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September 18, 2013 12:05 am GMT
Original Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/1_w6X4TmfAI/
Adobe Gets Serious About Hardware, Will Start Selling Its Mighty Digital Pen And Napoleon Ruler In The First Half Of 2014
Adobe’s first foray into hardware is about to become reality. When Adobe announced its thin-tipped Project Mighty digital pen and Napoleon digital ruler at its MAX conference earlier this year, they were still considered experiments. Even then, though, Adobe’s David Macy told me that these projects were more than just hobbies, so it is not a huge surprise that the company now says it will start selling themin the first half of 2014. Earlier this month, I sat down with Michael Gough, who leads Adobe’s Experience Design (XD) team which incubated this project, and take the latest versions of Mighty and Napoleon for a spin. Adobe won’t say when exactly the devices will launch or how much they will cost. Gough, however, told me that the company is looking at them as a premium product, and, after holding them for a while, they definitely feel like that. Both the Mighty and Napoleon have gone through a few design revisions since the company first showed them earlier this year. The Napoleon ruler, for example, now only features a single button to switch between different tools and shapes and the Mighty pen, which still retains its triangular form, is now charged through the back instead of the front. “We want to do hardware to push us,” Gough told me. The way we interact with software is changing and to stay on top of these developments, Adobe wants to try new things. Until earlier this year, Gough told me, Adobe was still planning to go it alone and develop the project completely in-house. After MAX, though, the team decided that its core competency wasn’t really hardware, and that it would rather focus on the user experience and design instead of the technical details of the hardware. After talking to a few potential partners, Adobe decided to work with Adonit, a company that’s probably best known for its Kickstarter-financed Jot digital pens for the iPad. Adobe plans to produce its hardware with the help of an OEM in Taiwan, though it’s still finalizing the production details. As Gough told me, the final version will likely talk to the iPad over Bluetooth to transfer data about pressure and signals from a built-in accelerometer. The Mighty Magic? Making The iPad Recognize A Thin Tip One of the breakthroughs with the Mighty pen is its very thin tip. By default, the iPad and most other tablets areOriginal Link: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/1_w6X4TmfAI/
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