October 27th Update - Troubles with wrist protection

[leJuan5150 7]

Hi!

 

I have been using Penultimate for years now, and although not perfect, the wrist protection has always worked fairly well ... Until the latest Penultimate update.

 

Now Penultimate seems to randomly ignore my pen strokes or erases text.  When this happens I can even lift my wrist off my iPad and it continues to ignore my input.  The problem corrects if I make a few marks on another section of the page then go back to where I was originally writing.  Then after a few words the problem repeats.

 

I am using iOS7 and a Jot Flip for input.  

 

Anyone else experiencing this issue?

[jdriggs 13]

Yes! It's terrible! I have whole letters that disappear after I've written them and also writing that it ignores.

And don't get me started on zoom and drift! Totally unusable!

[gabrielhooper 0]

Something is really wrong with this version, so I went back to the previous one and it works fine.

Wrist protection on or off the program recognizes lines, but when you try to make a circular pattern 

it won't accept them or erases them immediately.  Hopefully this gets fixed soon.

[EverBrook 3]

I agree with the wrist guard feature, works for a while, then I wonder if my Jot Pro stylus isn't touching the screen - no input, so I have to push harder for it to register. Quite weird.

In addition - finally, this update has the zoom feature. However, it only has one very close level. It's either zoomed fully in or not at all, so you can't set it to a level that's "just right".

The Drift feature sounds good, but in practice is very annoying. As you write, the page starts to scroll by, speeding up as you write. But try and dot an 'i' or cross a 't' and you'll find the page has Drifted by, making you try to sync the page speed, cross a 't' in mid air, or making your full stop a dash. On top of all that, you can't quickly tap Undo, Eraser or change the pen colour, because until the Drifting stops, those buttons are greyed out! Stop your input, then the Drift stops, then you can access the other buttons.

Don't like that? Use the Anchor button to lock out the Drift feature, but now you have to two-finger scroll the page along after every couple of words. What was a nice simple app, with perfect Evernote syncing (for me) that just needed zoom, has now been "upgraded" into a scrolling nightmare. They broke it, when it only needed a tweak.

So my choices are now to use other apps which don't sync with Evernote (they limit the API calling for other people) but write better with a better auto-scrolling feature and a variable zoom (Notes Plus, I'm talking about you), or, keep with Penultimate and it's, IMHO, great syncing, but coarse non zoom writing, or silly Drifting zoomed in writing.

They broke it. Just got the app so close to a great product, and went backwards.

Evernote - I love your product, but the Penultimate Team are obviously not 'your' people.

Apple knew what to do with Maps when it broke - they sacked the guy responsible. That's what I think needs happening here, it's that bad an "upgrade".

[JMcW 0]

Something is really wrong with this version, so I went back to the previous one and it works fine.

Wrist protection on or off the program recognizes lines, but when you try to make a circular pattern 

it won't accept them or erases them immediately.  Hopefully this gets fixed soon.

Hi Gabriel, sadly i'm finding the update horrendous. I have used penultimate now for around 18 months as my work note book and have raved about it to my colleagues.

Yesterday I updated the app and tried to use my new Jot Pro pen, I found letters were being erased, words disappearing and it almost unusable, at first I blamed the pen and went back to my old rubber tipped dabber !

I'm really struggling to use this app now but like the whole evernote sync, can you please advise how I can get back to the previous version of penultimate.

[TDeep 2]

I'm seeing this as well.

 

(iPad 4, iOS 7.0.3, Wacom Bamboo)

[CGerlach 0]

I also have been a long time user of Penultimate and as of the last update the ONLY way I can write is using the new zoom feature. Using the standard view doesn't work 98% of the time. When I try to write the image immediately goes away..

I went back in to general settings and tried a couple of different wrist positions and they all work the same, poorly.

iPad 3, 7.03, tried a few different stylus and had the same issue. Current stylus Adonit Jet Pro.

[JMcW 0]

Hi, I have just reverted back to version 4.2 and its working ok.

