Change. People are resistant to change. But change can be so beneficial if you are open-minded enough to embrace what is good, while providing solutions to what is not. (Notice the lack of whining option?)

Take the stylus for example. Please … take it! I don’t need it for my iPhone or iPad. I just happen to have ten, eco-friendly, organic styli conveniently placed at my fingertips. Yes, it requires a conceptual jump. Just like the jump from analog to digital, only this time I am jumping to my fingers. Oddly enough I have been using my fingers for years for all sorts of stylus-type jobs. They are willing soldiers just waiting to do whatever job I point them at. They are sensitive, flexible, and exhibit almost no fear in the face of the unknown. The real demon here is not the lack of styli, it is the software. Software is UI driven. In a world of 27-inch computer monitors, or multiple monitors, software engineers have become lazy, or in some cases downright belligerent, in filling our screen real estate with endless panels and docks. When this problem is forced into a small space such as the iPhone, the UI becomes paramount.

If anything, Sketchbook Pro is a pioneer at clearing away the UI so that an illustrator can concentrate on creative expression. Their gesture-based lagoon on desktop machines does a reasonably good job at subjugating the UI to the priority of the work at hand.

It is not surprising then that they where able to successfully tackle the limited confines of the iPhone. It comes at a price, however; You have to change your way of thinking.

The jump is not hard. You just need to drop the idea of a single stylus point and start thinking in terms of gestures.

After a few tentative strokes your mind begins to make the connections. Soon your other fingers jump into the fray and you realize that pinching, pulling, moving, and gesturing through a drawing is pretty intuitive.

The iPhone and iPad and related software have not taken away our stylus, they have given us nine more. I suspect that improvements will be made in both hardware and software as time moves forward. But in a gesture driven device, the last thing I want is a single stylus holding me back. As a matter of fact, When I go back to the tablet on my desktop I start to crave the simplicity that iPhone gestures have provided. The tablet begins to feel much like the pencil did not so long ago; like a tool of a bygone era.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS