01.29
Apple iPad. Yeah, you know you want one. And if you don’t… have fun denying the urge and I’ll see you when you’re secretly reading the New York Times on the Dave Bieter Downtown Boise Railcar when your Kindle and HP Slate are up for barter on Craigslist.
LOL iPad = lame! All the hype for THIS stupid thing? Wait, did I say iPad? I meant iPod. 9 years ago: http://bit.ly/4Gy2pN via @planetMitch
So, have fun knee jerking and as soon as I have an extra $500 I’m handing over my soul to Steve jobs for a sweet piece of tablet action. But with all the negative hype, closed system that is Apple, and loss of laptop functionality… what is there for me? Especially as a designer and an artist. Task specific apps.
For instance, one of my favorite iPhone apps SketchBook from Autodesk Inc. (the same software developers that brought us Maya) will be my new best friend. In the age of convenience, the scanner has become my enemy and emailing a sketch to myself to trace in Adobe Illustrator or touch-up in Photoshop is my new workflow. The quality of images that you can produce on the iPhones tiny screen will become a dream on the iPad’s drawing pad sized surface. Finger painting has never been this fun… and editable.
Photoshop Mobile. This app will become more and more useful as the iPad matures. As soon as Adobe recognizes the mobile space for photo editing then the iPad may become a dream come true for photographers. Literally touching up your photos and organizing them in iPhoto. The iPad will find a new space in the camera bag.
Mobile dev. has yet to mature as it only exists in laptop form, which is no different than the desktop space; sans the 10/100/1000. On the iPhone it’s only a few simple text editors with little server/proxy support. No auto completion, syntax help, or all the little things we take for granted when coding. But with the larger workspace and task oriented OS the iPad could quickly become a coders sketchpad. Instead of the multi-tasking madness we all live in maybe we’ll actually start writing cleaner code and put a little more thought into each module as we are forced to take on one function at a time. Maybe modular design will take over as visual coding will be adopted when we are able to cut and paste by moving around blocks of code with our fingers. Color coding functions instead of /*commenting every stupid little line we want to test, end up leaving it in the for final push, and we leave our clients with pages and pages of dirty coding secrets*/.
Maybe I’m dreaming a little too productive for this entertainment tool that Steve sees lying around your home for you to compulsively buy more music or play Tap Tap as you sit on the toilet buying movies tickets at Fandango.com… though, not all at the same time. We’re a little more focused with this task based tool. Instead of seeing this as a limitation, I’d like to see it as an opportunity to make each task really mean something. As artists I think we can make this entertainment tool into a sketchbook for the future. What do you think?
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..V, (^_^)
I left out musicians and sound designers of this post, but I feel that’s it’s own subject. TONS of audio potential! Think Lemur…
What about the lack of a workable stylus? I know about the Pogo, which is why I said “workable”. You sound like a pretty serious artist, do you really plan to be happy doing finger-paintings? Sketchbook Mobile on the iPhone is pretty cool- can’t wait to see what Autodesk might do fir the iPad… still, for me the lack of an artist-friendly stylus is something that no app, however great, can make up for.
http://doodl.es/blog/
Do you think that Apple might come out with and iPen as an accessory- regardless of the fact that Jobs hates styluses? Or, that someone else will? If not, do you really think you’d be content just using your finger?
- Jonathan
http://www.doodl.es
Not sure a stylus is needed… for the iPad. Check this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ44S17mHO4&feature=player_embedded
Autodesk has accomplished a way to “finger paint” that really doesn’t look sloppy to me; quite the opposite on the large iPad screen. An excellent tool set refined for the new format.
The iPhone is not the platform for this type of drawing tool. Hence the Pogo, but it seemingly lacks the precise control needed for such a small screen.