[HN Gopher] Apple Pencil Pro and iPad Simulate a Shadow of the P...
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Apple Pencil Pro and iPad Simulate a Shadow of the Pen Being
Emulated
Author : latexr
Score : 79 points
Date : 2024-05-17 13:21 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.threads.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.threads.net)
| millzlane wrote:
| Yesterday I tested siri on Mac os 14.4.1 and I finally can set
| more than one timer. Not sure when it changed, but it seems they
| are making changes for the better and listening to feedback in
| the feedback app.
| veidr wrote:
| One of the Apple bigwigs made a self-deprecating joke about
| this at a recent Apple event. I forgot which one, but it was
| something like "annd... you can now even set more than one
| timer. Will technological wonders never cease!"
|
| I thought it was interesting because a.) it showed they were
| aware of how common the frustration was, and b.) man it takes
| the world's leading tech company a lonnnnnng time to implement
| a feature that is about as simple as features get, if it isn't
| one they invented themselves.
| latexr wrote:
| If I recall correctly, it was Craig Federighi at last year's
| WWDC.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Yep. It's exactly 2323 seconds in to the WWDC 2023 keynote.
| The quote is "we truly live in an age of wonders."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYkq9Rgoj8E&t=2323s
|
| I carried an Android daily for this use case, since I use
| multiple timers throughout the day. I appreciate that they
| acknowledged, even if in a tounge-in-cheek way, that this
| should have happened sooner.
| achow wrote:
| 'Skeuomorphism' got lot of flak during its time and maybe most of
| them justified.
|
| But this is (my) first example, where it is with a purpose -
| affordance.
| rcoilliot wrote:
| Again the "insane attention to details" while in 2024 attaching a
| picture or a file to a message in Apple Mail.app macOS is an
| absolute nightmare. One example amongst many many others. It's
| cool, very cool, but I wouldn't call Apple this way while there's
| so much awkward choices to be fixed in their software.
| gumby wrote:
| Can't you just drag it into place? Am I missing something?
|
| But sadly I find Apple's attention to detail in its UX to be
| typically rather low. MacOS in particular is littered with
| broken interactions.
|
| The underpinnings -- the stuff users don't see -- suffers from
| this much less, and if there were a choice of where to have
| attention to detail, that would be the right choice. But Apple
| is big enough not to have to make this choice.
| rcoilliot wrote:
| It's actually impossible to attach pictures, they always are
| displayed in the mail. Also, when you drop a file into the
| message it's not "attached" in a "attachment box" but their
| icon is actually floating anywhere you dropped it in the
| message.
| gumby wrote:
| If you right-click (two-finger click) on the photo you can
| toggle "View as icon"/""View in Place". The default is to
| show it directly.
|
| Well, you can drag them to the end if you want them
| segregated. Usually I prefer them inline, but sometimes I
| drag them to the end. I don't know what an "attachment box"
| is.
|
| Outlook used to get confused -- when it first encountered
| an attachment it simply ignored the rest of the message. I
| think MS eventually fixed that bug. Is an "attachment box"
| an outlook thing? Apple mail correctly finds and handles
| any attachments anywhere in the message.
| skinner927 wrote:
| RFC 2183 allows for "inline" and "attachment"
| dispositions. Inline are part of the body and "inline"
| with the content of the mail and are automatically
| displayed. Attachments are to be shown as icons or links
| in a designated area.
|
| https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2183
| burnerthrow008 wrote:
| > attaching a picture or a file to a message in Apple Mail.app
| macOS is an absolute nightmare
|
| Am I missing something here? I just drag and drop into the
| email body and it just works.
| chrisandchris wrote:
| Attach a single page PDF and try to "Show as symbol". Only
| works if there is one PDF per line in the mail. Does not work
| if there is no line break between multiple PDFs. Works again
| if you put the second document on a new line. (At lest for
| me)
|
| Or other examples:
|
| - OTP on Safari iPad OS have a separate, single-purpose
| "paste" button. The hold-long and choose "paste" does not
| work. The only input field I found where pasting does work in
| a different way. - "Use a random mail" for login (using
| iCloud Relay) always appear like 150ms later than the regular
| "fill password from Password Manager" icon. Sou you're either
| fast enough, slow enough or you end up with iCloud relay but
| thought you chose the password manager (because the action
| changed right under your finger)
| lopis wrote:
| This probably reflects how big tech companies work. You're more
| likely to get promoted because of "wow" than because you of a
| mundane feature everyone else has. E-mail just isn't exciting.
