10 years of creativity on the iPad
I still own and use my original Apple iPad from 2010. It now serves solely as a music player, but it still works. A testament to the build quality and adaptability of the tablet devices.
Originally, the iPad was primarily designed as a media consumption device. A portable screen that gave access to the internet of things and allowed audio and visual access. Steve Jobs stubbornly resisted the idea of a stylus, this was a device for human interaction and that was the finger. The trouble with that approach was we creative types wanted the iPad to be more than a consumption device we wanted it to be a creative device. For me, it moved me one step closer to a digital sketchbook.
Within months of release art applications started to appear and after that YouTube videos showing how you could create your own stylus. I immediately made one. It sounds odd now to say it consisted of a metal pen with a small press-stud attached at the bottom with cotton, but amazingly, it worked. Long before any commercial stylus appeared, I was drawing with something other than my finger. (I still have it pictured below)
Over the ten years I tried many and varied stylus on ever more powerful iPads. Some were simple foam or rubber tipped affairs, others designed like brushes or pencils, some even offered a crude pressure sensitivity. The artistic software applications bloomed. Every week a new App. was released and again I tried them all. Each getting closer to what I was looking for. A digital device that accurately depicted natural media but crucially had an undo option and layers and text etc.
I have to admit that it was only when the iPad Pro and the Apple pencil were released along with compatible art Apps that I became fully hooked. The iPad is now as much a part of my creative workflow as the pencil and paper used to be. It is the one computer I use every day, more so than the iPhone. It is the ubiquitous nature of the device and its endless innovative applications that allows me to use it equally for business purposes, social interaction and creative output, sometime all three at once.
The steady evolution of the iPad from those low resolution, low powered devices in 2010 to the astonishingly high resolution and incredibly powerful processors of the current pro range fills me with hope for the future. With Adobe having released a fully implemented version of Photoshop and the competitive alternatives from Affinity going from strength to strength, along with dedicated stalwarts like Procreate, creativity on the iPad looks to be assured.
A recent survey amongst artists and designers showed that the iPad was the preferred digital tool of choice, beating Wacom and Microsoft’s surface. Whenever I see Apple falling behind the competition, they inevitably innovate themselves back into pole position. I for one hope this continues to be the case, especially with the iPad.