

Think – Fast mobile whiteboarding - reimertz
http://fiftythree.com/think

======
mceoin
I truly don't understand the snarkiness of the posts here. FiftyThree have
created a beautiful, useful app, and kept things clean and simple. Who cares
if they're promoting it with a video as polished as the product? (The video
itself obviously strikes at thematic concerns of buyers and typical use cases
for designers, so while it's lost on you I suspect they know exactly what
they're doing)

Some context: I spent years working in graphic facilitation and working
closely with clients creating mockups in real-time, both on paper and on
whiteboards. The "speed-of-thought" attribute being referred to in the video
is _critical_ , because the conversation will move with or without you. Apps
like this are exactly what I wish I had at the time, so I for one am excited
to see this launch.

~~~
andyl
I agree. Paper is wonderful and this new whiteboard app looks fantastic. IMHO
the work of 53 is as good as it gets. Yeah the video seems overblown - but try
the products they are great.

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desireco42
It's a shame they don't know how to make Android app. Galaxy Note is way
better tablet for drawing then Ipad ever was. I have ipad but I use note all
the time. It lacks good apps like this one but it has a really good stylus.

~~~
barbs
> _Galaxy Note is way better tablet for drawing then Ipad ever was._

In what way?

~~~
underlines
I was using the Galaxy Note 10" 2013 model for a year as a substitute of real
paper and notebooks at work and at home.

It was too small to substitute the A4 size (~us letter)

Me, a friend, and his friend recently bought a 12.2" Galaxy Note Pro which is
almost A4 size and it's just awesome. Those two friends don't use their iPad
anymore:

* True pressure sensitivity and pixel perfect accuracy

* Good size and light weight to substitute a real paper notebook

Those are the only two things needed to substitute paper: Decent size and
decent stylus. Those wannabe iPad styluses are just trash compared to a good
Wacom Stylus for the Note series.

You will know it if you have used both: Crappy iPad Styluses and real Wacom
Styluses on a Note Pro.

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ben174
I really think they need to focus on removing that awful latency. You can even
see it in the video. Microsoft did a study showing just how important it is to
get that number down below 10ms.

[http://phys.org/news/2012-03-microsoft-finger-1ms-
touchscree...](http://phys.org/news/2012-03-microsoft-finger-1ms-touchscreen-
video.html)

~~~
white-flame
Not only that, but they have to very carefully keep the rest of their hand
from touching the drawing surface as they hold the stylus. An active stylus is
far better, letting you rest or brush your palm against the screen without
interfering with anything.

If they're going to market this as taking care of all the fiddly bits and
letting you just be creative, then they should really take care of all the
fiddly bits.

~~~
wmorein
The Pencil stylus is actually active and our palm rejection works quite well.

~~~
bronson
The Pencil is more like a fat crayon, its latency is absurd, and its palm
rejection only sometimes works. After having bought the Pencil and the Pogo,
and hating both, I can say that technical drawing on the iPad is simply a poor
experience. (Wacom is an example of how to do it well.)

For sketching charcoal/crayon-style they're probably fine, but that's not
what's being shown in the video.

Edit: and calling either of these styluses "pressure sensitive" is to diminish
the term to nothingness. Wacom is pressure sensitive, these are barely
pressure aware. Erratic pressure response, just not very useful.

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rsinger9
I strongly recommend GoodNotes for this use case. They do a better job than
paper at all the "think" tasks like lassoing objects, handwriting in a zoom
window, highlighting, etc.

[http://www.goodnotesapp.com](http://www.goodnotesapp.com) (I'm not the maker,
just a really big fan)

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thirdsun
This looks interesting - I always wanted to use Paper for wireframes, sketches
and mockups. This might come closer to that idea. However the biggest problem
I still have with Paper is the fact that its canvas is always definitive and
limited in dimension - even with the regional zoom option complex sketches
will become crowded and busy. I'd love to have a close to infinite zoom out/in
(especially out) option, thereby rendering the canvas practically borderless
and as big as I want.

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alttab
Seems like an over-glorified tablet drawing app. The flowery language and
music in the video about incredible insights and innovating data design is a
bunch of puffery if you ask me.

What is the innovation here besides a neat picture app for the iPad?

~~~
makmanalp
Yeha the puffery is ridiculous, it seems everything must be world changing
these days to sell.

However the tool itself looks awesome, seems like they nailed down the
interaction perfectly. I can list a million crappy diagramming apps that are
unnatural and annoying enough that it's just easier to draw on paper.

~~~
dmix
> it seems everything must be world changing these days to sell

The TV show Silicon Valley has done a good job of satirizing this religion-
style promotion of products in the tech scene.

~~~
amelius
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0)

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jweir
I hope this moves into a collaborative space. A whiteboard would have a URL
that could be "read only." Other users of the app could collaborate and edit.

I am almost never in the same room as clients.

`vagrant --share` is a tool(ala very different) that gets this so right.

~~~
ryearsley
We've been working on Collusion for a while now, which might do what you're
talking about: shared collaborative white boarding (with a really big space -
from a URL, ... with pen support, good for tablets, phones etc. We're testing
so feel free to grab an account gratis - constructive feedback welcome: heres
an example project [https://col.lu/PSnZMIH](https://col.lu/PSnZMIH) and if you
want an account to mess with:
[https://collusionapp.com](https://collusionapp.com)

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harperlee
It's a shame that this only works on the iPad; it seems awesome.

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jgv
That video was tremendously pompous. Everyone spoke so much but said so
little.

~~~
adrianbg
Should be called "Talk". Looks like a nice product though.

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darkstar999
Is it called Think or Paper? I'm confused.

