WarrenBuffduckh

dewme said:

I played around with Scribble for a couple of hours with the Apple Pencil 1 to get a feel for it. The handwriting recognition is impressive. However, as others have noted the tactile feedback with writing on glass is still a big detractor. At least on my iPad Pro there seems to be a constant struggle between whether the Scribble input or virtual keyboard has the focus. I still feel like I'm writing with a ten foot long pencil when entering text into edit boxes in the UI. Pencil input into standard edit controls seems very disconnected. When using the pencil in text editors the inability to insert carriage returns and discern paragraphs feels unnatural. I guess what I'm say is that handwriting recognition is great, but it is only part of the overall handwriting experience and Apple has not yet captured the full picture, not by a long shot.

I still feel like I need to conform to the tool's expectations instead of relying on the tool to conform to my expectations. Truth be told, if I was heading for a meeting today where I'd be taking notes I would still grab my steno pad and a pen rather than my iPad Pro. In my opinion, until Apple can get to the point where the iPad is the default, zero compromise, and natural choice it will not serve my needs for handwriting based note taking. It gets in the way.

I applaud Apple's efforts, but the margin for error in this particular application space is so damn minuscule, much like voice based interaction, that being 99.9 percent on-the-mark makes for a compelling demo but falls flat on its face for being a reliable tool that users can count on for everyday use. This is a Big O challenge, and Apple is making impressive progress, but I would not get too pumped up about its utility at this point. It has a long way to go before it becomes generally usable. I have no doubt that Apple will keep drilling deep on this until they get it to the level of maturity that it needs to be. It still feels more like a novelty and toy than a boring tool that just works. Whether the maturity process takes 2 years or 5 years or 10 years is the real question. This is absolutely not a knock on Apple. This is a very difficult problem to solve and I'm grateful that they are making a concerted effort to solve it.