tequila bomb

HP webOS ‘PalmPad’ Tablet will have Digital Pen

Our insider tells us that just like HP’s tm series notebook, the webOS tablet will have a screen that recognizes a wacom pen while functioning as a capacitive touchscreen. That means the webOS tablet–unlike the iPad–will be an actual tablet. You will be able to take handwritten notes on it and easily search your notes.

Steve Jobs famously said 6 months ago..

“If you see a stylus, they blew it.”

And to a certain degree I agree with him. The simplicity of the iPad’s iOS driven finger touch interface is what makes it such a mass appeal device.

But there really is no reason to deny people the option of more precision. They don’t have to carry a stylus around with them all of the time.

We already know that it is possible to do **”pressure sensitivity”, up to a point on the iPad, and even the iPod Touch and iPhone. Apple are just reluctant to expose that functionality to developers – at the moment? I would personally pay money to have this feature on an iPad (as an option), so that I could use it as a more precise creative tool – if I chose to.

Ultimately what will kill the PalmPad though is that it doesn’t have iOS, and the fact that HP are clueless.

**The “pressure sensitivity” I refer to is actually a record of the size of area depressed on the iDevice’s screen. So with a soft stylus you can effect a kind of poor-mans Wacom functionality via physical pressure on the stylus, causing its tip to spread, and detecting the change in size of the area of contact on the device’s screen, in software.