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Big Backing For 'Universal Stylus' Campaign (bbc.com)
Google has backed an effort to standardise touch-screen styluses so they can be used on many devices. From a report: The Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) was launched, in 2015, to encourage companies to produce styluses that work on rivals' products Dell, Intel, Lenovo, LG and graphics tablet-maker Wacom have all backed the project. However, Apple, Microsoft and Samsung have not. One expert suggested the big brands would keep their proprietary pens. Styluses designed to work with modern touch-screen devices and graphics tablets usually contain sensors to detect pressure, movement and orientation of the pen.
...is there are so many to choose from. We had a standard connector for charging phones: microUSB. Apple and Samsung chose to go with a proprietary connector instead. The lighting cable is at least available from third parties; the Apple version cost $22 at BestBuy. The Samsung Galaxy S8 and presumably the S9 as well use a proprietary cable, only available from Samsung as far as I know. Apple sells a $99 Apple Pen; what monetary interest could they have in supporting a universal stylus?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Until I purchased a Sony DPT-RP1.
It comes with a stylus that imitates "real writing experience", including replaceable tips that wear down like pencils, and brake when falling like fountain pens.
and I thought there was an Apple bias?
The problem with these kinds of standards is that they usually settle on the cheapest, crappiest thing. MicroUSB is the perfect example, exploding/burning/shorting chargers are another one.
Lightning, Thunderbolt and especially USB-C are better examples, with companies behind it that have at least some level of QC.
There's nothing somebody else in China can't manufacture a bit cheaper and a bit crappier and a bit more dangerous for the end-user.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Google is not a player in this game, and be honest I really doubt they give a damn what gets developed as a "standard" Googles stance has EVERYTHING to do with attacking Apple and Microsoft. From reviews I have read both these companies have good pens/tech and they work very well. This is tech google does not have, so why not force these companies to either share or get labeled as "non-standard" even if that standard is inferior. this "standard" is by companies trying to stay relevant.
A few searches leads me to believe that Dell, Lenovo, and LG have all put out devices with Wacom stylus technology. I wonder what this "universal stylus" technology will be based on? I wonder whose patents it will depend on?
Breakfast served all day!
Apple and Google have zero incentive to have a standard, so that they can be undercut and effectively cede the market to cheap knock-offs. Pens are never the reason for choosing a platform, but it factors heavily into consumer satisfaction. Having a best-in-class experience is critical to maintaining satisfaction.
Also, I suspect the margin on Apple and Microsoft Pens is quite good.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Looks like they're supporting universal run-on sentences too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Nor do I. After all, what incentive does a leader in a particular category have for giving up their competitive advantage? To my eyes, this push for a standard is an attempt to stem the tide among the crowd that's interested in these sorts of things (among which I am not a member).
Apple currently provides the best stylus in the consumer tablet space, hands down. The Apple Pencil uses a proprietary Bluetooth chip that pushes its wireless latency to a far lower point than anything else on the market, and it only works with the iPad Pro, which has a 120 Hz refresh rate. Between the low latency and fast refresh, it seem as if you're simply writing on a physical pad of paper. Even as a person who has no interest in styluses, it was shocking how much of a difference those factors made over Wacoms and other products I've tried over the years.
A quick anecdote: my non-techie wife dabbles in watercoloring and sketching, and after a brief stop by the Apple Store a few months back, she went from being completely ambivalent about the Pencil to being blown away by it. When I told her that it only worked on the newest iPad Pro, she immediately changed her plans for her next tablet. She had been planning to pick up an iPad mini once her current mini got too long in the tooth, but now she plans to get a Pro. I've heard similar anecdotes from a handful of other friends who dabble in art, several of whom have dropped their use of dedicated devices like Wacoms that ostensibly do the same things, simply because the Pencil was so much better than whatever they already had.
I don't doubt that art professionals have access to better tools, or else tools that address needs the Pencil doesn't address, but at least in the consumer tablet space the Pencil is far and away the best thing available. If someone is interested in an inferior stylus, dumb styluses already work just fine. If someone wants a wireless, pressure-sensitive stylus, why would Apple support a device that is almost certainly worse than what they already have, particularly when what they already have is so compelling to the people interested in it that it's driving sales of more expensive iPads, despite the added cost of the Pro and the obscene $100 price of the Pencil.
Both my Wacom tablets are "too old" (5-6 years) to work with the latest MacOS. My only recourse is to buy new tablets. Consider this before buying from Wacom.
Maybe your problem isn't so much Wacom, but that you bought an Apple product and expected to not get stuck on an upgrade treadmill.
As a counterpoint, Wacom's Linux drivers, which are still maintained primarily by a Wacom employee named Ping Cheng, have excellent support, even with old tablets. I still have an Intuos 4 (early 2009) and an ancient Graphire 3 (2003) that both work just fine in Linux thanks to her work, and I've noticed that sometimes the old tablets gain new features added for other tablets over time due to how they're implemented. (The Graphire 3 gained rotation options it never had in Windows, as one example.)
On Windows, both devices have drivers up to Windows 8, and a quick search indicates that, at least for the Intuos 4, at least one of the Vista/7/8 drivers will work in Windows 10 as well. Not as nice as the Linux driver situation, sure, but not as dire as yours despite both being a fair bit older than your tablets.
Also, for what it's worth, if you don't like Wacom's support duration, you'll absoultely hate the non-Wacom alternatives. Vendors like Huion are making some pretty nice Cintiq-like devices now, but despite huge leaps in hardware quality, the drivers I've seen have all been really bare-bones and you're lucky if you ever see them release a newer driver than the one that came with the device for Windows or macOS. Though if you're using Linux it's not as dire, because I've noticed the Huion drivers can "speak wacom", so to speak, which lets them piggyback on the benefits of the wacom drivers and utilities like xsetwacom.
None of this is any comfort if you're stuck because of specific applications, I know, but I thought it worth mention. As a possible workaround for your problem, perhaps you should look into running a supported OS (older macOS, maybe Windows) in a VM and passing the USB device through to it.
Haven't paid much attention in a long time, but I always thought Wacom was the undisputed leader in the stylus market. No batteries required in the stylus, plenty of special-purpose buttons, incredible fast and high-resolution position tracking, excellent pressure sensitivity, and their pro-level products offer orientation tracking as well for high-fidelity virtual paint brushes and the like (2 axis? 3? I'm not certain.) Of course, I don't know what the power consumption was, it might not have been as suitable for low-power mobile devices.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
having worked with the apple stylus for a while now, the most annoying things is the charging. Cables are no option. A standard definitely needs a stylus which is wirelessly charged when near the tablet. One could even imagine a universal solution where the electonics would be the only thing vendor dependent. One could have a pen in a fancy fountain pen shape with an apple cartrige and write on an ipad, then if necessary change the cartridge to write on microsoft tablet etc.
Seriously? Surface Pro pen is miles ahead of Apples pen.