Think – Fast mobile whiteboarding

by reimertz • 11 years ago

159 51 11 years ago

reimertz• 11 years ago

These new features are really nice for people like me who really can't draw but still love Paper.

mwill• 11 years ago

Yeah, I wanted a stylus and at the time Pencil was one of the only ones that worked on the iPad I had, so when I got it, I played around in Paper and it's such a slick experience, but wasn't really the kind of app I needed. It is the app I show people who ask about the Pencil though.

So I'm stoked to check out the new features.

harperlee• 11 years ago

It's a shame that this only works on the iPad; it seems awesome.

darkstar999• 11 years ago

Is it called Think or Paper? I'm confused.

wmorein3• 11 years ago

Paper is the app. Think Kit is the new set of tools for whiteboarding.

pimlottc• 11 years ago

It is confusing that there is no clear title on the page. The first appearance of the name "Paper" is in a button label.

lucaspottersky• 11 years ago

I wish there was something like this that could help me with mockups and UML diagrams.

currywurst• 11 years ago

For UML, have you tried PlantUML? It's a brilliant little text-to-UML converter. Eg. Sequence Diagram (http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/sequence.html)

desireco422• 11 years ago

It's a shame they don't know how to make Android app. Galaxy Note is way better tablet for drawing then Ipad ever was. I have ipad but I use note all the time. It lacks good apps like this one but it has a really good stylus.

tdkl• 11 years ago

Don't know or don't want to invest into such a fragmented platform ?

dmix2• 11 years ago

Fragmented? In what way?

Most people don't know that each year one single Android device typically sells 10x more than any other one. For ex: Samsung S4 sold more than the next 2nd,3rd,4th, etc rank devices combined.

In addition, the screen sizes are almost all very similar these days. I don't know of a single Android designer or dev who has issues with that. As the UIs scale pretty gracefully. Pretty much the same way web designers adopted responsive design, mobile designers know to expect the UIs to scale/shrink.

Even Apple devices have similar size disparity: typical medium-sized phones, phablet, tablet sizes. And now a totally new watch UI.

The OS versioning disparity on Android is also becoming less of an issue on Android as devices have moved on to 4.0+. As the changes to frameworks are less drastic between 4.0 vs 5.0. Programming is much more predictable than it was say with 2.3 vs 4.0 for example.

Trufa• 11 years ago

Related to that, I got really frustrated with the site, I went through all the site (though I didn't watch the video), I read it all, watched the animations, all the way down to the button, where they casually (by ommision) inform me that it's only for ipad, not even a coming soon, nothing, great! I'm not saying build it for every device, but at least try not to totally frustrate me.

barbs• 11 years ago

Galaxy Note is way better tablet for drawing then Ipad ever was.

In what way?

underlines• 11 years ago

I was using the Galaxy Note 10" 2013 model for a year as a substitute of real paper and notebooks at work and at home.

It was too small to substitute the A4 size (~us letter)

Me, a friend, and his friend recently bought a 12.2" Galaxy Note Pro which is almost A4 size and it's just awesome. Those two friends don't use their iPad anymore:

* True pressure sensitivity and pixel perfect accuracy

* Good size and light weight to substitute a real paper notebook

Those are the only two things needed to substitute paper: Decent size and decent stylus. Those wannabe iPad styluses are just trash compared to a good Wacom Stylus for the Note series.

You will know it if you have used both: Crappy iPad Styluses and real Wacom Styluses on a Note Pro.

desireco422• 11 years ago

Notice I never said 'never will be' :)

rsinger9• 11 years ago

I strongly recommend GoodNotes for this use case. They do a better job than paper at all the "think" tasks like lassoing objects, handwriting in a zoom window, highlighting, etc.

http://www.goodnotesapp.com (I'm not the maker, just a really big fan)

caseyf7• 11 years ago

Can anyone comment on Paper's pencil stylus? I've heard people say the Jot Script is the best - I wonder if that will work with this app or if you have to use the Paper stylus.

lambdaelite2• 11 years ago

I bought a walnut one when they first came out.

I like the shape: it feels good in the hand just like a carpenter's pencil. The tip is pretty squishy and so isn't useful for precision work, and it wears quickly. I use it a couple of times a week and maybe charge it once a month. The specs say it's pressure sensitive, but I wouldn't know it by how it performs. Best features are probably the eraser function and that it enables palm rejection. The walnut has held up well, but I don't think it's worth a price premium.

I think it's a nice fit for the Paper app. If you like the app, you might like the stylus. I find that I like using the app with the stylus more than I do with my fingers. If you're planning to use it with other apps, the Pencil may not be the best choice.

jweir• 11 years ago

I hope this moves into a collaborative space. A whiteboard would have a URL that could be "read only." Other users of the app could collaborate and edit.

I am almost never in the same room as clients.

`vagrant --share` is a tool(ala very different) that gets this so right.

ryearsley• 11 years ago

We've been working on Collusion for a while now, which might do what you're talking about: shared collaborative white boarding (with a really big space - from a URL, ... with pen support, good for tablets, phones etc. We're testing so feel free to grab an account gratis - constructive feedback welcome: heres an example project https://col.lu/PSnZMIH and if you want an account to mess with: https://collusionapp.com

lasermike026• 11 years ago

$50 for a stylist? I just can't do it.

andor2• 11 years ago

It seems to be an active stylus with a pressure sensor.

eludwig• 11 years ago

I don't think this is actually true. The software supports a very rudimentary type of "pressure sensitivity" that (i think) is based on the capacitive area of the rubber tip. Maybe this can still be considered "active?" Perhaps. It is my understanding that the ability to determine the size of a touch (a radius?) is a system-wide thing that was added for iOS 8.

