Microsoft buy N-trig, digital pen war is coming? (with Wacom and Apple)

[Draconica5]

In case you guys don't know, Wacom is the biggest brand in digital art industry, of course with their overpriced products.
I'm too lazy to explant how overpriced they are, so here's a link: https://www.bing.com/search?q=cintiq+why+so+expensive
And you can take a look with their products here: http://www.wacom.com/en-es/products/pen-displays
They're making tablet PC now, it's call Cintiq Companion and of course they're all overpriced.

Apple and their Macbook, iMac, Mac Pro are quite famous in the world of Graphic Design and they're investing in their own digital pen.
Some artists already using ipad and non-pressure-sensitive stylus for their daily sketch art. (a real artist can use anything to make daily art, so it's not a big deal)

Microsoft and their Surface Pro series are very pleased the artist community due to the resonable price. A full tablet PC with pen & adjustable kickstand for serious artworks in a price of cheapest Cintiq with non-touch screen only. (This is the reason why I bought my Surface Pro 2)

So, if Microsoft seriously attacking Wacom, I would love to see it happening!!! It's really good for customer like me!

My dream workstation tablet:

• Surface Pen is a pen display tablet with 22inch IPS 2k-4k display and adjustable kickstand, fn buttons,... and start with 1000$.
• Or Surface All is a All in One tablet PC with the screen like Surface Pen, start with 1500$.

Is there anyone who interesting in this stuffs like me?

 

[HeyCori]

It will be interesting to see how rapidly Microsoft can improve N-trig's digital pens.

 

[tiziano27]

Touch is dead, the stylus is back.

 

[Wevenhuis]

Yes, I was also surprised micorosft took this step, because Wacom has been by far the biggest player in stylus support for the tablet. Between 2004 and the release of the surface pro 3 (with a few exceptions here and there) wacom was supported on every tablet that ran windows. And basically it was good. It was, in my experience, only the software UI that needed an overhaul to provide a more complementary immersive experience to touch. Microsoft, in my view, showed that clearly with the release of the surface pro line, but still the software OS does not feel immersive enough for the pen. Yes, the accuracy and speed was way better, But the software had not changed significantly since 2004. Microsoft did improve it slightly with the new surface pro N-trig stylus with OneNote. But it still is not quite there yet. For a good Note and stylus experience, that microsoft clearly advertises with the pro 3, it is better to also give the end user a more immersive pen experience, to complement the workflow. What about?

1. integrated write it in winodws 8.1 or 10? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwC5VAbldio

2. integrated ink to text recognition in OneNote? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ro8RLACs7M

3. Add write anywhere in office apps and outlook, calendar and people hub. ( I used to have a Lenovo X60T tablet with outlook 2007 and office 2007. There was an aftermarket add-on available for both where I could literally handwrite emails in the text-space in the textbox, handwrite emails, write numbers and symbols in excel cells, and markup documents in word and powerpoint easily. I was not constrained per se by having to input indirectly via inkpad/write pad.

If this was activated in tablet mode that would be great!

 

[_Emi_]

Microsoft will keep doing what they are doing. there won't be any real pen war. some people will still have in their minds "wacom is better" just like people think "mac is better for graphic desiging" which has always a lie to me... well, for example I use 3dsmax for vector some designing when I hate how Illustrator does stuff. some stuff is easy and all with 3dsmax, and 3dsmax is Windows only. of course some people think I am crazy and that's not a valid reason but sometimes these kind of workflows are nice. and I can only get it on Windows. and without 3dsmax? I would be able to do the same on mac or Windows, but of course I would choose Windows anytime.

So I think Microsoft will keep doing things right, of course we need Surface pro 4 soon. with a better ntrig technology, and probably put "1024 levels of pressure" sticker on it so people will stop thinking wacom is better because of that. that would be a good thing for artists. I wonder who many of people who got Surface pro 3 on adobe event last year are still using it, or thought Microsoft wasn't good enough to replace a mac, or ntrig to replace a Tablet or cintiq.

but for example on Surfaceproartist.com I found this last "opinion" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgfzm1g3lv4 as you can see, he had a Cintiq and replaced it with a Surface pro 3. he is fine with it, he does sketch on Photoshop and does the lines and illustration on Illustrator. why would someone do that if his cintiq and 1024 levels of pressure are better than 256? or that's what people think. but there is people who have changed and I am sure wacom saw it as a bad thing since pro 2.

Some people, like I said, will think wacom is better regardless of what ntrig does better. just like people think Apple products are better for graphic designer.
But I am sure Microsoft is going to do it well, they need to make the pen better, yes, and that's posible if Microsoft lets people have a cintiq companion alternative, cheaper and nicer to use, like it's Surface pro line.

 

[Wevenhuis]

I was thinking, amongst others, of this when it comes to a more immersive experience of the pen in windows. I think N-trig and wacom could be up to the job for this. It would be nice if this conept was available in other areas of the OS as well such as Cortana search, bing search, universal search, any textfield, such as comment and post fields, other office apps etc. That would make the stylus a more relevant part of windows with handwriting,doodling and drawing/painting supported.

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?res...468&authkey=!AHEgrIFv5XMXiQk&ithint=file,pptx

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?res...466&authkey=!AKvtDUnskeZhOwI&ithint=file,pptx