Paper vs. Paper
It’s interesting to compare MacDrifter’s review of Paper to Teehan + Lax’s review.
For example, MacDrifter complains about how the ‘ink’ behaves in Paper:
The faster the stroke, the thicker the line. That seems a little counter intuitive to me. With real ink, which I believe Paper is trying to mimic, darwing faster produces lines that are thinner and lighter. It does not feel like real ink to me but that’s ok. It takes some getting used too in order to make the pen behave how I want it to. That’s not ok.
While Teehan + Lax remarks on the backwards choice as being the smart one:
The free version defaults to the fountain pen, which while maintaining the feel of an actual fountain pen, adds a few small tweaks to how it works within the world of the application. In many ways, these tweaks are counter intuitive to the way that the fountain pen works in real life, which seems ironic for an application purporting to be a digital execution of a simple physical idea. In actuality, these tweaks add to the user experience. For example, the longer you hold down a fountain pen in real life, the more ink will spill out on the page; in the world of the Paper app, they eschew this convention in favour of letting users add fine detail. “Ink flow” in the virtual world is tied to velocity, which accentuates both usability and aesthetics. This approach puts an instantly recognizable style on the strokes within your drawing, while simultaneously enabling you to add smaller, fine strokes. It’s a seductive interaction, one that draws you into the application and makes you want to keep using it, maybe even making an in-app purchase along the way.
Paper has a very small learning curve. By requiring users learn a handful of gestures to get going, Paper allows for an application that is free of any extraneous cruft. I’m really enjoying Paper; it is now one of my favourite applications on my iPad.
