iPad Pro
A few thoughts about Apple's new iPad Pro, which is the first iPad that I'd consider trying to use for drawing.
Drawing on the iPhone was never more than a stunt or gimmick: way too small and finger painting? No. The iPad came along and it was better, but still a cramped 10" screen, and none of the kludgy attempts to pair it with a stylus could compare with what you could get from a TabletPC using a proper Wacom stylus. But now Apple has finally overcome all of that with the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil, which is the stylus that Steve Jobs never would've allowed them to sell.
It has a 13" 3:4 aspect screen. Still not the 15" I keep hoping for, but it's bigger than any portable tablet-screen I've used, so that's really nice. The resolution is 2732x2048. This puts it above everything else in the product category, including the Surface Pro 3, which has a 12" 2160x1440 screen.
But the key thing that puts it on the table (so to speak) is the $100 Apple Pencil. It requires a battery (Wacom's patents see to that), but you can recharge it from the iPad. It's genuinely pressure sensitive, and tilt-sensitive too. It remains to be seen how well the system ignores touches (from your palm or wrist) when using the stylus... I've had to disable touch sensitivity altogether on any tablet I've used that had that (ThinkPad and borrowed Surface), because it kept getting confused.
Unfortunately, what takes the iPad off the table (for me) is that Jobs' dislike for buttons still prevails. The Apple Pencil has none, so there's no option to squeeze it and switch to erase mode, or to color-picker mode. (Also no eraser function on the blunt end.) So the only way to erase is to tap on the Eraser tool, do your erasing, then tap on the pencil tool again. Ugh. This is a deal-breaker for me. I mean, I'd get by without it if I had to, but ... I don't have to, because I have a tablet with a stylus that lets me switch back and forth just by squeezing and relaxing.
Another issue is application software. Adobe's announced a version of Photoshop for the iPad Pro, but it's focused on photo retouching, not drawing. AutoDesk will no doubt be putting out a version of SketchBook for this, and I'm sure it'll be quite nice as a general-purpose drawing/painting tool but ... it's no Manga Studio. A version of MS for the iPad is possible now, but probably not likely in the near future, because the developer (Celsys) is a fairly small outfit, and they'd need to do a lot of work to get it running on a whole different processor architecture (ARM instead of Intel).
Bottom line: I'll take one if you have a budget of $900 to spend on me for Christmas, and I will be very happy using it for things outside my comics-production workflow, and maybe using it as an auxiliary tool. (The price, by the way, is pretty good, and worth it if it meets your needs.) But I'd still rather you gave me a Surface Pro 3 instead, thanks.
Drawing on the iPhone was never more than a stunt or gimmick: way too small and finger painting? No. The iPad came along and it was better, but still a cramped 10" screen, and none of the kludgy attempts to pair it with a stylus could compare with what you could get from a TabletPC using a proper Wacom stylus. But now Apple has finally overcome all of that with the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil, which is the stylus that Steve Jobs never would've allowed them to sell.
It has a 13" 3:4 aspect screen. Still not the 15" I keep hoping for, but it's bigger than any portable tablet-screen I've used, so that's really nice. The resolution is 2732x2048. This puts it above everything else in the product category, including the Surface Pro 3, which has a 12" 2160x1440 screen.
But the key thing that puts it on the table (so to speak) is the $100 Apple Pencil. It requires a battery (Wacom's patents see to that), but you can recharge it from the iPad. It's genuinely pressure sensitive, and tilt-sensitive too. It remains to be seen how well the system ignores touches (from your palm or wrist) when using the stylus... I've had to disable touch sensitivity altogether on any tablet I've used that had that (ThinkPad and borrowed Surface), because it kept getting confused.
Unfortunately, what takes the iPad off the table (for me) is that Jobs' dislike for buttons still prevails. The Apple Pencil has none, so there's no option to squeeze it and switch to erase mode, or to color-picker mode. (Also no eraser function on the blunt end.) So the only way to erase is to tap on the Eraser tool, do your erasing, then tap on the pencil tool again. Ugh. This is a deal-breaker for me. I mean, I'd get by without it if I had to, but ... I don't have to, because I have a tablet with a stylus that lets me switch back and forth just by squeezing and relaxing.
Another issue is application software. Adobe's announced a version of Photoshop for the iPad Pro, but it's focused on photo retouching, not drawing. AutoDesk will no doubt be putting out a version of SketchBook for this, and I'm sure it'll be quite nice as a general-purpose drawing/painting tool but ... it's no Manga Studio. A version of MS for the iPad is possible now, but probably not likely in the near future, because the developer (Celsys) is a fairly small outfit, and they'd need to do a lot of work to get it running on a whole different processor architecture (ARM instead of Intel).
Bottom line: I'll take one if you have a budget of $900 to spend on me for Christmas, and I will be very happy using it for things outside my comics-production workflow, and maybe using it as an auxiliary tool. (The price, by the way, is pretty good, and worth it if it meets your needs.) But I'd still rather you gave me a Surface Pro 3 instead, thanks.
Comments
Comparing the iPad Pro to the CC2, I see a bunch of trade-offs between them. The screens are close in size, but the iPad's is (IMO) the better shape (more page-like rather than movie-format) and higher resolution. The starting price of the iPad (with stylus) is $400 below the starting price of the CC2, which goes way up for the better CPU/RAM/storage specs. The Windows vs. iOS question is going to go to the CC2, though I have to say that the thought of Affinity Photo on iOS intrigues me. I'm sure I'd prefer Wacom's stylus to Apple's, and the CC2's thicker bezel with shortcut buttons on it would be to its advantage. No clear winner.
Since 1998, I've owned a CalComp Drawing Slate II, Wacom Intuos 3, Cintiq 12WX, 21UX and 24HD, and the iPad Pro/Pencil combo is hands-down the best drawing experience of anything I've used. Hope to find time to get Astropad running next week and see how it plays with MangaStudio.
https://twitter.com/MediBangPaint_e
In any case, there's no rush to decide: OS X.12 won't be out until late next year, and there'll be no compelling need to upgrade right away. Plenty of time to sort out options like Manga Studio and Affinity and whatever shows up to take advantage of the Pencil/iPad combo.
However.... If I buy the iPad pro before Dec. 31st I can write part of it off in taxes next year.
Hmmmm...