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iPad "Surface" -- er, "Pro"
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Posted by Franz Grieser
Sep 10, 2015 at 01:04 PM
UMake looks great - finally a reason to replace my iPad 2 ;-)
But I don’t see why that should not be possible on a Windows tablet with decent processing power. The Lenovo x201/x220/x230 notebook/tablet combos should be powerful enough. If only someone developed such an app for Windows.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Sep 10, 2015 at 04:16 PM
Yeah, but that’s just it, innit? People **don’t** develop apps like that for Windows, just for iOS. And in view of the enormous power of the iPad Air 2 and iPad Pro, with their extraordinarily smooth gesture/stylus input, you can see why.
Not that I particularly want to knock Windows here – I’ve spent a happy hour or two playing with Surfaces (the pleb one and the Pro), and they’re very nice. But when it comes to simple, unencumbered graphical power, gimme an iPad any time.
A simple list of the top iOS graphics apps shows you why the iPad is so popular with artists. It supports a whole bunch of very powerful apps (e.g. Pixelmator) that are the equivalent of desktop apps but stripped down for convenient mobile use. Windows attempts to do that, but falls into the “which interface?” trap. Just to take a simple example, there are two versions of OneNote: one is the graphical one for mobile use, the other is the desktop one. Is it surprising that the iOS version of OneNote is actually better than either of them (although it lacks folding, sadly)? With Windows, you’re always having to ask yourself that question - am I now working in mobile or desktop mode? I think it’s more of an obstacle than Microsoft ever realised it would be, and largely explains why there are relatively few Windows mobile apps (although their cunning decision to release free software for migrating iOS apps to Windows may help solve this problem). Certainly it’s a question I find myself asking whenever I start playing on a Surface.
Not so much “Am I a Mac? Or a PC?” but “Am I a mobile Windows user? Or a desktop Windows user? And which does this machine do best? Rats, I’m not sure…”
Posted by zoe
Sep 10, 2015 at 04:37 PM
MadaboutDana wrote:
>A simple list of the top iOS graphics apps shows you why the iPad is so
>popular with artists. It supports a whole bunch of very powerful apps
>(e.g. Pixelmator) that are the equivalent of desktop apps but stripped
>down for convenient mobile use.
Speaking from the artist and graphic design community, I can tell you that while most working artists might use an iPad for rough conceptual work or showing ideas to clients, very few regard the iPad as a serious creation tool. You are more likely to see a digital artists with a MacBook Pro and a small Wacom tablet as their portable setup than any of them using the iOS graphics apps. A graphic design community forum that I’m a member of is cautiously optimistic about the iPad Pro, but most seem pretty skeptical that it will be any less of a frustrating toy than the rest of the iPads.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Sep 10, 2015 at 04:50 PM
Interesting. And I’d certainly agree that iPads haven’t really made it beyond the drafting/conceptualisation stage for the serious artist/draftsperson. Which, while a useful stage in its own right, isn’t exactly ground-breaking.
But I’m firmly convinced that the iPad Pro is Apple’s next big step in this direction… ;-)
If you get a chance – as a professional – to play with the Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro, perhaps you would let us know your thoughts? That would be really interesting!
Posted by Franz Grieser
Sep 10, 2015 at 04:56 PM
Bill,
I dunno. I have a bunch of “painting” apps on my iPad. But to do serious work (i.e., doing a few simple scribbles as illustrations - I am a writer, not an illustrator), I go back to my Thinkpad x201 tablet as e.g. Autodesk Sketchbook Pro is faster and more precise to paint with on Windows than on my iPad 2; I do use the pen of the Thinkpad and have a Wacom pen on the iPad. The rest of the painting apps keep frustrating me.
That may be me, my frustration level is much lower when trying to get ink on a screen than when writing :-) But OTOH, the graphics artists I know see the iPad as a toy or a scribbling tool, not a serious illustrator’s tool.
Franz