 

I will not be upgrading again until they have this issue resolved.

 

iPad 2, 6.1.3 and new adonit Jot Pro.

[jdriggs 13]

How do you go back to the older version?

[thejeremycarson 1]

EDIT: I KNOW WHY IT'S DOING THIS!!! SEE EDIT BELOW!

i'm having this same problem. as i'm writing (i write about the height of one or two of the small grid squares), letters will disappear as soon as i write them. this happens whether my wrist is on the ipad or not.

EDIT: almost 100% sure this has to do with the increased sensitivity of the "paste" button popping up, because when something is in the clipboard, the writing disappears when the paste popup appears. however, if there is nothing in the clipboard, there is no popup, but the writing still disappears. I think that (at least with me) since the writing that is disappearing is usually when I'm writing in a small space, and not a line (unless it's very slowly), the app thinks I'm holding my stylus in place and responds with the action to display or not display the paste popup. if EV adjusts/fixes the paste sensitivity, it will fix this, I'm sure,

ipad 3, ios 7, latest penultimate update as of 10/29/13

[gabrielhooper 0]

I got back to old penultimate by having an old copy on my Mac. Then I deleted the new version on my iPad and turned off auto update and restored my notes back to the old penultimate with my evernote backup. Without the old copy of penultimate on your Mac, I don't think there's a way to get back to the old version.

[ScottFulton 0]

Glad to see others having the same issue with the Paste. This made one of my mission critical apps totally unusable for me. Hope they fix it soon!

[leJuan5150 7]

Glad to see others having the same issue with the Paste. This made one of my mission critical apps totally unusable for me. Hope they fix it soon!

 

I am surprised that no one from Evernote has acknowledged that this is an issue or that they are working on a fix.  I am positive they know there is an problem.  Although Penultimate is not mission critical for me, working around this problem is definitely costing me money.  

[Yutenji 0]

I have an iPad mini and a Bamboo stylus. I just noticed this problem today. Very annoying. As thejeremycarson noted, the problem seems to occur most frequently when writing o or a within a small area. I have had trouble with Penultimate before erasing my notes, so this is making me rethink this app again. A comment from Evernote would be appreciated.

[Klaus 4]

I seem to be having the problem too. It is particularily bad, when I try to write in small letters (which I need for Penultimate zto be useful to me).

 

As an example I attach the result of trying to write "Number" in several sizes. When reaching the size of one line on lined paper (or 3 squares on graph paper) input becomes unreliable. When approaching my "natural" writing size of 2 squares "Number" will typically come out as "N  ber" and any number of retries won't change it. The lines appear during writing but vanish before the stroke is even finished (⇒ palm rejection?). As it is now, writing on paper and using a camera scanner is almost always the most viable option. 

 

I am using the iPad Mini with iOS 7.0.3. Across several programs major problems with wrist rejection have started when I upgraded to iOS7, but since I applied the screen protector between the iOS update and first using handwriting again, I cannot tell which is to blame. Not using a screen protector is not acceptable since the Jot-it Pro stylus seems particularly susceptible to capturing hard grains while normal capacitive styli are incapable of providing sufficient precision for writing. 

 

The problems occurs also for a standard thick-tipped capacitive stylus. It just feels less bad, because that stylus doesn't allow small writing anyway. 

[amir 0]

I have the same problem

I use penultimate as my primary work tool, it has become very dificult to work

I hope the guys at evernote are aware and will fix it

[Kevin Mitchell 19]

Hi!

 

I have been using Penultimate for years now, and although not perfect, the wrist protection has always worked fairly well ... Until the latest Penultimate update.

 

Now Penultimate seems to randomly ignore my pen strokes or erases text.  When this happens I can even lift my wrist off my iPad and it continues to ignore my input.  The problem corrects if I make a few marks on another section of the page then go back to where I was originally writing.  Then after a few words the problem repeats.

 

I am using iOS7 and a Jot Flip for input.  

 

Anyone else experiencing this issue?