~~~
wmorein
Paper is the app. Think Kit is the new set of tools for whiteboarding.

~~~
pimlottc
It is confusing that there is no clear title on the page. The first appearance
of the name "Paper" is in a button label.

~~~
jkestner
Also that the product on this page, Think Kit, isn't mentioned until the 5th
panel, and even then it isn't stated that this is the product. I was also
expecting this to be an in-app purchase, but it's free.

Makes a little more sense if you start from
[http://fiftythree.com/paper](http://fiftythree.com/paper) , but this style of
web design is beautiful and frustrating and overbranded for the product's
simplicity (Paper and Think Kit and Innovation Engine).

I use Paper a lot, btw, and expect to use the new tools as well - just as I
was straying, trying out alternatives that have guided drawing and layers.
(Paper still doesn't have layers.)

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reimertz
These new features are really nice for people like me who really can't draw
but still love Paper.

~~~
mwill
Yeah, I wanted a stylus and at the time Pencil was one of the only ones that
worked on the iPad I had, so when I got it, I played around in Paper and it's
such a slick experience, but wasn't really the kind of app I needed. It is the
app I show people who ask about the Pencil though.

So I'm stoked to check out the new features.

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bambax
I read the title as "fast mobile waterboarding" and was very intrigued...

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tagawa
It's funny — the images didn't load for me and I read through the text
initially not realising it was an app. I thought it was a satirical page
promoting paper (as in trees, pulp) and it still made sense.

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joelrunyon
I really like the idea of Paper.

I really hate their pencil utensil. It's super broad & good I guess if you're
painting, but if you're doing any sort of detail work - you're screwed.

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caseyf7
Can anyone comment on Paper's pencil stylus? I've heard people say the Jot
Script is the best - I wonder if that will work with this app or if you have
to use the Paper stylus.

~~~
lambdaelite
I bought a walnut one when they first came out.

I like the shape: it feels good in the hand just like a carpenter's pencil.
The tip is pretty squishy and so isn't useful for precision work, and it wears
quickly. I use it a couple of times a week and maybe charge it once a month.
The specs say it's pressure sensitive, but I wouldn't know it by how it
performs. Best features are probably the eraser function and that it enables
palm rejection. The walnut has held up well, but I don't think it's worth a
price premium.

I think it's a nice fit for the Paper app. If you like the app, you might like
the stylus. I find that I like using the app with the stylus more than I do
with my fingers. If you're planning to use it with other apps, the Pencil may
not be the best choice.

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delish
At least two times in the video, someone said, "Businesses think in rows and
columns; but they need to think creatively." Then, the video showed Paper's
rows, columns, boxes, tables--not creative stuff! If they were critiquing
things-on-a-grid, they should have compared actual made-by-business diagrams
with out-of-the-box Paper stuff.

Someone in the video mentioned using "advanced statistical algorithms" then
the video showed her drawing a squiggly line graph. The video didn't show
interop between her algorithms and the graph. Does it interop? I'd be happy if
it did.

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bertomartin
Nothing beats working with a nice energel pen ([http://www.amazon.com/Pentel-
EnerGel-Millimeter-Assorted-BL7...](http://www.amazon.com/Pentel-EnerGel-
Millimeter-Assorted-BL77BP6M/dp/B0012G9VNS)) and simple notebooks from muji
([http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/notebooks.html](http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/notebooks.html))

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lucaspottersky
I wish there was something like this that could help me with mockups and UML
diagrams.

~~~
currywurst
For UML, have you tried PlantUML? It's a brilliant little text-to-UML
converter. Eg. Sequence Diagram
([http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/sequence.html](http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/sequence.html))

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jordache
Ahh so everything worth designing contains a filled area graph?

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duaneb
No android app, no sale.

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lasermike026
$50 for a stylist? I just can't do it.

~~~
andor
It seems to be an active stylus with a pressure sensor.

~~~
eludwig
I don't think this is actually true. The software supports a very rudimentary
type of "pressure sensitivity" that (i think) is based on the capacitive area
of the rubber tip. Maybe this can still be considered "active?" Perhaps. It is
my understanding that the ability to determine the size of a touch (a radius?)
is a system-wide thing that was added for iOS 8.

In practice, there is a huge difference between a true pressure sensitive
stylus, i.e. a wacom stylus, with, say 1024 real levels of sensitivity, versus
this more kludgy solution. The Wacom solution is far closer to real media
performance. Paper, when used with Pencil seems to support 2 size variables.
The first (mentioned above) is based on the new iOS 8 size of the rubber tip
deal. The second size variant is based on the velocity that you use to draw
your line. The faster you draw, the fatter the line gets. Amusingly, this is
somewhat backwards of the way a real artist would use a brush loaded with,
say, India ink (like an inker would use). In that scenario, the faster you
move your brush, the thinner your line is (generally -- artists can vary this
greatly with practice and technique)

Anyway, this Paper and Pencil deal has vastly improved since the first
version. The tracking, the connection to the Pencil -- all have improved
dramatically. Highly recommended for iPad artists and non-artists.

One thing to note is that a newer iPad will be much better at tracking than an
older one (obviously!).

~~~
lambdaelite
Only thing I'd add is that because of the carpenter pencil shape of the
Pencil, the contact area "pressure sensitivity" seems to work well if you're
using the side of the Pencil to shade an area with the software pencil tool,
as one would do with a real wood and lead pencil. Outside of that one example,
I don't find that the "pressure sensitivity" contributes anything.

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gred
I read the title as "fast mobile waterboarding" during my first quick scan of
the main page. I was very confused there for a second.

~~~
andor
Same for me, seriously.

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raisedbyninjas
That lag is terrible.

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sharpercoder
What value does this add versus MS Paint? I watched the video but could not
answer this question.

