> It’s right out of the Steve Jobs handbook: something you don’t offer is a
  > terrible idea, until you offer it yourself, at which point you explain why your
  > solution is the first to get it right.

--Jon Gruber, Daring Fireball

If you think a feature is a terrible idea then you shouldn't offer it. And if the technology or context changes sufficiently for you to change your mind then you should start offering it. This is just good product design. But I guess if you word it that way then you cant heavily imply that Jobs was a liar.

I didn't post that to suggest that Apple is right or wrong.

There are all sorts of reasons not to offer a particular feature or product at time X, and then subsequently offer what appears to be that exact thing at time Y.

Not to mention that the feature or product at time Y might be significantly different or better than the compromise you might have cobbled together at time X.

The comment simply refers to the black-and-white way in which Steve used to frame these things. IIRC, he said many of the same things about Intel chips, keyboard shortcuts, expandable RAM, and so forth.

Case in point, self-driving cars. No one's offering that right now, because they all believe it sucks (at this point). But that doesn't mean that when they do offer it that it will be a bad idea.

> The comment simply refers to the black-and-white way in which Steve used to frame these things.

Except the Jobs' quote you replied to succinctly explains why a stylus is a bad idea as the primary input method on a small pocket device.

A stylus is a bad idea as the primary input method on a small pocket device.

A 12.9 inch iPad Pro is not a "small pocket device".

It's also still absolutely not the primary input method of the device, even on the iPad Pro.

The Surface Pro has been doing stylus input right, in combination with capacitive multi-touch, for 3 years. The problem with the "we don't want to do that, it's terrible ... let's do that, we figured out how to do it right" turnaround is that there's a period in the middle where there's an unreasonable almost religious resistance to doing that thing. Which just keeps progress in check. For example, the iPad mini, which pretty much waited until Jobs was in the ground before it could get on the market, due to his resistance to the idea. And perhaps also the stylus (by which I mean a pressure sensitive, high-precision stylus, not just a capacitive wand) which might have been on the iPad years ago were it not for that resistance.

The issues is more... 'he was for it, before he was against it'...

Apple got it right because they were the first to charge 99 bucks for it.

Correct. Until now, a pencil was $50.

http://shop.fiftythree.com/?cc=CA

Also $50 for a Surface 3 pen

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface-...

Which comes free with the Surface.

Surface Pro 3, yes.

Surface 3, no.

Huh? Wacom has been selling $99 stylii for quite some time.

http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-KP701E2-Intuos4-Art-Stand/dp/B00...

Gruber wrote about the stylus thing too, you could have quoted that if you wanted. Here ya go: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/01/20/if-you-see

Would that might it wrong, though?

There have been 3rd party pens and they were terrible and unnecessary. The multiple inputs, sensors, etc. will probably make this Apple stylus pretty useful. In this case, maybe Apple is the first to get it right.

The pen on Samsung's Galaxy Note was great

I find the button gets in the way though and I inadvertently press it

In context Jobs was talking about a stylus as the only/primary input for the device, meaning you would be required to have a stylus to ever use the device. Of course that would be terrible.

This stylus is an optional accessory with a very specific use case. A fundamentally different thing.

This is exactly right, and I'm sure it was a shot at the original Microsoft Tablet PC which required a stylus for input. The Pencil they announced today is very clearly for drawing applications and not intended to be the primary means of interacting with the iPad.

In context Jobs was talking about getting them, putting them away and losing them.

"How are we going to communicate with this? We don't want to carry around a mouse, so what are we going to do?

Oh, a stylus, right? We're going to use a stylus? No.

Who wants a stylus? You have to get them, put them away, you lose them, yuck. So let's not use a stylus.

We're going to use the best pointing device in the world; a pointing device that we're all born with - we're born with ten of them. We're going to use our fingers. We're going to touch it with our fingers. And we have invented a new technology called multi-touch..."

I didn't know apple invented multi-touch.

By the way, I'm not saying they did, I'm just including the entire quote from Jobs.

The important part of the quote in this context is that Jobs was obviously referring to the stylus being the primary input device for the iPhone being unacceptable.

They didn't, but then again they also now have a stylus, so at least they are consistent.

apple did not invent multi touch.

