Gadgetory

hey this is Josh from the verge and we're with George from 53 one of the creators of paper for the iPad which is a new sketching drawing scrapbook notebook how would you describe it what's your description of the app so paper is where ideas begin right it's the place where you go to like sketch write draw color outline it's it's when you want to spend time with your ideas papers the home for your ideas and you guys are a new york-based company right are you totally new york mayor in new york and seattle-based explain to me the the ideation behind this now you guys a few people who work at 53 worked at Microsoft yeah you guys worked on the courier project which a lot of our readers will know yeah and there's some you know similarity here but this is a this is something you guys started working on after you left Microsoft can you just help me tell me where the creation of the how the creation of this began where it came from it really came from from actually this this is disbelief of our so I thought people are their best when they create right that's what motivated that's what motivated us you know to start career that's what motive would have made it be to start working on office that's what really has been motivating like a lot of us and to just start picking up like engineering to build tools creative tools in this case in this tools tools that you know that that that help people work with their ideas right and personally we were getting a little bit frustrated right there now we have all these great breakthroughs in mobile technologies and and connectivity and what we really got was like mobile email Twitter and and Angry Birds right and it just didn't feel right it just didn't feel right I think there's more there was more to mobile curation and and so we we bound it together we all really enjoyed working together and we said it's like hey let's start a company and devote ourselves towards figuring out what are sort of essential tools for creation let's figure this out so when we were testing this yeah as soon as we got the beta from you guys we were like we have to go get styluses styli now and we got these bamboo these Wacom or Wacom Bamboo Stylus is they're not that good and it seems to me that you can use your finger and it works really well in paper but it seems to me like you guys are you want people to use stylus to do this I mean it's it's natural so people used to write with this you know what's your take on that well I you know but when you when you look at activities like drawing and sketching they just feel much more natural when you can have holding utensil and the reason for this is one it's I mean that's that's what the hand has evolved to use we've got a risk so you can articulate at the moment you put your finger down you lock your wrist into place right you can't move and the other thing is your fingers fairly large so it actually concludes what you're working on right so stylus makes a lot of sense I mean it has made sense for hundreds of years and it still does thousands right that wasn't first in the minute they're actually pick on the stand that's true but I mean you know so so you know but this the stylus you can get right now for the iPad I feel it's pretty lacking I don't know if you agree or disagree I don't put words in your mouth but have you been looking into other technology there's blue tiger which is apparently gonna be you know a better more advanced take on yeah it's the ILA Aaron for a capacitive just like absolutely I think there's a lot of room for improvement there's a tremendous amount of room and for improvement like you know mentioned blue tiger there a couple other there are a couple other and new technologies that are coming and we're super interesting and that stuff the year that you're looking into we're absolutely looking to those but what about other platforms I mean Android Windows 8 is coming you gotta buy you've got a history with Microsoft so like are you exploring other platforms for thought we we have great relationships to all the various you know platform vendors in our case we're somewhat limited by our resources and our time you know I mean Samsung Apple anyone send us more money you want an apple samsung said you okay that will facilitate that I'll just make a call whoever sends me the checks yeah well I'm sure we'll cut you one no but it's it's it's more like will develop platform you know we'd love to go in more plan right so so Android is a possibility absolutely a Windows 8 is a possibility oh that's cool that's great tell me about the business model here it's a little bit different then you know other apps um they charge 15 bucks you just get this at 10 bucks two bucks you are offering the basic app for free and then you can buy put tools basically yeah so the the idea for us is like you know we want people to experience paper right and really look at the UI get a sense for it see how nice it flows and and anyone should try that so the base application is free you get first tool which is draw for free drawing is all about sort of general sketching illustrating can use it for writing it's a really flexible tool that adjusts its width dynamically I think people would be surprised how great their script looks when they when they use that and then you can't customize the application to your use if you want to do color right there's a tool for color its basis to control color and watercolor a cost to box to get its its 99 okay yeah two dollars yeah so so so so and the other tools are you get the eraser yeah you can play eraser and then you can have you know you can buy color right outline and sketch okay and and do you see and so this kind of gives you a way to be modular with this app so you can add-on tools and we were talking a little bit before this that you're thinking about what other types of tools you might add to it and it may not just be freeform stuff that's right it's right you know I mean this is really our beginning right and now we need to now we can start engaging with you know dialogue with our audience and our customers and start developing tools specifically for their needs so if industrial designers want a Copic marker well build a Copic marker if like you know Julian our developer has been talking about like flow charting tools drafting tools we'll go build that and it allows you to really tweak and tailor and get more vertical in the various creative disciplines that are out right so you really could go all sorts of directions I mean this could become you get out like a text tool if you wanted to we could add a text me yeah saying that you will but yeah if that's it well there's a demand for there's a demand for it yeah sure it's and it's for us it's like we need to be you know we know there are certain bases that you want to cover in the creation process draw sketch right color right these we know people do right but now from that now we're starting to get