Did you ever wish you could sync up your iPad’s drawing or painting app directly with your Mac? Now you can with Astropad, a brand new app that literally mirrors your Mac desktop via Wi-Fi or USB.
Created by two ex-Apple engineers – Matt Ronge and Giovanni Donelli – Astropad works with several popular brands of pressure-sensitive pens to create a pro-level drawing tablet that pairs with your Mac for illustration, sketching, painting and photo editing.
This always seemed like such a no-brainer to me. In fact, I’m surprised this kind of ‘tethering’ functionality isn’t built into iOS+OS X themselves by Apple.
I agree, I’ve always thought that touch screen desktop interfaces were impractical, however I’ve often wanted a device capable of stylus input to interact with certain kinds of graphical desktop apps.
One would think a tablet ought to fit the bill really well. A year or two ago I tinkered with something similar on an android tablet, detecting multitouch from inside the tablet’s browser, and forwarding events to the desktop. This setup worked well, however I was disappointed with the “feel” of using a stylus on the tablet. It required more pressure and friction than I found acceptable. Without a stylus, the finger is too blunt to be useful for precise input I needed, so I abandoned it. A tablet designed for stylus input would have helped.
Edited 2015-02-24 01:05 UTC
At least with older iPads, the static touch interface wasn’t precise enough. Maybe that’s different with new models?
It’s a bit better, but not even close to the precision needed by professionals.
A friend of mine is an artist and says the real problem is the (lack of) friction, as well as the pen-resolution for pressure.
It’s promising stuff though, just not there yet.
That’s pretty cool, if you already have an iPad and a Mac. It’s about $100 for a good pen, plus whatever the software costs.
But, compared to the low-end Wacom Cintiq:
13″ screen, versus 9.7″ on a current iPad
Cintiq pen has 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity, probably same as a high-end pen that’s compatible with the iPad.
Cintiq pen has 40° of tilt, with +/- 60 levels detected. I don’t know if any “Smart Pens” that have tilt.
Now, the Cintiq has a lower-resolution screen (1080p), no multi-touch (Though, it does have touch), but it is also a full-on second monitor (connects via HDMI), and the pen doesn’t use batteries (pen point, eraser, and side button)
The Cintiq 13 HD costs $999, compared to about $700 for a new iPad + Pen.
So, probably not a good idea to buy an iPad solely for use as a tablet, but if you’ve got one already, this is pretty darn cool.
A used Surface 2 pro would do the same, have better resolution and pressure sensitivity and can run the apps directly without lag.
Capacitive screen + capacitive stylus != precision
But then again, i’m not an artist, so what do i know …
I’ve done a lot of cool stuff with the stylus and an iPad, but yes.