| maicro wrote:
| One of my "favorite" macos interface decisions - having the
| Refresh and Settings menu options at the bottom of the Wifi
| dropdown list - so it's a constantly moving target as you're
| waiting for a certain network to be seen, or if it
| automatically refreshes as you're going for the Settings
| option...
| jiehong wrote:
| Indeed!
|
| The cool animation when bringing phones close together to share
| contact and data?
|
| Well, work 10% of the time for airdrop, but often doesn't do
| anything...
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I see someone arguing that this is useful because orientation
| affects real pens, so being able to see the rotation of the fake
| pen is useful. But... does the program actually utilize the
| imagined rotation of the pen in this physical way? I would guess
| no because that would not work very well with the apple pencil
| that is irl geometrically not the same.
| veidr wrote:
| Yes, it does. The "shadow" isn't a shadow, it is a preview of
| what your mark will look like, before you actually make the
| mark. So if it isn't aligned how you want, you can rotate the
| stylus in your fingers to get the angle you want before
| drawing.
|
| I'm not an artist, but this is actually useful to me even for
| just writing sometimes, e.g. when writing Japanese characters
| with a flat/bladed pen style.
|
| You are right that the physical Apple Pencil stylus doesn't
| have the same geometry as the virtual pen/brush/etc it is
| modeling, so without the preview mark on the screen when you
| hover the tip of the stylus near it, it would be really hard to
| know what the angle was.
|
| Perhaps some real artists could develop a muscle memory,
| because while the stylus tip is round, the body of it has one
| flat edge. In my quick testing, it seems that the angle of the
| virtual brush/pen tip stays consistent relative to the flat
| edge of the stulus itself, even across drawings and putting the
| styus away and taking it out again.
|
| But for normal people, I think the preview indicator is very
| useful and easy to use -- although not needed at all for many
| pen/pencil styles, since those also are modeled on writing
| implements with round tips.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > Yes, it does. The "shadow" isn't a shadow, it is a preview
| of what your mark will look like, before you actually make
| the mark.
|
| ... No it's very clearly a shadow of the pen. Watch the link.
| It's not the angled mark preview.
| elliottkember wrote:
| Look at the tip.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| The program does alter the mark shape based on the rotation of
| the physical Apple Pencil. The faked reflection of the fountain
| pen may help illustrate that for the user.
| freedomben wrote:
| I love the attention to detail and the artistry of this
| feature, but ironically it actually backfires on me. The shadow
| being there mainly raises my awareness that the physical pencil
| isn't actually the right shape. The shadow isn't visible enough
| to let me quickly grok my pen's orientation either, and it
| being directly underneath the pen (as though the light source
| is right above me) makes it very hard for me to see. I like to
| position my eyes right above where I'm drawing and it helps me
| be a lot more accurate, but that's the worst position for
| viewing this shadow.
| veidr wrote:
| This isn't "insane attention to detail" -- it's the basic
| functionality of the new feature. It's not just a shadow to look
| cool, it's literally the shape of what you are going to draw, if
| you actually touch the screen with the stylus.
|
| Since they can't yet physically morph the rubber tip of the
| physical stylus to the shape and size of the brush or marker,
| this is a kind of clever workaround; the best they can do with
| today's tech.
|
| (And it is indeed one of the two significant new features of this
| new Apple Pencil stylus, coming from the old one -- the first and
| more important one to me personally being able to find the
| insanely expensive stylus when my child (or, OK, me myself)
| misplaces it.)
