Psdtuts+ Updates - Is Adobe Wasting Their Time by Jumping on the “iPad” Bandwagon?

Is Adobe Wasting Their Time by Jumping on the “iPad” Bandwagon?

Posted: 08 Nov 2010 07:00 AM PST

Last week, Adobe Photoshop Product Manager, John Nack mentioned on his blog that Adobe was currently working on ways to incorporate the iPad and other tablet devices into the Photoshop workflow. While I think that it's great that they are currently working on new ways to interact with our favorite app. I wonder, what's the point?

When we asked you guys over the weekend what you thought of the idea, over 75% of you said that you liked it. I don't blame you. In principle, I think it's pretty cool. Being able to use Photoshop on a tablet device sounds like an awesome idea. The problem is that the iPad as well as the other tablet devices on the market don't let us use pens or styluses. They don't even have pen pressure sensitivity. All we can currently do is finger paint. So why would we want to use a tablet if it doesn't have the capabilities that we need or want?

I suppose there are a couple of additional tasks we could use a tablet for if we can't use it for drawing. We could use it as a second monitor or as an interface device to quickly change the tools that we are working with. I fail to see, however, how a tablet would be any better than what we currently have in that regard.

What we really want is Photoshop installed on a portable Wacom Cintiq-like device with pen pressure sensitivity that allows us to sketch, draw, paint, or even take pictures on the go. What do you guys think? Do you agree? Is Adobe wasting their time by jumping on the tablet bandwagon when the technology we want simply isn't available? Should they instead, be working with a company like Wacom to develop the technology that we actually want to use?