Of course they didn't. That never prevented Steve from claiming they did...

You are taking Apple apologetics to a whole new level.

Not sure you are completely correct there, as he said it repeatedly in many contexts.

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

edited to add -

"as soon as you have a stylus, you're dead." - Steve Jobs

That is a direct quote from Jobs. "If you see a stylus, they blew it." You can say that Jobs' aversion to styluses was a little stronger than it should have been due to the devices he'd seen with styluses, but his stated opinion was not this moderate "Styluses shouldn't be mandatory" stance people are trying to ascribe to him here.

Context matters, especially in technology, where the entire industry is in constant upheaval.

Really?

It's pretty clear he meant "when you see a device can only operate with a stylus, it's a bad product."

But it doesn't have a stylus. You can get one if you want (for the low, low price of $99) but you don't need it.

This is Apple definitely responding to high-end pressure from increasingly successful Surfaces in the same way the iPad mini was a response to pressure from the low-end by small Android tablets.

This is basically Apple saying "let's make a Surface with a bigger screen and do it the Apple way".

It's weird seeing Microsoft participate in it.

Other than size, there's not much that Android tablets need to respond to, there's already been large high-end Android tablets with great pen input (no angle detection, but they're all Watcom class).

What I think was most interesting here was the incessant pitch that this is a productivity device not a media consumption device.

For the full experience you're looking at:

$800 for the pad

$100 for the pencil

$170 for the keyboardcase

And we're in low-end laptop territory without necessarily cannibalizing their laptop business, but it fires shots across the bow of also increasingly popular Chromebooks which are around this price point.

Edit: for people confused, I meant a low-end Apple laptop not a Windows machine, which are much cheaper. This is priced to barely overlap with the bottom-end. The pricing ensures the two segments are partitioned.

For some context, I'd disagree with the "low-end laptop" characterization, though if you mean "low-end" in terms of, say, Thinkpads and MacBook Pros, then yeah you're right on.

My Chromebook cost about 20 percent more than the keyboardcase alone, and I'm writing this comment on an i7 laptop with 8 gigs of RAM and a GeForce video card, which cost less than the pad and case. I get that there's some appeal in entering the Apple ecosystem, but for my needs, I don't think it's a "shot across the bow" of very many actual, full-featured laptops that I'm allowed to actually install stuff on.

(edit: Aaaand while I was looking up my laptop's specs, everyone else made the same comment as I. Leaving here in case it helps.)

> but it fires shots across the bow of also increasingly popular Chromebooks which are around this price point.

The price point is more like (a little under) the at-release Surface Pro than popular Chromebooks (its a little cheaper than the Chromebook Pixel, but that's not really the big seller -- the popular models are at the low end.)

Both by form factor and price, this seems more to be competing more with the big "pro" tablets that the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 (slightly cheaper) and the Surface Pro (3 was slightly more expensive at release, 4 probably will be too, 3 is slightly less expensive right now) than Chromebooks.

While the Pro 3 was slightly more expensive, if you include the keyboard cover and pen, I'd argue this is much more expensive (included pen & $120 for the cover/keyboard, Vs. $99 + $170).

And the Pro 3's pen/drawing experience has received pretty good reviews after some early software jitters.

To be fair you'd have to include the Pro 3's keyboard cover in that too - $120.

Also the Surface stylus isn't in the same league. So you'd have to compare to something like the N-Trig stylus which is an extra $50.

Cheaper? Yes, though I'd say the Apple ones are better quality (especially looking at the keyboard cover).

> Also the Surface stylus isn't in the same league. So you'd have to compare to something like the N-Trig stylus which is an extra $50.

The Surface Pro 3's pen is an N-Trig... Yeah, so not $50 more, included right in the box. And it has reviewed excellently by artists.

> Yes, though I'd say the Apple ones are better quality (especially looking at the keyboard cover).

You have absolutely no basis for claiming that the Apple pen and cover are superior. Literally nobody has reviewed them, you haven't used them, nobody you know has used them, and you didn't even know they existed two hours ago.

I've used the Surface Pro's cover - it's crap. Based on the dome switches (which I have used the previous generation of) the Apple one is already better.

So yes, I have a basis for claiming that - one based on the hardware used and direct experience with the competition.