into this interesting dialogue of what to develop next and that's kind of where we're now it's time for us to see and sit back and look at what people are doing and also work then with different you know just with different disciplines and start bringing on the next set of tools right now now you mentioned that I mean we've been talking about how simply how very simple this is not simplistic but very simple you worked on the office team office suite right so did that and is this in some way a reaction to because offices coming classically known as being a very feature-rich complex application this is in the opposite direction was that that inform any of the stuff you guys were thinking about when you started on this yeah certainly right I mean what was there was part of the office of 2007 release which was an attempt at or which was actually an effort at streamlining the office experience and off is an incredibly valuable product there's so much in it but I oftentimes felt like when you ship a box software a product you kind of have to put all your eggs into one basket you put a price label and ship it out it's like if you don't get it in the box it's not gonna be maybe they're right and I think you know the world of mobility and connectivity it's different you can be much closer to your your audience and can be much more responsive and so and that's where sort of the in-app purchase model for us is actually really fascinating to see is like look only build what people need right and only buy what you need right and that I think is a wonderful thing you would and if something isn't selling yeah you'd consider just scrapping it you know if you feel like there's a tool that people aren't in here you would say like hey you know we'd probably like just remove like put it to other places in the UI I mean there might be that one or two people you know that are using that tool but I don't have to keep it in the main you right there you have that modular we have the motor approach - yeah exactly so all you really have what you need right because we know what creation it goes many places right I mean if you're in if you're in the arts versus science worth versus legal profession right you'll need different tools right you don't want to have you know like every other tool available only the ones that really matter to you right and so this this was in development before the new iPad existed obviously you guys how long have you been working on this app started working earnest probably in June last year okay so it's you know you're approaching almost a year of working on it was it always a plan to wait until there was a higher resolution display out there or do I mean obviously this will run on will it run on the original iPad it runs on iPad one two and three okay so did you want to hold it for that high res display or did it just a line that they released this new what happened we had the application ready for some time but when you know we started seeing glimpse of what the iPad 3 could be or the new iPad could be we were like hey that's pretty sweet yeah like you know our graphic engine is there to really take advantage of the high resolution I think people are really going to enjoy it you know just the look and the clarity and the speed of the so that just made more sense no I mean it looks incredible in the new iPad I mean it is it just like you know text is like you don't see the pixels so that's really very fluid and natural I do have any plans to bring this to the iPhone I mean seems like you get like a smaller sketchbook or there any idea that certainly we architected it and we could do the development work it's more about like what can we do to like how can we best support our customers if if there's demand for it will develop it but currently there are right so this is me I see where this yes so you guys have added you have some unique gestures here in particular the undo gesture is really interesting yeah you use two fingers to kind of go backwards so we have to rotate backwards what's the thinking behind that we're dead so from so our interaction designer and round he's a filmmaker and he's been working a lot with jog dial on VCRs and for him it was like we need rewind we don't need to undo we need to rewind and that's kind of where that gesture came from and I really fit in our way of thinking about sort of what does mobile creation look like how how shouldn't app work when you're on the go how do we keep people in their work and you know rather than having to bring up a menu find a little button it's like no it just flows really naturally like you drew a mistake or you just want to revisit what you did you just start scrubbing backwards it's it's rewinding what about you shake to undo was yeah that was the other thing it's like kind of not how to do it right I mean the current oftentimes in people like you know today under gestures oftentimes people just have to shake the device and that's we found that to be really distracting yeah like really distracting me Shh stamp rush no it 10 status right and you were like you'd have to do a shake for each step they didn't did you test that with that not a thing that we call right it didn't feel right I didn't feel good we didn't like so you came up with with rewind rewind yeah and it does how many steps back now if I what's the how far back are they so on on the new iPad and iPad 2 it's 20 and on the original iPad it's 5 but we're working on a on a much better way is that a memory issue it's a memory issue well it's more like a my my coding skill issue but right oh it's your fault it's my fault you take responsibility for the action more undo but all the awesome code with no my trillion my my yeah under your like I can just do I get half ask the undo stuff you want I don't know it's fine it's actually good you can go back at all I mean but you can you envision a time when you can go back yeah no I mean it's like as far as you want we want people to spend time with their ideas and being able to go through and play through their process of creation because that's where you learn right you know that's where you learn something so that's definitely something we want to have right so you've also felt incentive some cool sharing functionality to this you've got tumblr Twitter Facebook and you know about right but the main the interesting one for us is this tumblr here right one is like we noticed people use their tumblers almost like online notebooks and we were like hey how do you have pages into it right so we were like hey let's paper the web let's make it really easy for them to post pages up to their tumblr more original content you envision an internet that looks like just a bunch of pages that people have drawn on say your say your vision so what you want to do to the Internet the best thing about the Internet is when people create things on it and get creative so the more of that more power to the creators