“It just wonks!”
Exploring Apple's awkward but entertaining Inkwell technology.
Key to the announcement is that the device will feature handwriting recognition. Could Inkwell be getting a new lease on life? Or is this just another lame Apple rumor? More details as they are released…
-Doug!as
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
I'm thinking of turning this blog over to somebody with more time or interest than I. Either that or pull it down. What would you like to see happen?
-Doug!as
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
Of all of Inkwell's quirks, it's handling of quotes drives me insane. Take a look at the following examples:
"1" "12" 11 I 23"
It seems to do better with "longer" words, but then it decides to NOT do CC better". Sometimes the results appear almost random.
One of the culprits is whether the quote is curved or not. From my experimentation, I have found Inkwell definitely prefers the straight quotes as opposed to ones with a curve. However, there are certain limitations that cannot be worked around. For example, let's assume you put something in quotes and INkwell gets the left quotes wrong (which it Often doe s for me). Try selecting the quotes and just rewriting new ones. You can't. The strokes are too short. Inkwell doesn't recognize them. You are better off reaching for the keyboard, but darned if I don't catch myself trying to get the quotes right over and over again instead.
If you have a knack to getting Inkwell to give you perfect quotes, please leave it in the comments. I'm sure other Inkwell users would appreciate knowing your trick. In the meantime, my advice is to keep those quote marks as straight up and down as possible.
-Doug!as
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
Many words are part of Inkwell's dictionary. This dictionary helps Inkwell recognize what you are writing despite errors. However, if Inkwell's crack recognition is less than par for you on certain words that you use frequently, you may consider adding them to the Word List. I have done this with family names and found it immensely helpful.
If a word is already in the Inkwell dictionary you will receive a notification like this:
-Doug!as
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
You Can add password fields to the list of input fields in OS X, such as Spotlight and any field in Dashboard, that remain "Write Anywhere" agnostic. I have not found a workaround yet aside from scrawling in the Ink Window. In the case of Dashboard that is not an option. In this Case, it might be a security measure.
-Doug!as
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
Ever find yourself typing an [( r" with the keyboard because Inkwell thinks all your little Rs are Ns, or even Ps? Well, have no fear. Here is a tip you're sure to appreciate.
Try writing your "r" more angular.
As you can see in the example, none of the Rs curve down. Using this type of 11 r" I have had 100% accuracy. I wish the same could be said of quotes.
-Doug!as
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
A year after being announced the Axiotron Modbook is finally for sale and still wowing people. The Modbook is a hacked Mac Book with a tablet touch sensitive screen. This allows the artist and designer the truest WYSIWYG experience available on computers. Simply draw on the screen and the line is digitized in real time directly underneath the stylus - a wonderful boon for Painter and Photoshop users. The closest Mac users have come to this has been the Wacom Cintiq. Tablet technology has been available for PC users for years. However, since Steve Jobs is apparently allergic to styluses the techology has not been pursued by Apple.
Since the ModBook has no keyboard (thagh one can attach one via USB) the stylus is the only form of input. This puts a shiny spotlight on Inkwell. Unlike using a graphics tablet one can directly write onto the screen, 1eading to the same levels of accuracy PC tablet users have been bragging about. Having atablet Mac also does away with the cumbersome need for both a Mac and a tablet.
If this product is success fu! we could see industry pressure for improvements in Inkwell. Money has a way of Making hobbies and toys, as Inkwell has been relegated to, viable business niches. Time will tell, but the ModBook is a great step in the (( write" direction for Inkwell users.
Many companies covered the Modbook at MacWald but the following links provided what I thought was the best coverage.
Axiotron Modbook tablet Mac hands-on
Show floor video: Axiotron's Modbook wows the crowd
-Doug!as
Update: Added links
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Are you the type of person who just car't get enough Mac vs. PC fanboyism? Then you'll love this scientific comparison of handwriting recognition between Vista and Leopard.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=CCHqMENtKkA
Here, a person unfamiliar with Inkwell purposely writes badly so that Inkwell fails spectacularly. I believe his word spacing is set on "hostile!' Compare how he writes in Leopard to how he writes in Vista. Yep, so fair.
