Editing The Pen Addict 221/transcript (section)

== Brand Value ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' But it's like everything Montblanc, right? Like, you're paying for the brand, you're paying for the quality of the materials. Like, you're paying extra to get the Montblanc-ness of it all, really.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. And the title of the article is great. It says, Montblanc's Augmented Paper Digitizes Rich People's Handwriting. Yep. I thought that was pretty funny. That's exactly what it is. And that's what it is. Yeah. But it's not just... It's just not a good experience, right? No one has... Yep. One day in our lifetime, someone's going to nail this technology. Moleskine's close, right? Yeah. Moleskine's close. But it's not there right now. And the level of frustration that you have when you have to use not your favorite pen on not your favorite paper, and it only works sometimes, is not worth any amount of money, much less 650 euro.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yep. And, you know, you get like an Italian leather envelope that it all goes in, and the modified Starwalker, and a Montblanc Italian paper notebook. But apparently the app itself just kind of sucks. Like, who was it that did the review on The Verge? James Vincent. James talks about the fact that the application, you can tag the notes that you save, but you can't organize them into folders or anything, so you just have this long list of stuff if you're just scrolling through. And every note that you take on the paper gets its own page in the application. Even if, like, you went back to a previous piece of paper and wrote on that piece of paper, it doesn't get merged in. Right. It just takes it as a new note, and apparently there's a way to merge notes together, but it's really difficult to get it right. Right. So, it kind of, it doesn't really pay attention to the pages. And if I remember correctly, the Moleskine one does, because it knows what page you're on, and kind of will add to it. So, and there's no live conversion of handwriting in this application, in the Montblanc one. So, it all picks it up after you have to sync, essentially. So, you kind of sync it. Now, what's really weird about this is Montblanc are using Wacom's technology, but Wacom's product seems better.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So, that's next on our list. And I called them being on the bandwagon, but I knew that was an incorrect term. They're actually one of the leaders in this. And if anyone's going to nail this, I fully believe it's going to be them. They haven't done it yet, but talk about this slate, because didn't we, wasn't there a product called the slate or something similar that we talked about in the past? Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's such an obvious name. I think it might have been used before. So, they have two products. They have the Wacom slate, which is just a notepad. And then the Wacom folio, which includes an integrated cover. But the notepad, like, it's... To call it a notepad is probably a little bit wrong. It's kind of like a notepad slash backplate thing. Yeah. It's a writing board, essentially. And then there's one that includes a cover as well. Now, the Wacom's version does let you use and see live capture handwriting. And with them, they have a cloud sync storage stuff. The app has five gigabytes of free storage. And then you need to pay more, like a subscription fee to get more storage in the cloud.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, I want to ask you, and I want to discount the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil from the conversation. Are you even remotely interested in a device like the slate?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yes.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Really? But... Like, I'm at zero.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Okay. Let me rephrase that. I'm interested in the outcome of a product like this. Mm-hmm. But as you said, like, it needs to be some way in which it can just integrate with whatever products I want to use. Right. Right? And I don't know how you would do that.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' There's such a huge amount of friction with these devices right now to accomplish anything. Right? It's, you know, I have a pen and a piece of paper sitting here. And I can just write down whatever I want, and I know where it is, and I know what I said. And I don't have to have an extra device to sync my notes. I don't have to wonder if it actually works. I don't have to have extra batteries, extra charging cables. All kinds of friction that prevents you from getting what you need down. And that's all I see in these type of devices. But like I said, I think if anyone's going to eventually do something that's going to be kind of like the great crossover potential, it's going to be Wacom or Wacom.