But that's exactly my point - Sprout doesn't do this, but it provides a form factor with all the sensors and actuators necessary to do so. An application could then provide this functionality and support these use-cases.

Yes, it'd be a very complex application, solving some fairly hard CS and CV problems, along with probably needing to invent a whole suite of new UI paradigms.

I guess what I was saying, invent OCR that good you’ll sell it to someone like IBM for a billion dollars.

Actually find a workflow that allows live collaboration to be more efficient than working individually might be hard to capitalise but would be revolutionary and change the world. I’ve never seen Pair programming in XP really work, for instance. It’s certainly not common practice for most workers.

Each solution would be amazing for plant earth, Sprout doesn’t help solve either.

So, a pipe dream.

>Why not just edit the email/document using a keyboard, you can even do it in a google doc so the other person can live collaborate, but as we know live collaboration is fine in movies but in real life is very very hard to do. Humans are just not build for it.

Because some people prefer a pen to a keyboard when trying to mark modifications to a draft?

Surely you can imagine of at least one situation where a pen is a useful input device.

Honestly it's very difficult to imagine a case where pen is better. I can type faster than I can write, and everyone can read my typing much more easily than my writing. Etherpad (sadly killed by google) had a great annotation UI. Maybe for serious mathematics with formulae, or something where you want to annotate 2D diagrams (architecture?), but that seems pretty niche.

I can, not saying you can’t, but technology using a pen interfacing with a computer is decades ok and mature but is still not commonly used hence I don’t think it’s a useful tool in general.