> I've used the Surface Pro's cover - it's crap. Based on the dome switches

Nope, scissor-switch. It is mechanical.

They used to sell one called the Touch Cover which is likely what you're describing, they don't anymore (discontinued, years ago).

> the Apple one is already better.

Because, why? You haven't used the Surface Pro 3 (as evidence by your own posts), you haven't used this (as evidence by the fact that nobody outside of Apple has), and you keep making basic mistakes about how both work.

This is like the N-Trig remark all over again.

> Nope, scissor-switch. It is mechanical.

I know, I was saying that the Apple one was better based on my experience with their Dome Switches vs my experience with the Surface keyboard.

You fail at reading comprehension. Just because you can't read, don't blame me.

The price point for Chromebooks is ~200-300. My ASUS Flip was $250.

$1000 gets you a powerful high end laptop in terms of hardware. You might be sacrificing build quality at that price though, but you can get good specs for that.

...and on the software side, you don't even have sysadmin access

Or, from the opposed perspective, you're paying Apple to do your sysadmin tasks for you.

(Really, you do have sysadmin access, if you care enough. My iPhone has a profile on it put there by my [big, enterprise-y] employer, which gives them the ability to do pretty much whatever they want—including side-loading applications. I'm surprised nobody has used the "corporate-owned device" method to build an App store yet.)

I'm not invested in the Apple ecosystem any more. Is this true? Being trying to find a link to some authoritative info on this but haven't thus far.

Do you mean this? http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/it/management.html

I see no mention of being able to side-load apps.

Business use a dev license, then deploy their own apps via side-loading. Standard practice by now. And "own" apps is becoming a very loose definition, 3rd party develops, then signs with corp key.

ThinkPad X series is about that much. (It used to be $2000 but they've come down in price.) Quality is far higher than a MacBook (doesn't burn my skin, has an acceptable keyboard, has buttons to click).

1k for a low-end laptop? come on now, that's not even close.

By 'low-end laptop' I assume the OP is referring to the Macbook Air segment, not anything running Windows or Chrome OS.

Your list adds up to $1070. That's no low end laptop. $399-599 is low to mid end laptop nowadays. Most Chromebooks kick in at under $300 now also.

I picked up a Windows8 touchscreen laptop for web testing and it cost me the same as an old android phone: $230

That means a machine like my primary work computer is like 8 low-end laptops. This new iPad is the cost of 2–3 low-end laptops.

For navigating and general use on a 3.5" screen, he was dead on.

For drawing on a screen of any size, especially a 12" one, the stylus makes plenty of sense.

Oh please, a stylus worked better on my old 3.5 inch PDA than any stupid touch gestures do for my 4.7 inch Android phone. Arrows on the keyboard? What the fuck are arrows?

Marketing just pushed styli (?) and hardware keyboards out, the latter is something I really miss on my phone...

heh, I have a note 4, with an integrated stylus. I love the thing. I'm more accurate and faster typing on the keyboard with it then I am with my thumbs, and it's a toss when swype style stuff guesses right. If I have to reswype a word, I would've been faster using the stylus

Aaaaand there it is.

He was talking about the iPad at the time. Further his statement was the existence of a stylus, not the necessity of it.

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

He specifically refers to the iPad in the actual quote. Anyone claiming otherwise is simply wrong or a revisionist, though such sorts seep out of the woodwork whenever Apple cedes prior claims, rephrasing and adding unspoken criteria to somehow make it prescient and relevant, seen throughout this discussion.

No, the quote is from the first iPhone presentation. He did say something similar though when they unveiled the iPad.

Great. I love it when a company re-evaluates and introduces technology they previously said was a bad idea, but have reconsidered. More of this sort of thing!

We have to consider context as well.

The original stylus comment was for a 3.5" pocket phone. Previously, things like Palm Treo or Windows Mobile devices required a stylus to touch the resistive sensing screen. That is the baseline.

Anybody taking the quotes out of historical context is just trying to incite an argument and pretend they are better than Tim Cook. Nobody is better than Tim Cook.

