Pixar staff gets early chance to test iPad Pro & Apple Pencil
Apple recently brought the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil to the award winning Hollywood filmmakers at Pixar, giving the studio's digital animation wizards an early sneak-peek at its upcoming technology.
"Lovely of our friends from Apple to stop by to let us take iPad Pro & Pencil for a test drive," commented Michael Johnson, the lead of a Pixar team that creates the tools for animating its movies. In response to a question on Twitter, Johnson claimed that the Pro had "perfect palm rejection as far as we were able to see."
Palm rejection is essential for people doing handwriting or illustration on tablet, since touchscreens otherwise can't distinguish a palm from the tip of a finger or stylus.
Apple is presumably hoping to sell Pixar on adopting the Pro, since some of Apple's main targets for the product are professionals in illustration and 3D modeling.
The two corporations already have close ties. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was once the CEO of Pixar, and after Pixar was taken over by Disney, he became that company's largest individual shareholder and a member of the board of directors. Current Disney CEO Bob Iger sits on the Apple board, and Jobs' widow -- Laurene Powell Jobs -- now controls his Disney shares.
The iPad Pro is due to ship sometime in November, and features a 12.9-inch screen specifically designed to be more responsive to touch input. The Pencil is a separate accessory that will cost $99.
"Lovely of our friends from Apple to stop by to let us take iPad Pro & Pencil for a test drive," commented Michael Johnson, the lead of a Pixar team that creates the tools for animating its movies. In response to a question on Twitter, Johnson claimed that the Pro had "perfect palm rejection as far as we were able to see."
Palm rejection is essential for people doing handwriting or illustration on tablet, since touchscreens otherwise can't distinguish a palm from the tip of a finger or stylus.
Apple is presumably hoping to sell Pixar on adopting the Pro, since some of Apple's main targets for the product are professionals in illustration and 3D modeling.
The two corporations already have close ties. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was once the CEO of Pixar, and after Pixar was taken over by Disney, he became that company's largest individual shareholder and a member of the board of directors. Current Disney CEO Bob Iger sits on the Apple board, and Jobs' widow -- Laurene Powell Jobs -- now controls his Disney shares.
The iPad Pro is due to ship sometime in November, and features a 12.9-inch screen specifically designed to be more responsive to touch input. The Pencil is a separate accessory that will cost $99.
Comments
iPad Pro looks great.
Hell yeah it does!
But as with any professional product it'll live or die by what software it offers. Apple should be courting Adobe to bring full PS to iPad Pro. That alone would be huge for this product.
That was very nice of Mr. Iger!
Feedback #1. Can you make a bigger version for in house production use?
iPad Pro looks great. But as with any professional product it'll live or die by what software it offers. Apple should be courting Adobe to bring full PS to iPad Pro. That alone would be huge for this product.
Assume you're thinking more of "AI".
iPad Pro looks great. But as with any professional product it'll live or die by what software it offers. Apple should be courting Adobe to bring full PS to iPad Pro. That alone would be huge for this product.
Astropad will support iPad Pro out of the box. This will let you use the iPad Pro as a Wacom Cintiq replacement with Photoshop etc. on the Mac.
Too bad the article did not include more of the feedback that was acquired by the pixar team...
I would hope that Apple would have had professional feedback prior to releasing this. I believe that Apple will release a larger iPad down the road when things make sense to do so. This is the next best logical progression. Much larger form would be too tailored to PRO users. This one handles consumers and pros which will drive more volume.
Too bad the article did not include more of the feedback that was acquired by the pixar team...
Kind of like a drafting table and they sit up to it and work?
iPad Pro looks great. But as with any professional product it'll live or die by what software it offers. Apple should be courting Adobe to bring full PS to iPad Pro. That alone would be huge for this product.
The code base for PS must be gargantuan after so many years. It's not something they could port quickly with a finite number of developers who really understand large portions of it. I also wouldn't expect to see it conform to app store pricing conventions. You will probably see an iPad version added to your creative cloud subscription at some point.
But given the highly secretive nature of Apple's product developments, I guessing they wanted to keep the number of advisors to a minimum.
Answer #1. You'll have to wait a couple more years. All larger oxide-backed display production capacity is directed toward Macbook, iMac and monitors for the near future.
Jobs became the largest shareholder of Disney??.... (This was never clear to me?)...Does that mean Laurene Powell has a controlling stake in Disney?...Which owns ESPN?
The easier route to go would be something that works like Handoff. You'd have a comp in Photoshop on a Mac and need to add a sketch. Having the iPad near the computer would send the current comp wirelessly over to the iPad. You can then sketch on the iPad and changes would be synced back onto the Mac. This can be an image layer sync and the layers on the iPad project wouldn't have to be the same as on the Mac. The Mac project might have 100 layers open and you can just create a single linked layer to the iPad and the iPad can be working with a single layer to save memory and performance. Linking with iCloud or Creative Cloud would be useful too, especially in a business as a freelance or just remote artist could sketch something outside the office, link it with the cloud and people in the business can be using the layer in comps and adding to it with version controls and locking.
Having the full set of plugins and masking features from Adobe apps would be good to have for people who want to only use an iPad without a Mac and to use when mobile but the sales numbers would have to justify the development and support cost. If the pen worked on all iPads it would be more worthwhile adding fuller software support because then you hit a portion of ~70 million per year instead of likely <10 million per year starting at ~$900 with the Pencil and $1067 with keyboard too. Every iPad could use these accessories.
The price is high for a tablet but for graphics artists, it competes with the following 13" touch display Wacom at $999:
http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Cintiq-Touch-Tablet-DTH1300K/dp/B00U2K20H4
If the user experience can rival that then it offers more functionality for the price.
Big software developers will likely bring more and more features to mobile versions of their software over time. Mobile devices aren't going away and they aren't going to revert back to using legacy UIs so they have to keep redesigning parts of their software to work with touch. Modern tablets have only been around for 5 years vs over 30 years for traditional computers and it takes time to assess the demand and rewrite millions of lines of code. Part of the consideration is to do with the audience too. Like with Nintendo, they can put out the platform, developers can put out the software but if the audience that uses the platform isn't interested in that particular software then it won't sell. The iPad audience is primarily a consumer rather than producer audience so if pro apps are to be successful on that platform, they need to get an audience of producers using the platform as one of their main productive platforms. Pencil and keyboard accessories will help with this as well as cloud syncing of files.
You are conflating two very different issues. The largest shareholder owns more stock than any other shareholder. Every publicly owned corporation has one. It is not a given that the largest shareholder owns enough stock to control the corporation.
BTW, Disney is diversified media company and is second only to Comcast as the largest media holdings. ESPN is among Disney's many business interests. This makes Laurene Powell Jobs the largest shareholder of the company that owns 80% of ESPN.
"After Pixar was taken over by Disney, he became that company's largest individual shareholder and a member of the board of directors."
Jobs became the largest shareholder of Disney??.... (This was never clear to me?)...Does that mean Laurene Powell has a controlling stake in Disney?...Which owns ESPN?
Yes, largest individual shareholder. But I think that was something like 7.7% , which is far from a controlling stake.