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| I think the tip shadow thing has been done before on other
| devices (Samsung note) but the shadow of the entire pen you're
| using is new. It looks very cool.
| veidr wrote:
| Ohhhhh -- OK, I watched in on my phone, and did not actually
| see the faint shadow of the pen body itself, and thought we
| were discussing the preview of the pen tip.
|
| I retract my statement, haha -- that is indeed some pretty
| nice attention to detail. :D
| LegitShady wrote:
| What blows my mind is the dumb stuff apple fans get excited over.
| I draw on an ipad every day. I select tools every couple minutes.
| I'm never going to be looking at a drop shadow thats under the
| pen.
|
| It's just not that interesting.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| Has anyone ever met one of these mythical "Apple fans"? I have
| a lot of people in my circle that are repeat apple customers
| for all the obvious reasons, but they are in no way "fans",
| just repeat customers.
| LegitShady wrote:
| The person who came up with the link that is the basis of
| this story. The astounded reaction to a feature that isn't
| all that useful.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Read old.reddit.com/r/apple to witness the zealotry -
| incitement topics include:
|
| * Discussion of iPad not supporting desktop workloads like
| macOS despite costing as much as a MBP
|
| * Discussion of the Apple mouse
|
| * Discussion of EU regulation
|
| * Discussion of the monopolistic nature of App stores and
| fees
| olliej wrote:
| Yes but you can do the same for android, windows, different
| game consoles, etc
|
| Forums can make tiny groups of people look large because
| they all aggregate in one place.
|
| The same thing allowed flat earthers and such to believe
| they have huge numbers of supporters.
| freedomben wrote:
| Yes they absolutely exist. I used to work with a bunch of
| them, and it was unreal. They would actually get _angry_ when
| I mentioned that my Macbook Pro with Apple monitor (so all
| Apple hardware and software) would leave my laptop screen
| completely off after unplugging from the external monitor
| about 50% of the time. I had to hold the power button to hard
| reboot it in order to get the laptop screen back on. That bug
| was there for at least 9 months. It usually went in the same
| logically progression. First, denial (no way), then dismissal
| and blaming the user( "works for me, you must be doing
| something wrong"), then acceptance but always with a comment
| like "it's worse on Windows" or similar.
|
| My MBP before that had a weird bug where if the screen was
| completely off (which I routinely did at night so I could
| listen to a podcast while falling asleep), after right around
| 5 minutes it would suddenly blast the screen at full
| brightness, which lit up the room and shocked me back awake.
| I ended up "fixing" the bug by cutting out a piece of tin
| foil and taping it to the screen. Absolutely maddening when
| you're paying a premium for stuff that "just works" and the
| company (tightly) controls the entire stack to "ensure the
| quality user experience." After that point I finally had
| enough and just bought a Lenovo laptop and had a much better
| experience with Linux on it.
|
| I think Apple makes some great hardware, and I wish it was
| more open/hacker friendly, but damn Apple is absolutely a
| religion to some people, and they don't take criticism well.
|
| Now that said, I do think the vast majority of Apple
| customers are just like you. The super fans are just a very
| loud minority. Some Linux communities have the same problem
| where a small number of very loud assholes can overwhelm the
| average voice.
| joemi wrote:
| On the other hand, just because you're not consciously noticing
| it doesn't mean it's not affecting your experience (for better
| or worse).
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| Feel free to criticize Apple, but if you're going to get into
| cheap fanboy wars, reddit is right over there -->
| binary132 wrote:
| What's next, a shadow of a 3d-printed save icon?
| rchaud wrote:
| Was a Mont Blanc pen also flattened into an iPad in that ad they
| apologized for?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40313733
| klyrs wrote:
| > You can't watch this and not smile.
|
| Not only did I not smile, my eyes rolled so hard I pulled a
| muscle. That's a whole lot of needless computation on a battery-
| powered device to show a smudge on my drawing that shouldn't be
| there.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I was wondering how this would compare in experience with
| putting a blank sheet of paper over a digitizer and using real
| pencil & eraser. The pencils might need RFID or something to
| tell what color/hardness it was.
|
| At this rate I suppose the rich will live in VR (Vision Pro)
| and the rest live in the physical world _(can 't call it 'real'
| cause it sounds better somehow)_ to deal with issues like
| paper. It's like we're _implementing_ Buddhism pulling the wool
| over our own eyes.
| phyalow wrote:
| In a similar vein, pass through mode on my Vision Pro has a
| similar effect. I adds super realistic looking shadows on the
| ground to mimic shadows cast by the windows open. I didnt notice
| it for a few weeks because it looked so realistic.
| ein0p wrote:
| There's no way this particular thought would ever cross the mind
| of anyone at Google or Microsoft.
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