Uh the treo didn't _REQUIRE_ a stylus, it worked when poked at with a fingernail. Which was fine for course operations with big buttons. The problems were things drawn as 4x4 pixel targets (or something equally insane). But that problem still exists to a certain extent. I have to be really careful with the iphone onscreen keyboard because my finger (above average hand size) easily covers multiple buttons. Unlike my wife, who's fingers apparently are the target audience. The cheap little iphone stylus can definitely help.

The original comment. Yes.

And then at the launch of the iPad - "if you see a stylus, you blew it".

"if you see a stylus, they blew it."

- Steve Jobs, after the 2010 iPad introduction.

I just can't figure out why Jobs, and apparently lots of other people, are against adding an extra, more accurate method of interacting with a touchscreen, without removing any of its current capabilities. I'm not taking handwritten notes with my finger, get real. A stylus totally changes the range of interactions I can have with a device.

Jobs didn't like Modes -- something you see quite a bit in todays presentation.

He felt that Modes obscure the immediate discoverability of functions and they keep you from pushing your design to ensure you can use something without left clicking or pulling out a pen. It should just work.

The "no modes" approach is a good one. I do find with modern systems that the obscure hieroglyphics and no hints for buttons is just as bad though - who would have thought that a box with an arrow going into it was "share"? Or that I had to swipe left or right to show a delete option in a list? Or on Windows, that Win-U or hovering near the right showed charms?

IMHO these non-discoverable items are a barrier to use. Screens are big enough that buttons can be drawn on them, and even with text.

Because it adds complexity to the user experience. Most people don't need handwritten notes. How would a stylus help with their text messaging or photo taking? They're fine just pressing on the on-screen keyboard. Hell, they don't even teach cursive writing in school anymore. So, a stylus is STILL not a valid useful device for the average person.

You'll notice that they introduced this stylus for the iPad Pro, and not for the regular iPad. This stylus is for a specific pro user that actually needs a pen input.

Then people started buying 3rd party crappy stylus, because drawing with just your finger is hard. If there's demand, it would be stupid not offering a solution. The stylus is an optional, not included nor needed for the iPad Pro. People are under the impression that what Jobs said to sell his ideas at the time should be an unbreakable company law, but that would be idiotic.

Yeah, like the bigger iPhone screens. So many market demands to be fulfilled, so many times Apple and the Apple faithful said something was stupid and then rectified themselves.

While I do agree Jobs was saying that no one wants to use a stylus to use their devices, you have to admit this stylus is a pretty good idea. With the additional sensors you can actually do things you can't do with traditional styluses and you're not forced to use it with your device, it's just an add-on.

> While I do agree Jobs was saying that no one wants to use a stylus to use their devices, you have to admit this stylus is a pretty good idea.

The apple distortion field is running at maximum.

No. No one wants to be required to use a stylus to successfully use a device. This is true, and remains so. What has become apparent is that there is a need -- especially for artists -- for a tool more fine-grained than a finger if you want to do more complicated tasks.

> especially for artists

See also (from this same thread): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10192958

Artists could also use electronic paint brushes, erasers, and chalk, too.

Nice injection of the word 'required' there...

These aren't the styluses you are looking for...

This quote

- The whole of Twitter right now

But, this is just an accessory. See also: beats headphones, smart case.

Unlike the comedy "smartphone" attempts of 2005 which Steve Jobs was alluding to, you may still freely use your fingers.

Comedy "smartphone" attempts? I had a couple of smart phones before the iPhone came out and they offered several things it didn't. The fact that capacitive touchscreens and GPU acceleration weren't as good yet doesn't make them "comedy attempts". More like the incremental developments that provided the base which the iPhone was built upon.

Ignoring the fact that it's all moot now, I was doing GPS navigation, multitasking, audio streaming, and rudimentary video calling on some of those "comedy attempts" from 2005-2007 and I did a lot of it with my fingers as well. The iPhone improved on the touch aspect quite a bit but it's not as if it wasn't missing 10 other things that were common to smartphones of the time.

And that only makes sense. It's good business to focus on the things your competition isn't doing as it allows you to target different parts of the market.

There are two kinds of personal computing products in any era:

* Blatant copies of some Apple product

* Rough prototypes of some future Apple product

So, in your era Apple is the centre of the universe?

And it's not a Wacom-like active digitizer, you need to actually charge this thing. I feel the stylus that came with Windows XP tablet edition in 2002 was probably better than this.

