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Apple Pencils don’t draw straight on replaced iPad screens

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apple Pencils don’t draw straight on replaced iPad screens

#101

Post by kccqzy »

freitzkriesler2 wrote: post #23
anyfactor wrote: post #21

Tangential rant. Has tablet computer really improved since the last Google Nexus 7 tablet, which was released in 2013? Seriously, I was in the market for an affordable tablet, and quite bizarrely the tablet computers today have significantly underwhelming spec compared to a phone of the same price point. There is no budget tab from known manufacturers. Even at IPad level prices, the android counterpart is quite under…

It's because Google dropped the ball on Android smartphone app sizing for phones vs tablets. This IS changing now that Google has a pixel foldable smartphone.

Couldn't you say the same thing for iOS/iPadOS though? It's up to the developers to manually support iPads. To date, very well known and popular apps like Instagram still run as iPhone-sized. Which is especially perplexing because there are seriously good photographers on Instagram whose work should be enjoyed on a bigger screen.

Re: Apple Pencils don’t draw straight on replaced iPad screens

#102

Post by xenadu02 »

kiririn wrote: post #14
voyagerfan5761 wrote: post #3

Avoidant as I am of Apple's ecosystem, I can only imagine the "security" justification for serializing a display panel. Covert exfiltration of sensitive information from password managers and such? At any rate, I continue to be unamused by how difficult it is for normal people to service their own Apple devices.

For displays I imagine the reason is more reputation and experience - normally just about every apple product has a factory calibrated display, but that promise can be broken (intentionally or not) on the used market. It’s nice to have a means of checking whether a display is legit other than eyeballing it That being said, I can’t think of a reason for blocking correct pencil functionality. It doesn’t seem like somet…

The Apple Pencil is designed for extremely low latency and high accuracy to make it feel as close to writing on paper as possible. The API offered to developers presents predicted digitizer points and retroactively updates them in subsequent frames because even the latency introduced by a standard 60/120Hz draw loop introduces cognitive dissonance - your brain can tell something is off if you wait for the next frame update.

People are making a lot of bold claims with absolute certainty without so much as a test rig... how they can determine that such precision doesn't require any calibration or that using the old controller with a new screen is "accurate" is a very interesting question. I'm not sure drawing a few lines in one app is sufficient to draw such strong conclusions.

Re: Apple Pencils don’t draw straight on replaced iPad screens

#103

Post by realusername »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #30
dataflow wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no way to verify this, but this Redditor claims it's due to the serial number being different, not calibration (also see the grandparent comment that they posted): https://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/15cxwaa/apple_penc... That said, I see a generous explanation that I can't rule out based on what they're describing. It seems like the only test this Redditor mentioned was that you can modify the serial nu…

That redditor says it's just serial number matching, complains at length about how this issue is destroying their business while in the same breath saying that reprogramming the screen's serial number on a working unit will bring up the same problem. So, if it's just a matching serial numbers problem, why aren't they programming the new screens with the serial number of the old screen, and thus the problem goes away?

That's exactly what their "calibration" procedure on iPhone does, it just changes the serial number pairing, nothing else, you don't even have to touch on the screen.

Re: Apple Pencils don’t draw straight on replaced iPad screens

#104

Post by cameldrv »

anyfactor wrote: post #21

Tangential rant. Has tablet computer really improved since the last Google Nexus 7 tablet, which was released in 2013? Seriously, I was in the market for an affordable tablet, and quite bizarrely the tablet computers today have significantly underwhelming spec compared to a phone of the same price point. There is no budget tab from known manufacturers. Even at IPad level prices, the android counterpart is quite under…

The budget tab from a known manufacturer is the Amazon Fire 7 for $59.

Re: Apple Pencils don’t draw straight on replaced iPad screens

#105

Post by wiseowise »

wkat4242 wrote: post #62
dotnet00 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly a budget tab, but I've found the S8 Ultra (and the S7 FE before that) to be pretty great. The S8U managing to make having a laptop entirely unnecessary (since I'd only need a laptop away from home and I mainly WFH). With Android there has been a long period of stagnation with only Samsung doing custom stuff like DeX, multi-tasking stuff and striking deals with various productivity apps for Android ports t…

It's pretty great but it also costs a lot more than than a basic laptop :)

It has a much better screen than basic laptop.

