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From a recent issue of Wired:
Study after study shows we remember things better when we write them—our brain stores the letter-writing motion, which is much more memorable than just the mashing of a key that feels like every other key. We think in fragments, too, in shapes and colors and ideas that just don't come through on a keyboard. "Think about how many things that are built start as a drawing," Bathiche says. "Most things, right? Everything you're wearing probably started as a drawing."
You can't type out the folds of a dress, or the gentle curves of a skyscraper. Drawing with your stubby finger on a touchscreen isn't much better. Humans are tool-based creatures: Our fingers can do amazingly intricate things with a pen, a brush, or a scalpel, that we can't replicate with a mouse or the pads of our fingers. Our computers are giving back that kind of detailed control. In turn, the pen is opening up new ways of digital expression, new tools for communication, new ways to interact with our tech.
My wife's cousin's husband is a cartoonist for the New Yorker. He uses a high-end Wacom digitizer. Hasn't the problem of the high tech pen been solved?
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday July 09 2015, @02:51PM
The original patents for their cordless, batteryless pen technology should have long since expired, so where are the generic knockoffs? Are they really so expensive to make that there's no profit margins for knockoffs to cut into?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 09 2015, @04:47PM
Here they are: Yiynova [yiynova.ca], Huion [huiontablet.com], and Genius [geniusnet.com]. Cheap drawing monitors is rather recent. By cheap I mean about 1/4 Wacom's price. Wacom is still the best quality, but now there are options at least.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Friday July 10 2015, @12:46AM
I believe the grandparent post was referring specifically to how Wacom tablets work [wikipedia.org] using EMR and resonant inductive coupling to provide a battery-free active pen.
The products you linked, while nice for the price, are still battery-powered. The Huion-based one I have, for example, has a battery built in that requires occasional recharging, and I've seen some that pop open and take AAA or AAAA bateries instead of being charged.
The rechargeable ones aren't really a big deal, in my experience, because the battery life is very good, but it'll still bite you in the ass if you forget to recharge it and it dies in the middle of something. The big issue is that having the battery affects the weight and size of the pen, so Wacom's technology gives them more flexibility in pen design.
Like you said, at least there are options now. Maybe we'll start to see Wacom-style technology get adopted eventually, though at this point I'd rather have an eraser button on the alternatives. Last I looked, they can't do it because Wacom actually has some sort of patent on putting a pseudo-eraser on an active pen, so the knock-offs can't legally do it yet. I don't begrudge Wacom's EMR stylus patents, but the eraser thing just seems too obvious to deserve a patent, so I find that unfortunate.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday July 10 2015, @03:16PM
You are correct. There've been lots of other tablet technologies, starting decades before Wacom came on the scene. It's their passive pen technology that set them apart. I agree that the eraser seems too obvious to patent, unless there were significant implementation challenges presented by the passive technology. In any case it seem like they added the eraser fairly early on - I'm fairly certain I remember seeing them in the 90's - so that patent should be expiring soon as well, if it hasn't already.
I definitely don't begrudge them their (expired) EMR patent, I feel it is a major improvement to the technology, but since it expired years ago I'm surprised nobody else has created knockoffs - Wacoms are after all distinguished primarily by their low-maintenance pens and sky-high prices. And personally I never got into using the eraser much - with my left hand on the tool-selection hotkeys it just seems like too much effort to flip the pen over to get to the same tool a quick keypress can access. Though I can see how the rounded end might feel more intuitive with some tools, especially in applications that read the pen orientation.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday July 10 2015, @08:29PM
I definitely don't begrudge them their (expired) EMR patent, I feel it is a major improvement to the technology, but since it expired years ago I'm surprised nobody else has created knockoffs - Wacoms are after all distinguished primarily by their low-maintenance pens and sky-high prices.
That's how I feel about it, too. Their pen technology is a good example of patents being issued for the right reasons (for a change). If the patents expired already like you said, I wonder what's keeping alternatives away. Possibly implementation details, or maybe they can't properly implement it without hitting some other patents Wacom (or someone else) owns that hasn't expired yet? Could Wacom be hoarding potential patents and pulling them out to drag out the effective life of their monopoly on the pen tech? I don't know patent law well enough to know if there are mechanisms in place to prevent that sort of thing.
Even if that's impossible, there's the possibility of certain aspects of the process being treated as trade secrets by Wacom instead: not patented, not public, and would require R&D on someone else's part to implement. Could make it unjustifiably expensive to copy it when the alternative is "good enough". Hell, maybe it just hasn't been available out of patent long enough for the competition to pick up on it and make useful products yet, or perhaps it just hasn't been deemed worth the effort and cost due to investment in the battery-operated pens -- sunk cost fallacy, basically.
And personally I never got into using the eraser much - with my left hand on the tool-selection hotkeys it just seems like too much effort to flip the pen over to get to the same tool a quick keypress can access. Though I can see how the rounded end might feel more intuitive with some tools, especially in applications that read the pen orientation.
I do something similar. Pen in left hand with a bluetooth numpad under my right, with my preferred shortcuts bound to every key possible. I get 18 hotkeys in a compact space with no wires to deal with, and I can push my normal keyboard out of the way to use the monoprice pen display in a more comfortable location.
Still, I do occasionally miss the "eraser" for two reasons. 1) Programs often kept a different set of brush information for it, so it was sometimes more convenient to flip the pen instead of switching presets. For example, use the eraser side for huge brush settings like a giant eraser or bulk-paint while using the normal side and shortcuts for more fine-grained tools. 2) Like you said, the rounded end has a different feel to it. I found it more comfortable to use that side when I wanted to use full pressure or large brushes
By "pen orientation" I'm guessing you mean Wacom's tilt sensitivity. That's another thing I'd like to see in the competitor tablets, though if I'm being honest with myself, I'd have to admit I never quite got used to it when I had it. Most brushes didn't care about it, so then I'd find myself surprised when one did, which made it just feel weird to have it. Maybe if enough of the competitor brands started using it in cheaper tablets, it could become ubiquitous enough that more programs and brushes would be made to use it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dbe on Thursday July 09 2015, @06:07PM
Your answer is very soon! The main issue historically has been that the pens and tablets were not compatible between each other, so a Wacom stylus would not work on a dell tablet. This was limiting the appeal to buy an expensive and powerful pen as it would have a very restricted usage.
There is a initiative going on between all the important actors in the touch industry to define a universal pen protocol that would be compatible between devices. It would allow both basic pen functionality to very advanced ones, so you can choose the device for your usage.
Look at the USI: http://www.universalstylus.org/ [universalstylus.org]
For IP reason I cannot comment on the technical aspects, but the first products following this protocol should be available in the coming year.
Cheers
-dbe