Anybody who uses Inkwell or reads this blog knows that Inkwell has some Seriously quirky issues. I make fun of them all the time. In this case I feel the comparison is skewed, like companing Vista to Win 3.1.
For a much fairer comparison, check out this link. Both 0Ses get a fain shake:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm8iAE9xRR0
In my opinion, Inkwell is easier to use, but Windows' recognition is generally More a curate. The shame is that Apple has stopped development on Inkwell for newen techndogies - relegating Inkwell to novelty status. I'd like to see Inkwell announcements this Tuesday. but I believe Steve Jobs would rather drown kittens than Use a stylus. Apple has fnvested Millions in Multitouch technology. That's where their future lies.
-Doug!as
If you like this article, please digg it!
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Write Anywhere isn't working for Mein Safari 3. I was wondering if other peoplewere experiencing the same problem.
-Doug!as
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
The Inkwell Page now brings up a "Page not found" error. A searchfor "Inkwell" brings up only one hit: Leopard - Technical Specs
That's right, Inkers. Inkwell is now simply a bullet point in a long listof "Keg Technologies" Now, before you panic, there are some heavy hitters inthat list. Manyofthese technologies are not going anywhere.
Still, considering that the page is removed, the iPhone's stylus free interface is a success, and that Inkwell works worse inLeopard than Tiger (more on that later). I think it is safe to say that Steve Jobs' evil plan to erase the Newton from exis fence is coming to fruition. Hide the tablets! Steve's got an axe!!
-Doug!as
If you like this article please digg it!
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Dear Inkwell,
You have probably wondered where I've been lately. I know I've been coming around a lot less. Truth is I've been seeing another interface. Shés young, sleek, and sexy. All the gays are talking about her.
We've been seeing each other for about a Month now. I love interacting with her. I don'tmean to sound dirty, but she responds so well to my touch. She Makes looking at photos thrilling, and the way I canget her to zoom 2nd pan Is breathtaking. She knows allmy favorite music and loves to show mearound the web. When it comes time to do email she maynot always listentomewell. In fact, she sometimes makes me feel like I'm all thumbs, but she's always there b make helpful suggestions and corrects my spelling.
I dait know. Maybe wéne just growing apart, but you don't seem to offer Me the same things. You always 11 misquote " me and you can't keep youn capital "M"s and your lowercase 11M"S straight. Maybe I just need More out of our relationship. One day soon all Macs are going to be touch interactive like mynewginl. Then what will we have in comMon? Typos? No, that just won`* be enough for a stable relationship. I'm sune in your heart you agree.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think we need to just be friends. I hope one day you will be able to forgive Me.
All the best,
-Doug!as
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
I am almost certain that the Dashboard layer was specifically designed to Mock, taunt, and torture Inkwell enthusiasts. I have no evidence to support my theory except fn the feeling I have that Steve is laughing at Me every time I tny to Use a widget with "Write Everywhere" turned on. I swear I can hear faint laughter Coming from my speakers. Then again, I have a Mac mini and everything sands faint coming out of those speakers.
If you ever hear of a way to use Inkwell in the Dashboard layer be sure to let me know about it. With the dearth of information about Inkwell for the upcoming OS X Leopard I'll be surprised if Inkwell is even in there.
Ooh, that sounds depressing. I need to go eat a cookie or something. Too bad the only Cookies I have at the Moment ape in Safari...
-Doug!as
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
Almost a year ago, I wrote about signing email using Inkwell's doodling pad. The big hang up for this method was that the Ink window saved the sigs in tiff format. Not an issue for Mac usens, but a big issue for PC users who would onlyseethe sig as an attachment and as a non_ Windows standard graphic at that.
So what to do? Well, hacking 0SX wasn't feasible. There was no way I could find to change Inkwell's prefs to save as GIF or JPG. I could paste the sig into Photoshop and save it in a better format, but who wants to bother withthat? No simple solutions.