Re: Apple Pencils don’t draw straight on replaced iPad screens

#106

Post by can16358p »

userbinator wrote: post #78
can16358p wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. As a user I'm okay with using only authorized components if it makes theft virtually impractical as there wouldn't be much to use even if the device is stolen. It will give me more peace of mind as no one will have the incentive to steal an iPad anymore.

I'm not. It's only creating more e-waste, and thieves will find a way around it sooner or later anyway.

Well there are many other alternatives then.

It's good to have at least one company to go this way for people who want to be (relatively) safe from theft.

Re: Apple Pencils don’t draw straight on replaced iPad screens

#107

Post by wiseowise »

treprinum wrote: post #58
anyfactor wrote: post #21

Tangential rant. Has tablet computer really improved since the last Google Nexus 7 tablet, which was released in 2013? Seriously, I was in the market for an affordable tablet, and quite bizarrely the tablet computers today have significantly underwhelming spec compared to a phone of the same price point. There is no budget tab from known manufacturers. Even at IPad level prices, the android counterpart is quite under…

One good development is that if you buy a Microsoft Surface Go 2/3, you can easily install Linux with Gnome, it works great and you can get rid of both Windows/iOS dependencies at the same time. It's also easy to glue a metal Linux sticker over the Windows logo so you won't even notice MS underneath. PineTab2 is impossible to use due to a missing WiFi driver (!?)

> it works great

How is performance? Mind recording a video of average browser/application speed?

Re: Apple Pencils don’t draw straight on replaced iPad screens

#108

Post by can16358p »

raphman wrote: post #72
can16358p wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably for touch the effects are negligible as the accuracy needed for touch is much more coarse compared to accuracy needed for Apple Pencil drawing. So if calibration is perfecting things at Apple Pencil-level accuracy, it should already be below the threshold of touch-based highest acceptable margin of error anyway.

Touch and pen would generally require completely different calibrations because touch is detected by the capacitive touch screen whereas the pen position is tracked inductively. However, I wonder why the pen calibration data is not stored on an controller on the display panel? That would absolutely make sense.

Can it be like:

Pencil also has a small calibration table and when paired with a new iPad it checks and downloads that immediately.

If not, it might also be (more likely) sending whatever it senses to iPad and iPad processes that raw input with the calibration data to determine the final output.

Re: Apple Pencils don’t draw straight on replaced iPad screens

#109

Post by LoganDark »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #44
dotnet00 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly a budget tab, but I've found the S8 Ultra (and the S7 FE before that) to be pretty great. The S8U managing to make having a laptop entirely unnecessary (since I'd only need a laptop away from home and I mainly WFH). With Android there has been a long period of stagnation with only Samsung doing custom stuff like DeX, multi-tasking stuff and striking deals with various productivity apps for Android ports t…

> only Samsung doing custom stuff like DeX, Motorola has phones that do the same and without a proprietary dock.

You can do this on completely stock Android, Android already supports multi-window completely natively if you enable it in the debugging options and use a launcher such as Sentio Desktop.

Though I used to use this on phones with a dedicated micro-HDMI port so I'm not sure if just any phone can be hooked up to an external display (maybe most of the ones with USB-C?) but it's definitely not OEM-specific.

Re: Apple Pencils don’t draw straight on replaced iPad screens

#110

Post by djmips »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #24
dataflow wrote: post #2

Note: I slightly edited the title for accuracy. In particular, it appears "third-party replacement screens" doesn't refer to third-party-manufactured screens, but merely replacements performed by third parties using genuine Apple screens. And we simply know that they don't draw straight lines, not that they "can't". More reading: https://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/15cxwaa/apple_penc...

My god, the narrative. "Apple is doing this just to fuck with users, fuck apple" etc over and over despite zero evidence as to their intention here. One sane person comes up with the more likely explanation: > That implies to me the calibration is unique to each screen and a proper repair has a calibration setup step? And someone just dismisses that perfectly logical explanation completely out of hand, declaring 'all…

You didn't even do your homework. The replacement screens are original Apple and 'can' be fixed by moving a microchip from the old screen to the new.
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