Michal Marek The release of the iPad Pro and the special Apple Pencil was a big event for many different designers, graphic artists and illustrators. It is true, however, that artistic creation on a purely electronic basis is definitely not for everyone, and many people cannot tolerate pencil and paper. But the IT industry is thinking about such people as well, as proof of which is supposed to be the Bamboo Spark from the Japanese company Wacom.
Wacom Bamboo Spark is a set consisting of a robust case for the iPad Air (or for a small tablet or for a phone), in which you will find a special "pen" and an ordinary A5 paper pad. Thanks to modern technologies in the form of a transmitter in a pen and a receiver in a case, the Bamboo Spark ensures that you can transfer all the content of your drawn or described paper in digital form to the iPad in no time.
The device is paired with the iPad via Bluetooth and transferring individual pages takes just a few seconds. To import content and work with it, a special Bamboo Spark application is used, which offers useful functions such as phasing the resulting drawing stroke by stroke, thanks to which it is possible, for example, to return to older versions of your work along the timeline. Here, even more than anywhere else, you will notice that the drawings are transferred with the pen very precisely. The application perfectly replicates your strokes on paper.
But there is also a minor complication here, which one must not let get carried away. As soon as you upload your drawing to the iPad, you go into the next drawing with a "clean slate" and at first glance it seems that you no longer have the opportunity to work with it on paper.
When you start drawing on the same paper after synchronization and then sync your work to the iPad again, a new sheet will appear in the application containing only the work since the last synchronization. But when you mark the last sheets representing the work on one paper, you will see the option to "Combine" to get your creation on one digital sheet.
You can upload drawings or texts to the application individually, but it is also possible to draw all day and start synchronization only at the end of the day. The memory stored in the guts of the case can hold up to 100 pages of visual content, which after synchronization is arranged in a similar chronological stream that we know from the system application Pictures, for example.
Individual pages can be easily exported to Evernote, Dropbox and basically any application that can handle PDF or classic images. Recently, the app also learned OCR (written text recognition) and you can export your written notes as text.
But the feature is still in beta and not perfect yet. In addition, Czech is not currently among the supported languages. This is a rather significant disadvantage of such a solution, because most users would certainly like to actively work with the text they write by hand and then transfer it to the iPad. So far, Bamboo Spark can only display it as a rather unprocessable image.
The Bamboo Spark user can also use Wacom's own cloud service. Thanks to this, you can synchronize your content between devices and also use interesting additional functions such as search or the aforementioned export in text document format.
The feel of the pen is really perfect. You have the feeling that you are simply writing with a high-quality traditional pen, and the visual impression is also good, so you will certainly not be ashamed of your writing tool at the meeting. The entire "case" including the iPad pocket and paper pad is also nicely and well made.
And while we're on the subject, you most likely won't be exposed to the unpleasant search for a socket and handling cables in the conference room, because the Wacom Bamboo Spark has a very solid battery that will last even an active typist for at least a week before it needs to be charged via a classic micro USB connector.
So Bamboo Spark is a really cool toy, but it has one major problem: an unclear target group. Wacom charges 4 crowns for its "digitizing" notebook, so it's not an easy investment if you simply want to write something by hand from time to time and then digitize it.
Wacom has not yet advanced the Bamboo Spark to such a level that its digitization technology should be that much further than when the user writes something classically on paper and then scans it into Evernote, for example. The result is similar, because at least in Czech, even Bamboo Spark cannot convert written text into digital form.
In addition - and with the arrival of Pencil for iPads - the complete transition to digital is becoming more and more widespread, when various pens and styluses provide more and more convenience and possibilities in connection with specialized applications. The (partially) digitizing notebook from Wacom thus faces a very complex task of how to reach users.
