AppleInsider Staff
Wacom on Monday announced the Intuos Creative Stylus pressure-sensitive "digital pen" for iPad, which is designed to work in conjunction with supported apps to bring a more natural drawing experience to Apple's tablet lineup.
The Intuos Stylus has advanced Wacom pressure sensing technology built in, making dynamic sketching and drawing on the iPad more accurate and seamless than similar products currently available.
Compatible with the third and fourth generation iPad, as well as the iPad mini, Wacom's stylus connects via Bluetooth 4.0 and allows for pressure-sensitive input with intelligent palm rejection in supported apps. Wacom notes the Creative Stylus supports the company's latest Bamboo Paper app as well as Autodesk SketchBook Pro, ArtRage, ProCreate and Psykopaint.
While the digital pen isn't positioned to replace the company's Cintiq 13HD connected tablet, it does offer a number of features over a normal capacitive stylus. Most notable is a level of pressure sensitivity normally reserved for professional products. The Intuos Stylus can detect 2,048 pressure levels, identical to Wacom's Intuos and Cintiq product lines, allowing artists to vary the size and shape of drawn lines on the fly. In addition, Wacom says the stylus adds a "realistic pen-on-paper" feel.
There are already pressure sensitive digital pens made for iPad, such as Ten One Design's Pogo Connect and the Adonit Jot Touch, but Wacom's forthcoming stylus appears to have the highest number of recognizable pressure levels, suggesting a higher level of accuracy.
Wacom's Intuos Creative Stylus will first be offered by Best Buy in October for $99.
Malcolm Owen
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46 Comments
Coooool!
Ooh. I may have to get one of these. Finally a proper stylus for a proper 'screen behind the touch surface' tablet.
And… I'll just stick with my Intuos 4 medium, I guess.
I like Wacom's stuff generally, but how can it be "accurate" when the end of it is the size of a baby's finger?
Will it work on PDFs/Pages/KN/Numbers -- e.g., being able to write on slides?
Well at least someone can innovate. Too bad Apple can't recognize that there are a lot of people who would use a stylus with an iPad, just like they originally failed to recognize that people would play games on iPhones and iPad. In the later Newton versions, digitizer support and handwriting recognition were actually pretty good. If Apple put half the effort they have into Siri they could add decent stylus and handwriting recognition in iOS and still maintain all the convenience using your fingers gives you when you are dealing with a small device like an iPhone. Apple used to be about empowering people with tools to create, not just consume. Lately it does not seem that way. I have a Wacom tablet and look forward to seeing if this new stylus will help make the iPad a decent creative tool.