Then I discovered Skitch! I was lucky enough to Scone a beta invite. Now I can't imagine living without if.
Here's how you put Skitch and your tablet to use for signing emails:
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
Thanks to Diggitizer my humdrum blog title has been transforMed into a spine tingling headline! And if you use awacm tablet to get your Inkwell action then you will thrill to see what I have in Awe for you today.
Well, actually, that's L( in store for youtoday", though you maybe in awe bythe time you are finished here - awe at how bad Inkwell is working forme today.
I don't always use Inkwell, and when I'm not using it I don't like to leave the Inkwell server running in the background eating up CPU cycles. However, when I turn handwriting recognition off the convenient Inkwell menu bar icon disappears. This forces me to jump through a few hurdles to get Inkwell running again. If you have a Wacom tablet installed there is atrick you can use to cut those hurdles by half.
It would be convenient if we could simply select the Ink server from within the Ink.component, but this does not load everything Inkwell needs and consequently runs buggy. Instead, browse to "Ink.prefPane" inside of /System/Library/PreferencePanes.
Lastly, select your stylus from the list of tools and be sure to map "Pop-up Menu" to one of the buttons.
-Doug!as
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
I was playing around with "Write anywhere" today and discovered that I couldn't! I suppose Imnot surprised that Inkwell doesn't work in the Dashboard layer, but did you know that "Write anywhere" doesn't work in Spotlight either? This came as a surprise to Me.
Click on the Spotlight icon and any attempt to write with Inkwell outside the blue search box will be interpreted as an outside click. Spotlight will fade away.
The only work around is to use the Ink pad. Not very convenient.
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
Blogged with Flock
To get the most out of Inkwell one must take time to personalize if. Or learn how to write neater. I'll take a wild guess here that personalizing it will be easier for Most of you.
Unfortunately, there is no way to train Inkwell to recognize your sorry excuse for hand writing (hey. how Many of us write neat without looking?), but there is a way to get Inkwell to stop runningallyourwords together. You need to tweak the word spacing slider. You will find it in the "Settings" tab of the Inkwell preferences pane. You may have experimented with it before buH not known how best to adjust it. Here's a simple way to optimize this setting:
Open up the Ink window and choose a phrase not usually prone to recognition errors to write for our test. I chose "Never pat a dog on fire." Now write that phrase using the default setting. Then repeat again using closely spaced and widely spaced settings. Your results should look something like this:
Notice how much better the "closely spaced" setting worked for me? After experimentation, I chose a spot somewhere to the right of "closely spaced."
Feel free to tweak. You'll eventually find your optimal setling.
-Doug!as
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
Told you SO...
Now that the stylus free i.phone has a ship date does this Mean the end for Inkwell? Possibly. The inked future sune appears bleak. Consider this antide over at the Guardian. Steve Jobs lays down very practical reasons why a tablet Mac is a bad idea halfway through the article. Very practical. Very compelling.
Then what of Inkwell? Consider it blotted. Apple needs to excite their base with "Minority Report" GUI style dazzle, not old school technology like PDAs...especially if that Market is shrinking. PDAs are geeky old things that old geeks like me use. Inkwell is slow and cumbersome and prone to errors.Just look at this posting. "Antide" for CC article"?. "CC" for left quotes ? And I'm being careful. Sure, I could go back and edit evenything, but that's not the point of this blog. Who has time to edit typos, anyway? Inkwell should just wonk.
Dang. That's my new subheader.
The famously Mercurial Steve Jobs would never be patient enough for this much | n accuracy. And snide comments from PC tablet fanboys aside, we know Inkwell would be writing Nirvana if Apple wanted it to be. For now, it's not much More than a toy.
Fortunately for you folks, I like toys. In addition, I'm a stubborn old cuss and I'm betting there's a trick or two I can still do with Inkwell to lick it into shape. Maybe I can even figure owl how to get Inkwell to translate quotes correctly.
