Project Mighty and the Napoleon ruler

Adobe’s first foray into hardware: a stylus and a digital ruler.

The stylus is pretty common: soft, rubber point and software pressure sensitivity. It’s far less effective than a true Wacom stylus and tablet combo since the iPad doesn’t expose pressure sensitivity data — I’m pretty sure it can’t record that data, even though Apple uses the gyroscope in Garageband. The drawing latency is pretty long since the stylus has to send its own data through bluetooth which is then analyzed by the software… Not ideal, but until the iPad has a display with this technology built-in (like the Surface Pro), it’ll do.

The Napoleon ruler on the other hand is one smart piece of technology: it’s a digital ruler, meaning that it projects a digital line beneath the physical object that is used to draw a perfect line. Well, it’s far simpler than what I’m trying to describe. The one thing totally awesome about this is that it isn’t limited to a simple line: it can do arcs and more. Awesome idea. Awesome, I say!