Thanks for the topic. Now I know it's not just me.

My Jot Script just came in, and I was so excited to try it out, and it was a severe (and fairly expensive) disappointment.

I just hope Evernote fixes it. Evernote 7 is much improved.

Will Evernote OCR pen input from other programs?

[Gopiballava 1]

My Jot Script just came in, and I was so excited to try it out, and it was a severe (and fairly expensive) disappointment.

I just hope Evernote fixes it. Evernote 7 is much improved.

 

Same here. Stylus arrived this afternoon, and Penultimate is a dismal failure. Horrendously buggy and laggy. I downloaded the program "Ink" and have found the palm rejection to be much, much better.

 

It still have the problem that the stylus tip is way too springy. It stays in contact and writing for too long - I get tails on my letters frequently. 

 

The demo video says you don't have to turn it off. That's technically true. It turns itself off so quickly you might not get to the power switch before it's turned off. (Ok, slight exaggeration. But it turns off way too quickly IMHO)

[davebe 3]

Hi!

 

I have been using Penultimate for years now, and although not perfect, the wrist protection has always worked fairly well ... Until the latest Penultimate update.

 

Now Penultimate seems to randomly ignore my pen strokes or erases text.  When this happens I can even lift my wrist off my iPad and it continues to ignore my input.  The problem corrects if I make a few marks on another section of the page then go back to where I was originally writing.  Then after a few words the problem repeats.

 

I am using iOS7 and a Jot Flip for input.  

 

Anyone else experiencing this issue?

Same here. Wrist protection unusable.

[wnsbas 0]

I'm having the same issue (pen strokes not being recognized when writing). Ipad mini, ios7

My wife is having the same problem. Ipad 2, ios6

I hope more people post so that evernote recognizes this is a major issue and sends an update asap.

[bogrady 1]

+1 more. The very first word I wrote with the new update had the disappearing letters. It happens consistently. The app is pretty much useless to me now. I'm holding off on the premium until this is fixed.

[stefan74uk 1]

Hi, I have just reverted back to version 4.2 and its working ok.

 

I will not be upgrading again until they have this issue resolved.

 

iPad 2, 6.1.3 and new adonit Jot Pro.

Yep - that's the only thing that worked for me too. Version 5.0 is simply a disaster.

 

To revert back, you need to have the old version on iTunes. Make sure that you delete the new version from the iPad first, and then connect to sync with iTunes. Once the initial sync is complete, go to the apps tab, find Penultimate and then select Install. Click on apply - this will ensure the old version is synced back to the iPad.

[RichardM 15]

Hey Evernote - any reaction to the increasing body of evidence about this critical bug in Penultimate?

 

All - I highly recommend Notability as a very smooth, powerful alternative to Penultimate, until Evernote get round to fixing this. (There is a risk that you like it so much you don't come back to Penultimate of course...  )

[BKRONANDER 0]

Does anyone know if someone at Evernote is working to solve the problem with this critical bug? For now it is waste of time while it goes much faster to use Evernote with "keyboard" instead of Penultimate with disappearing letters.

[gtrogue1 0]

Same problem for me. I got my Jot Script today and have been severely disappointed. My text keeps disappearing (seems like every a, o, e, & g that I write disappears). The stylus becomes unresponsive and my hand makes marks all over the page.

It's shameful that third party note taking apps work better with the Evernote branded Jot Script than their own.

[cwb 225]

Something for people to try perhaps...

I was puzlzing over why I seem to get 98%-100% perfect palm rejection... (with or without multi-touch gestures enabled)

Firstly I re-looked at my wrist position and changed the setting in Pentultimate:Settings:Wrist Position to match.

 

Then I observed that the only times I got spurious palm marks was when I lifted the stylus too far off the screen between words.

 

If you think of it from the screens perspective, you don't know the difference between a palm and a stylus which has just skipped down a few lines to continue writing if there's only a single point of contact.

But if you assume multiple screen touches means a stylus and a palm you can reject the big less moving input.

