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Apple Pencils don’t draw straight on replaced iPad screens

arstechnica.com

131–140 of 164 posts

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

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? They're a more valuable target for theft the more parts that can be "cleanly" sold.

Are ipad thieving gangs really breaking down and on selling stolen components?

"ipad thieving gangs" makes it sound like a joke, but yes, there are people who steal iphones and ipads, and they know who to talk to to sell them, which in turn disassemble them and know who to talk to to sell the components, etc.

If you go to aliexpress you will find tons of used, original Apple components. Where do you think they came from?

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

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody really think that one company removing users freedom at the software level, will make thieves not steal hardware worth $1000+? This is some silicon valley tech bubble mentality.

It makes sense from Apple's image that want to create: being associated with trust and stability, even if means less freedom at some extent. If I ("I" as the potential customer) can buy an iPad where I can trust Apple because they are taking many measures to make my iPad non-stealable (by practically removing many incentives to steal) it would create a trustworthy image and I'd feel safer, and Apple would have reache…

It makes sense from Apples perspective yes, I mean, after all third party repairs was seen as a huge threat to revenue.

As a user though, lol.

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just speculating but the accuracy needed for Pencil to work properly is, by nature of the application, much higher than estimating ink in cartgridges. I mean, if cartgridges' calibration drift a bit it might also be more acceptable for many, but if Pencil starts drawing incorrectly many artists would be extremely frustrated and move away from the ecosystem.

The fact that they showed how using the controller chip from the existing screen causes it to start working correctly shows definitively that this is not about calibration at all.

Unless the calibration data is stored on the controller chip.

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

#134
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If anything that proves it’s a calibration issue.

The controller on the replacement screen has no calibration whereas the controller from the old screen has been calibrated to the old screen, apparently sufficiently close enough to the necessary calibration of the new screen to not show noticeable issues to most people.

The real test would be grabbing two screens with calibrated controllers and switch the controllers out, then compare accuracy after the swap with accuracy before the swap.

This similar to color calibration on your TV. Replace the panel of your TV and reset all settings and a good chunk of people is going to notice that the colors are off. Plugin the color settings used when calibrating the original panel and most people won’t notice it’s off by a little, only trained eyes might notice that it needs further calibrating to perfect the color output.

Another analogy would be new uninflated tires. Put them on your new car and everyone sees there’s something wrong.

Grab inflated tires from your old car and put them on your new car however and most people don’t notice that they need more/less air appropriate for this different make/model/weighted car.

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

#135
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If anything that proves it’s a calibration issue. The controller on the replacement screen has no calibration whereas the controller from the old screen has been calibrated to the old screen, apparently sufficiently close enough to the necessary calibration of the new screen to not show noticeable issues to most people. The real test would be grabbing two screens with calibrated controllers and switch the controllers…

If it really was about calibration, wouldn't you think Apple would've calibrated the screen at the factory and programmed the controller with the calibration data?

The real test would be grabbing two screens with calibrated controllers and switch the controllers out, then compare accuracy after the swap with accuracy before the swap.

That's what they showed in the video. The replacement screen was from a different iPad; it wasn't an entirely new one.

If the cal data is stored in the controller, it's likely that using the old controller with a different screen means the calibration is off a little, but if that's better than using the new screen and controller (presumably with cal data for the new screen) together, there's something going on beyond that.

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

#136
post #123
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calibration is like wheel alignment. What is happening here is : Changing tires for same brand and model car came from the dealer. Car no longer drives in a straight line, steering wheel feels wobbly at certain steering angles. You saying its a wheel alignment issue. Replacing TPMS sensors with ones from the old wheel set. Car magically starts driving straight and no more weird wobbles.

More like putting on the new wheels but forgetting to put enough pressure in them.

Turns out wheels came off another fully working car and worked perfectly fine before being removed.

The _only_ difference is TPMS sensors serial numbers.

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

#137
post #6
post #4

Seems to me like it might be a calibration issue, and third parties aren’t able to perform the calibration.

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…

They have no clue what they’re talking about.

They were a genius grunt and their penchant for drawing conclusions on incomplete information is exactly why they aren’t trusted to perform manual calibration that hinges on their manual interaction with the screen.

If you read their other comments then you see that they believe that all components used are identical and thus wouldn’t need calibration.

Never mind the fact that different vendors are used to supply screens depending on the model in question, even between “identical” screens there’s plenty of subtle variation.

The controller holds calibration information in the form of offsets for touch and color amongst other things. The controller is married via serial numbers and if there’s a mismatch it’ll default to no offset.

This also serves as a clear indicator, with other indicators, that calibration is needed in an effort to prevent the calibration from being forgotten.

Despite not every screen being identical, the accepted tolerance makes it so that offsets for one screen are often “good enough” for another screen to the point most people won’t notice it’s not perfect, provided they’re from the same vendor.

There’s no other super secret mystery to it.

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

#138
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense from Apple's image that want to create: being associated with trust and stability, even if means less freedom at some extent. If I ("I" as the potential customer) can buy an iPad where I can trust Apple because they are taking many measures to make my iPad non-stealable (by practically removing many incentives to steal) it would create a trustworthy image and I'd feel safer, and Apple would have reache…

It makes sense from Apples perspective yes, I mean, after all third party repairs was seen as a huge threat to revenue. As a user though, lol.

Well as a user who never broke an iPad screen I'd prefer this way too.

Less reason to steal, especially being in a country where Apple device prices are skyrocketing and theft common, I'd even pay more for this to happen as an insurance.

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

#139

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 :)

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

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's pretty snappy for a media consumption device (I use it mainly to watch videos from my NAS), don't expect great coding experience though. Here is a video about Surface Pro 7 but it's similar with Go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79Jj0jWXyWo
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