Finger Input Just Can't Keep A Good Stylus Down

Suddenly, pens are everywhere in electronics, and that's a big change from the recent past.  Starting with the Apple Newton, the pen has come in for a drubbing.   Once upon a time, Apple excited us with the idea of a natural language interface based on a pen.  Then the Newton arrived and hopes were dashed.  Unless you wrote like a school-teacher, the feature was not particularly useful.

Things for the pen went from pad to worse (get it...ha-ha) with the arrival of early Windows Mobile devices, that needed a pen just to do what we all do with a finger now on the iPad and iPhone.  And when the iPhone arrived, the pen was banished and we all went finger crazy.

But now, we see, pens are back with a vengeance.  Starting, ironically, with the iPad, where pen-based applications routinely top the business charts.  Clever application development has enabled software to tell the difference between a finger or a palm and a pen even without a traditional hardware-based magnetic stylus.

Now along comes the HTC Flyer, a stylus-enabled Android tablet and Qualcomm's new ultrasonic pen. Both face up to a critical reality: pens are a great way to take notes.  In meetings or the classroom, laptops are a distraction or worse: they are a barrier between people.   A pen and paper is not a barrier and so neither is a stylus working on a tablet.

The market has spoken: we want our pens.

Qualcomm's ultrasonic pen.  Read about it on Engadget.

The HTC Flyer - a pen-based Android PDA - also at Engadget