 

We also know that near but not touching fingers and styluses can register an input.

And I confirmed that when I lifted the stylus only slightly between letters and words, I got no palm related spurious marks.

I could even slide my palm across the screen to re-adjust without leaving any marks.

 

But if I lifted the stylus too far so that it was no longer seen and the palm was the only thing touching, I got wrist marks on the page.  But if I brought the stylus back down before lifting my palm, the spurious marks would disappear.

 

Multi-touch is your friend.  If there's only one object near/touching the screen, it better be your stylus or you'll get extra markup.

[Klaus 4]

@cwb: The problem is the opposite for me. The palm gets rejected almost perfectly.

 

But sadly it rejects a lot of wanted strokes too (see my example) which makes any productive work near impossible. 

 

@everyone else: Could those of you who share the problem post, whether they are using a screen protector foil? I am. 

[gtrogue1 0]

I don't have a screen protector.

 

I actually find that my old Bamboo stylus works better than the Jot Script. I have much better wrist rejection and fewer dropped strokes with the old stylus.

Though it's supposed to do the opposite, it appears that the Jot Script degrades wrist rejection and accuracy.

[cwb 225]

@cwb: The problem is the opposite for me. The palm gets rejected almost perfectly.

 

But sadly it rejects a lot of wanted strokes too (see my example) which makes any productive work near impossible.

Are you certain your setting in "Wrist Position" matches your writing style?

That setting is about all it has to go on to tell where you pen is in relation to your wrist contact point.

[somewhere a wacom exec is chortling]

[bogrady 1]

Update:

I just finished a meeting with a key client. We both had to download Notability at the start of the meeting to take notes as we both found this new Penultimate revision to be totally useless. Within the very first line of writing we had 4-5 letters disappear. 

 

One iPad with no screen protector and a cheapo stylus

One iPad mini with no screen protector a Jot Pro

 

Both of us are experienced Penultimate users and tried to set/reset palm rejection settings.

 

This is not good. Is anyone at Evernote listening? The first few minutes of the meeting became a conversation with other users about how nice Notability was. You guys are losing users.

[Chris Nelson 0]

New to Penultimate today but have tried with Jot Script pen and, well, it is horrible.  Disappearing letters, my hand can not touch the screen anywhere or it wigs out.  Love the concept but think I wasted $75 on the Jot Script pen.  Using iPad 3 and iOS7.

[TDeep 2]

There was a new update today.  So far, the two issues that I was having (accidental zoom, and disappearing letters/"Paste") are both resolved.

 

*fingers crossed

 

iPad Air, iOS 7.0.3

[cwb 225]

On the other hand I seem to be struggling with spurious wrist input with this version versus yesterday.  It's doable, but seems to require more work.

Wacom Bamboo stylus, iPad 3, iOS 7.0.3

[oceanre 0]

i got evernote to refund my shipping after I asked to cancel my order prior to it's 'late' shipping date. once I received it, I experienced all the problems noted in the above 2 pages. the 'update' does nothing to change the problems I have experienced on my ipad mini and as a very early evernote user who switched to premium the same day it was offered (and got quite a few colleagues to upgrade to premium, I find it hard to believe that no one from evernote has bothered to speak up here - perhaps the only way to get their attention is to ask for a refund - if we all inundate them with demands they take the stylus back for a full refund, I am sure they will push someone out of the foxhole and man up - I am doing precisely this as soon as I hit enter.

[C.Hull 0]

The most recent penultimate update as of 11/05/2013 made little to no difference for me in the quality of penultimate + Jot Script. Letters are still dropped, wrist still makes marks all over the page and now the stylus seems to randomly disconnect. I spent more time in lecture today trying to fix mistakes it made or get it to connect again than I did taking quality notes. Over all I am really disappointed with my purchase of the Jot Script as well as its integration with penultimate.

 

***To clarify Penultimate is working fine with any "normal" stylus I use, just not the Jot Script

[thejeremycarson 1]

just updated to 5.0.1. seems to be completely fixed. it's harder (takes longer) for the "Paste" button to show up, but whatever they did, it fixed the issue. wrist protection is much better, as well.