My surface also uses a battery in the stylus.

Two in fact. One for the pen and one for the button. At least on the SP3.

A €1 battery which lasts more than a year...

Yeah the force sensor is in the pencil, not in the screen.

Wacom force sensors are also in the pencil, but they get their power through induction or something from the tablet.

And everyone else uses batteries because of Wacom patents. At least that was the case 5 years ago.

And Apple, the richest company on earth, can't afford a license, or what?

Wacom may well decide that the competitive advantage to them having better styluses than the ones Apple can make is worth more than any amount of money Apple could offer.

Beyond the issue of whether Wacom wants to license it in the first place, even if they did, it's probably a high per unit cost (Wacom is a premium-pricing sort of company), and it's in the tablet, not the pen. What percentage of purchasers will even want the pen? I'm guessing it'll be pretty low.

Depends on software support. I remember with WinXP tablet edition, it came with 'Windows Journal', which was good enough to take all my classnotes.

Wacom may not be willing to license it.

Oh, is that why? I thought current multi-touch technology interfered with the Wacom-style force sensor, but I could have imagined that.

From what I remember when I had a wacom tablet in the 90s and 2000s, the tech was something like RFID where the active tablet would read the passive puck and stylus and get sub millimeter accuracy from triangulation. This included tilt and angle of the stylus.

The stylus pressure and buttons was a sensor on the stylus that was sensed by the tablet.

The screen or surface didn't have any sensors.

Very informative, thanks!

Nope. Surface Pro 1 (and 2?) used Wacom tech, had 10-point multitouch, and the stylus didn't need batteries or recharging. The induction stuff that Wacom does is pretty cool.

exactly (that's why they are called 'active digitizer')

Induction basically.

He said this at the iPhone unveiling. For an iPad, a stylus makes a lot more sense imo.

Who cares what Steve Jobs thinks? He's dead.

Wasn't he talking about the iPhone, not the iPad? At that time the dominant mobile platform was PDAs with styluses. I'm pretty sure that's the context in which he made those remarks.

Exactly. His point, I think, was trying to get rid of the need for people pulling out a stylus in a car sitting in traffic and scribbling notes and smiley faces. Not catering to artists and people sitting in meetings taking notes. The iPhone doesn't need a stylus. A tablet (especially at that size) acts more like a blank canvas and it makes perfect sense to get a drawing tool like a pencil on that big surface to encourage even more apps and creative outlets.

So, if you don't want one, don't buy it. It's optional and cost $100. Would Steve have changed his mind on them 8 years later?

Of course, he would... I bet all iPads in the future will have an optional stylus. Hopefully, the phones too.

http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-i-don-t-really-...

They did repeatedly mention that the main way of interacting with it was touch, and that the stylus and touch can be used together.

So it's an extra feature. This differs from earlier touchscreens that required a stylus and the strength of 10 mighty men to get that cheap touchscreen to register.

On a 3.5 inch screen? Yeah, the stylus was terrible for that. Touch screen interfaces were held back for years because everyone blindly used a stylus as the primary input device.

This is for a much larger screen, and it is an accessory and not the primary input device.

This quote is making the rounds on Twitter right now. The non-snarky response to which is "that's an ancient quote", the more snarky one is "It's been 7 years. The market changes. Deal with it."

Guess that applies to Apple fans quoting "Less space than a Nomad. Lame" as well?

What's your point?

Steve Jobs was talking about a Phone. Not a 12 inches tablet.

Yeah thanks. He also told Tim Cook not to make decisions based on what Tim thought Steve would have done. Which nobody on twitter seems to remember when they post this quote.

I want to be able to pick up anything and use it as a calligraphic stylus

He was right for phones. You are quoting him out of context. Why?

Hence, it's not a stylus, but an actual active pencil-like device for drawing.

But yeah, lets not let the facts get in the way.

Here is the definition of stylus.

Stylus noun, plural styli [stahy-lahy] (Show IPA), styluses.

2) any of various pointed, pen-shaped instruments used in drawing, artwork, etc.

3) Computers. a pen-shaped device used on a display screen to input commands or handwritten text or drawings. Compare joystick (def 2), mouse (def 4).

But yeah, lets not let the facts get in the way.