Good luck to them.<p>In my view, Paper is more of a toy than a useful tool but it's not all their fault. Some will spin this more charitably with something along the lines of 'limitations foster creativity' or something like that.<p>Attempting to really use Paper made me realize something that's been sort of but not really bothering me since the iPad was introduced, and that is I like the tools but the application as a whole sucks. It doesn't make sense to buy a some canvas or a drawing notebook at the art store but be limited to the tools that are bundled with it. That is crazy. Not just crazy but it makes zero sense.<p>I can make a picture on a real piece of paper with literally anything that makes a mark, from coffee to dirt, blood, fruit, chemicals, bricks, burnt sticks (if I want to be classic), water... not to mention folding and crumpling.<p>the digital tablet equivalent to this will require two things.<p>1. complete separation of the tools from the "paper". And I mean complete. BYOT. Whatever that means.<p>2. a connection between physical tools and software tools. I am TOTALLY FINE with having five different physical objects to draw on my virtual tablet if it means not having to mess around with someone's idea of a genius menu and tool selection system. Really. I would actually love this so much. Look at a real artists studio: they often look like explosions happened. nobody thinks that fewer tools is better. I can find a physical tool without looking or thinking about it or messing up my train of thought. Menus and gestures and commands and even alphabetization ffs, all that "left brain" stuff is a real drag.<p>3. stretch objective, not really critical today but maybe 20 years from now, I'd like to have full, realistic multitouch. The day I can, for instance, make a handprint on my virtual tablet is the first day it's going to be able to reproduce detailed human expression. I might be off base on this particular one but I want it.<p>yeah, yeah yeah limitations and all that. digital stuff is totally different. whatever.
Title would probably be better if it were a bit more descriptive:<p>"FiftyThree, creators of Paper app, raise $15M, plan mobile office suite"
" Particularly relevant was a project they led at Microsoft called Courier that has been widely praised as a visionary take on tablet computing (unfortunately, Courier was never brought to market)"<p>I thought the Courier was cool when it was presented, and still cool now. I would completely consider getting one if it were priced the same as one of the other tablets.
Note that the Jobs quote is linked, the "skeptic" quote is not. Once against Steve Jobs proves prescient compared to imaginary foes.<p>A tablet with a bluetooth keyboard is what traditionally would be called a laptop, and thanks to several iterations of hardware and software, a modern tablet holds its own. Is anyone seriously arguing that people dismissed the ideas of laptops being productive, or that they thought that the state of tablets wouldn't improve?<p>Tangentially, Paper has got to be the most overhyped application in the history of applications. I mostly ignored it (after falling for the hype and grabbing it and all of the in-app purchases to actually have a marginally useful drawing program), but when they went on the road selling snake-oil about their trivial HSV "paint mixer" I really started to see the negativity in the hype.
It's interesting that they seem to be suggesting they will build out an office suite imagined from the beginning for mobile. I had thought of Paper as being for artists but perhaps they aim to go more general purpose.
I think the most important thing, if you want a tablet to be productive, is a keyboard that actually suits it. I'm not talking about what we have now, which is basically laptops with detachable keyboards. I envision something you could pick up and type with, like a split keyboard on each side of the tablet. The tricky part to this is creating something you can grip and type with at the same time, but I don't doubt a creative engineer could come up with something (there are one handed keyboards that you can grip and type with effectively, IIRC).
This jibes with what I've seen. I didn't think phones could generate content, but it was just long text that they struggled with. I don't like typing on a tablet, but my laptop gets smaller and smaller. Good user experience people will find ways to get tools on these devices, with desktops relegated to very heavy lifting. (Anything requiring big screens)
Congrats to FiftyThree, however, I think that while new kinds of content-creation apps can be created on touch-devices, I don't (/hope) that they replace their precursors.<p>obligatory link to Bret Victor's rant on the limitation of touch interfaces: <a href="http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/" rel="nofollow">http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...</a><p>To put it another way: for those of you who program/create via the command line and keyboard shortcuts, could you imagine a touch-setup that would give you more power than what you have with the keyboard? The mouse and GUI hasn't so far...they've added <i>different</i> ways to create content, but arguably these interfaces end up limiting the true power users.