Collusion - iPad pen productivity solved

Ah yes, I remember this. Worth noting that his device is a projector putting the image on a screen, and I think it's got a lot more computing power behind it than an iPad has available.

The name Collusion elicits negative connotations and my initial reading of the title led me to think that there was come wrongdoing on Kickstarter's part. I really would reconsider the name of the name of the company / product, unless this is the intended effect.

You would be more impressed by a Wacom penabled tablet or phone, like the Galaxy Note.

My Wacom penabled tablet/laptop convertible PC was invaluable at taking calculus and economics notes in Word 2007 - You can type all the text, then pick up the stylus and draw formulas, graphs, and symbols where you want.

It was such a powerful use-case for me that I don't understand why nobody has copied it yet.

I am probably somewhere in the target market for this (as someone who works in architecture), but as nice is it is technically and as good as the implementation might be, I'm not sure it would be very useful to me. I barely use a stylus as is (only for detailed work in photoshop) and most of the other situations for using this I'd actually prefer pen and paper (physical copies are easy to sort, trash and store, I'd rather not look at a screen all day, etc.)....

Hard to know how far this will go to solving what people want in this type of product. The lag is pretty clear in the video - don't underestimate how much this will frustrate you in reality. Watch the scene where the student is writing very carefully just to form simple letters in a short word.

In my experience, two things matter with styluses on the iPad - precision and responsiveness.

With a view to replacing all the scraps of notes and sketches I have lying around, I bought a stylus recommended by an Industrial Designer friend and gave it a crack on my iPad: http://adonit.net/product/jot-pro/ ($45 including shipping to Australia)

I've used that stylus in some sketching app I can't remember and Penultimate (which has some palm avoidance settings that are somewhat but not completely effective). The stylus itself is well made and the little tip piece works well enough. For rough wireframe sketches and largeish notes, it all works fairly well.

But if you want to annotate your drawings by hand, I think you may find it frustrating. Writing text is pretty weak. My stylus sits largely unused and I'm sketching on paper as much as ever.

In stylus demos, ignore any moments where they circle part of a map, or underline something, or sign their name. Looks lovely, but none of that is especially hard with a cheap stylus and a sketching app, nor will most people be doing a whole lot of it.

Pay special attention to the moments where they try to write in any small detail and watch for the thinness, quality of the lettering and responsiveness to the pen. Did you see the collaborative drawing of the Sydney Opera House? For almost everyone, that's what the drawings will probably look like - a bit of a rough mess.

The collaborative features might appeal to others, but at no point in my work/home life am I usually sharing a drawing space with a colleague. I'm rarely excited at the idea of someone messing with my garden layout drawings or idea wireframes! If I'm dealing with wireframes for a client project, it's usually not on an iPad.