In practice, there is a huge difference between a true pressure sensitive stylus, i.e. a wacom stylus, with, say 1024 real levels of sensitivity, versus this more kludgy solution. The Wacom solution is far closer to real media performance. Paper, when used with Pencil seems to support 2 size variables. The first (mentioned above) is based on the new iOS 8 size of the rubber tip deal. The second size variant is based on the velocity that you use to draw your line. The faster you draw, the fatter the line gets. Amusingly, this is somewhat backwards of the way a real artist would use a brush loaded with, say, India ink (like an inker would use). In that scenario, the faster you move your brush, the thinner your line is (generally -- artists can vary this greatly with practice and technique)

Anyway, this Paper and Pencil deal has vastly improved since the first version. The tracking, the connection to the Pencil -- all have improved dramatically. Highly recommended for iPad artists and non-artists.

One thing to note is that a newer iPad will be much better at tracking than an older one (obviously!).

duaneb• 11 years ago

No android app, no sale.

sharpercoder• 11 years ago

What value does this add versus MS Paint? I watched the video but could not answer this question.

alttab• 11 years ago

Seems like an over-glorified tablet drawing app. The flowery language and music in the video about incredible insights and innovating data design is a bunch of puffery if you ask me.

What is the innovation here besides a neat picture app for the iPad?

makmanalp• 11 years ago

Yeha the puffery is ridiculous, it seems everything must be world changing these days to sell.

However the tool itself looks awesome, seems like they nailed down the interaction perfectly. I can list a million crappy diagramming apps that are unnatural and annoying enough that it's just easier to draw on paper.

dmix2• 11 years ago

it seems everything must be world changing these days to sell

The TV show Silicon Valley has done a good job of satirizing this religion-style promotion of products in the tech scene.

gred• 11 years ago

I read the title as "fast mobile waterboarding" during my first quick scan of the main page. I was very confused there for a second.

andor2• 11 years ago

Same for me, seriously.

jgv• 11 years ago

That video was tremendously pompous. Everyone spoke so much but said so little.

adrianbg• 11 years ago

Should be called "Talk". Looks like a nice product though.

raisedbyninjas• 11 years ago

That lag is terrible.

thirdsun• 11 years ago

This looks interesting - I always wanted to use Paper for wireframes, sketches and mockups. This might come closer to that idea. However the biggest problem I still have with Paper is the fact that its canvas is always definitive and limited in dimension - even with the regional zoom option complex sketches will become crowded and busy. I'd love to have a close to infinite zoom out/in (especially out) option, thereby rendering the canvas practically borderless and as big as I want.

mceoin• 11 years ago

I truly don't understand the snarkiness of the posts here. FiftyThree have created a beautiful, useful app, and kept things clean and simple. Who cares if they're promoting it with a video as polished as the product? (The video itself obviously strikes at thematic concerns of buyers and typical use cases for designers, so while it's lost on you I suspect they know exactly what they're doing)

Some context: I spent years working in graphic facilitation and working closely with clients creating mockups in real-time, both on paper and on whiteboards. The "speed-of-thought" attribute being referred to in the video is critical, because the conversation will move with or without you. Apps like this are exactly what I wish I had at the time, so I for one am excited to see this launch.

andyl• 11 years ago

I agree. Paper is wonderful and this new whiteboard app looks fantastic. IMHO the work of 53 is as good as it gets. Yeah the video seems overblown - but try the products they are great.

bertomartin• 11 years ago

Nothing beats working with a nice energel pen (http://www.amazon.com/Pentel-EnerGel-Millimeter-Assorted-BL7...) and simple notebooks from muji (http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/notebooks.html)

bambax• 11 years ago

I read the title as "fast mobile waterboarding" and was very intrigued...

ben174• 11 years ago

I really think they need to focus on removing that awful latency. You can even see it in the video. Microsoft did a study showing just how important it is to get that number down below 10ms.

http://phys.org/news/2012-03-microsoft-finger-1ms-touchscree...

white-flame• 11 years ago

Not only that, but they have to very carefully keep the rest of their hand from touching the drawing surface as they hold the stylus. An active stylus is far better, letting you rest or brush your palm against the screen without interfering with anything.

If they're going to market this as taking care of all the fiddly bits and letting you just be creative, then they should really take care of all the fiddly bits.

wmorein3• 11 years ago

The Pencil stylus is actually active and our palm rejection works quite well.

netfire• 11 years ago

I agree that reducing the latency would be awesome, but is this something the app developer has any control over, or is this just a restriction imposed by the device hardware (or operating system). In the example video you posted, it appears that Microsoft is using completely different (and likely very expensive) hardware.

delish• 11 years ago

At least two times in the video, someone said, "Businesses think in rows and columns; but they need to think creatively." Then, the video showed Paper's rows, columns, boxes, tables--not creative stuff! If they were critiquing things-on-a-grid, they should have compared actual made-by-business diagrams with out-of-the-box Paper stuff.

Someone in the video mentioned using "advanced statistical algorithms" then the video showed her drawing a squiggly line graph. The video didn't show interop between her algorithms and the graph. Does it interop? I'd be happy if it did.

jordache• 11 years ago

Ahh so everything worth designing contains a filled area graph?

tagawa• 11 years ago

It's funny — the images didn't load for me and I read through the text initially not realising it was an app. I thought it was a satirical page promoting paper (as in trees, pulp) and it still made sense.

joelrunyon• 11 years ago

I really like the idea of Paper.

I really hate their pencil utensil. It's super broad & good I guess if you're painting, but if you're doing any sort of detail work - you're screwed.

Think – Fast mobile whiteboarding

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