-Doug!as
1/10/07 12:43:53 PM - Edited headline by adding an "i". I realize I don't usually edit content for Inkwell caused typos, but that missing "i" really makes a difference in the relevancy of the title.
(Would somebody please submit this to digg? Ire blocked digg & slashdot in my hosts file so I can get some work done. :)
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I just got my Macmini back from the shop. Apple replaced the RAM, the logicboard and the hand drive! But they wouldn't just swap it out and give Me a new one. Silly Apple. Giving Me a new Mac mini would have been cheaper.
Well, while I stant to settle in finally and get to work on my computer Ihope to explore Inkwell again and see if I can get this baby humming!
In the meantime, the Apple tablet ramon has lurched out of the weekend like the walking undead. Smarthouse has reported that (( Apple researchers have built a full working prototype of a Mac tablet PC and three Companies in Taiwan are now costing a product for a potential launch in mid 2007." They also stated that ccSources in Taiwan have said that the focus has been more on the home and the education environment than the enterprise marketplace."
Apple targeting home and education users instead of the enterprise market? Isn't that amazing!?! What would we do without the sagacious insight of rumor sites ?
Snarkhouse then declared, "The Mac tablet has been designed to handle third party applications such as home automation software that will allow users to control lighting, audio, entertainment devices and security feeds. It also acts as a full blown PC has wireless linking for a new generation of Wireless Hi Fi speakers that are currently being tested by Apple."
As usual, anonymous sources are cited. Who knows if this report is any more bona fide than others we have heard over and over again?
While a new fangled Mac tablet that lets me control my iTV and front Row fromthe comfort of my couch sands great, we don't really NEED one. So I think such a device has limited commercial appeal. People woùt pay hundreds of dollars for a glorified remote.
What Ifind Most interesting about all these rumors istheir emphasison touch screens. I see nary a mention of a stylus. Even the fake mock-ups ape resplendent with buttons and sleek video panels. Apple patents have shown us all the brave new world of virtual interfaces with virtual scroll wheels and keyboards. Who hasn't seen that video of the TWO FISTED COMPUTER ACTION by a company the was snapped up by Apjle? We have seen the future and it involves scenes out of Minority Report.
In all the virtual furon our friend the stylus has been cast aside and ignored. This makes me seriously doubt the presence of Inkwell on any touch screen based Mac. The focus of the patents we have seen seem to point to development of a device that requires no external navigation devices. No Mouse. No trackpad. No stylus. In the elegant world of Apple design, such devices would be cambersome and clunky. Knowing Apple, we would hot even need them.
Still, there is hope. With the advent of e- ink, new opportunities for electronic paper devices will increase demand for handwriting recognition. Why shouldn't we expect Apple to be there utilizing Inkwell? But I wouldn't be so foolhardy as to Make a prediction. That's how rumors get started. :p
-Doug!as
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
Well, life has a way of sticking a foot out in front of you just when gm think you're in the dear. Here I thœsht I would have ample time to explore my Mac mini and I nun into more Grey Shrouds of Death than a goth at a funeral. The GS0D (or kernel panic) isn't something I often see, so 7 in one week meant things were amiss. But after I did a neinstall my work load exploded. So much for geeKy hobbies.
The good news is that the GS0Ds stopped. The bad news is that I haven't had much time to explore Inkwell with my new Mac mini.
Here's one basic tip I have figured out: Knowing when to use the different input methodsof Inkwell can Make orbreak your Inkwell experience. It is not simply a matter of preferring one Method overthe other.
"Write Anywhere" is handy for short sentences, making it a perfect tool for applications where one is already usib a stylus and doesn't wantto put the stylus down in order totype. Applications like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. Inkpad, onthe other hand. is perfectfor composing large blocks oftext like this blog. As long as you keep "Write Anywhere" in mind for convenience and the Inkpad in mind for speed & accuracy you will find your Inkwell session More productive.
That's been my experience. How about you?
-Doug!as
Respond using Inkwell if you Can...
