Pogo Sketch Stylus for iPhone & Macbook

The iPhone platform has a perfectly crafted system of touch recognition and gloriously killed the tremendously easy to lose stylus, however there is still one use that begs for this small piece of annoyance and that is drawing. The Pogo Sketch solves that problem.

I have read about the Pogo Sketch before and on a whim while in the 5th Ave Apple Cube/Store, I decided to look for one. I mentioned the Pogo Sketch to my friend and one of the Apple Store employees overheard and said to me, “You looking for ‘Pogo Sticks?’ they’re in the back, ask a blue shirt.

Looking around, at a sea of “Geniuses” wearing blue shirts, I walked up to a cute brunette and asked her, “I hear you have ‘Pogo sticks’ in the back?”

She looked incredibly confused and I immediately realized what i said could have sounded really wrong, but after a moment  she realized what I was talking about and went to get one. It seemed like I was negotiating some secret backdoor geek deal.

The Pogo Sketch is a $14.99 pocket sized aluminum stylus with a capacitive ball at the tip. This tricks an iPhone, iPod touch, or Macbook trackpad (also any other phone with a capacitive screen like a Droid or Nexus 1) into thinking that it is being touched by a finger. On the newer Macbooks with the larger integrated button trackpads, the Pogo Sketch even gives the user pressure sensitivity.

This means that with the paint program of their choice, an illustrator or designer with an iPhone, iPod Touch, or Macbook Pro (which, lets be serious means practically all illustrators and designers) can never be without a drawing tablet. Since even the smallest Wacom is a little too large and delicate to throw in a laptop bag, the cheap Pogo Sketch is an interesting alternative.

So far, I have found the Pogo Sketch responsive and functional on my iPhone. The little bit of test drawing I have done has felt like magic. Even though I have trained myself to draw with a drawing tablet, there is something to drawing directly on the image. Since my iPhone is with me everywhere I go, I can have a pocket sized digital drawing device on me at all times. Of course, I have always carried a moleskine notebook, so this isn’t a new convenience, but I don’t carry a paint brush, eraser, airbrush and thousands of colors of paint that a digital drawing app emulates.

A friend of mine saw the Pogo Sketch and kidnapped my iPod touch. In a few minutes, they were able to whip out this Carmen Sandiego. Considering they had never touched the Pogo Sketch or Autodesk app before, I think the results speak for themselves.

Credit: Elizabeth Reynolds

Of course, the Pogo sketch is not comparable to a Wacom tablet, which almost perfectly replicates the feeling of drawing on paper. This product was not made to be a competitor to the digital drawing giant, but a portable solution. Once I got used to the smaller screen and zooming in to do detail work more than usual, I found drawing on my iPhone pretty addicting. The Pogo Sketch is constructed of a sturdy feeling, yet light aluminum and has a clip for storing it in pockets.

Even for people who can’t even draw stick figures, the Pogo Sketch can still be a transformative purchase. For the Macbook, the company that makes the Pogo stick gives away a program that allows you to sign forms. On the iPhone, the Pogo Sketch can also be amazing for when it is so cold you don’t want to take off your gloves. In Korea this winter, they discovered a certain kind of sausage could be used to operate an iPhone. Personally, I bought a pair of $4 fingerless gloves at H&M to solve this problem.

Where I think Pogo Sketches will really shine is on the iPad. When I saw the iPad, I immediately thought two things: that thing will be amazing for reading comics and i want to draw on it. During the keynote, Apple featured Brushes for iPad, a fully featured drawing app. Add a Pogo Sketch and Brushes to an iPad and the $499 device becomes  something that could rival the $999 Wacom Cintiq, which may have pressure sensitivity, but needs to be hooked up to a computer and can’t be thrown into a messenger bag.

If you are an illustrator or designer, the Pogo Sketch is a required purchase. It sure beats a sausage.

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