_, it looks bad, but when you see it in motion, you see that it's effectively gesture.

You're trying to visually communicate and gesture, not create an artifact to refer back to. My handwriting on real physical whiteboards is terrible, but they still work.

It would be interesting to try on an MS Surface. To literally answer your question, (1) there are a lot more iPads out there than Surfaces, (2) I worked at Apple for 7.5 years, on the Cocoa Frameworks for most of it, and I'm very productive in this environment.

Agreed on the count of potential customers with iPads and productivity within the platform you know. I, for one, wish you all the best and I think its a great idea to be sure. I said this elsewhere, I think this could be super useful for a variety of disciplines, but the underlying technology has to be right. Heres to hoping Apple releases a tablet like the Surface Pro!

I am the other guy working on Understudy. The iPad has been the best platform for Understudy so far, but I still have my fingers crossed that Apple builds a better touch screen into their next iPad. Who should I pray to for that wish?

They don't need to build a better touch screen... they just need to add wacom or ntrig digitizer layer with a stylus. Think: Macbook Air with a flip or detachable screen and wacom baked in. This would probably vaporize the iPad as the duality of fully tablet and fully laptop negates the need for both. I like my MBP, but I am seriously considering a Surface Pro so I can get the tablet form factor and a full PC in one. The added bonus is handwritten notes and practicing digital art which used to require a Cintiq or another peripheral device.

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