 

not sure about the jot issues, as i use a regular stylus with cloth tip.

[thejeremycarson 1]

There was a new update today.  So far, the two issues that I was having (accidental zoom, and disappearing letters/"Paste") are both resolved.

 

*fingers crossed

 

iPad Air, iOS 7.0.3

ditto. works for me.

[gtrogue1 0]

just updated to 5.0.1. seems to be completely fixed. it's harder (takes longer) for the "Paste" button to show up, but whatever they did, it fixed the issue. wrist protection is much better, as well.

 

not sure about the jot issues, as i use a regular stylus with cloth tip.

I my quick test the update does seem to work better. I'll give it a good go tonight and report back.

[JennD 0]

This needs to be fixed. The app is useless now

[gtrogue1 0]

I did some more testing and the wrist rejection is greatly improved in the latest version. However, it still has some inadvertent marks from my hand. Noteshelf is still better.

The disappearing strokes problem seems to be eliminated. I'll need some more time to tell for sure.

Now if we could get rid of the clicking & clacking of the Jot Script.

[RichardM 15]

*UPDATE* following bug fix release 2013-11-06:

 

The bugs I found so unacceptable have now been fixed - Penultimate works as expected.  It's nowhere near as powerful or flexible as Notability but perhaps over time Evernote will build up functionality.

 

I use the old Adonit Jot Pro and that works pretty well.  The way wrist protection is implemented is quite impressive and makes note-taking that bit easier.

 

I can't report on how the Adonit Jot Script performs as there is no way I afford $75 for a stylus.  It is slightly off topic but I find the pricing of the new Evernote-branded items such as the Jot Script a worrying indication of where the company may be going.  It looks like it is a beautifully designed tool and I know from the Jot Pro that Adonit's quality of manufacturing is very high so I am sure it is a delight to use, but it's not going to change the way the majority of us work with Evernote at that price.  (Unless that's just a UK perspective  ).

[Klaus 4]

As of Version 5.0.1 the problem has vanished for me (iPad mini, iOS7, Adonit Jot Pro capacitive stylus, screen protector).

 

I can now write letters as small as one square on graph paper, with the limit being the minimum line thickness rather than any palm rejection issues. 

 

A Problem with lags causing delayed display of parts of words or letters to merge into a wavy line disappeared after rebooting.

[Randen Montalvo 9]

Thank God the wrist protection with the Jot Script has been fixed i can finally use this as intended.!!!...now can we get some highlight ability lol...

[stefan74uk 1]

They've just released an update v 5.0.1 - that fixed the issue for me. Go download & try it.

[Randen Montalvo 9]

Yes I agree vast improvement for the jot script , finally it only registers the jot script in a fashion that's usable lol

[TDeep 2]

I spoke too soon.

 

The small characters / Paste issue has been resolved for me, but the accidental zoom is still happening at least 25% of the time.  This makes me a bit hesitant every time I go to write because the accidental zoom is jarring and results in extra scribbles when I start writing or as a result of where my wrist was resting.

 

Evernote, please just let us turn off automatic zoom.  I'll look around for the appropriate way to file this as a feature request.

[Joelcohn 1]

Same problem with new stylus and wrist protection

Went to Notability

Has ability to go from keyboard to stylus to paste and back again

Evernote - pay attention

[Mark Clarijs 0]

On the 11th of april I received this answer from Evernote. This issue already exists at least 5(!) months. What prioity is given to solve this. Penultimate is hardly usable this way.

Hello markclarijs,

We apologize for the inconvenience, however it appears there is currently a bug causing this.

We appreciate you taking the time to send us this error. We have filed an internal bug report with the QA team lead. They will classify and fix the bugs in the order determined by the project Lead.

Unfortunately this is not something I can fix for you at this time.

Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience.

Thanks for making Penultimate a better product,

Jesus Mendivil

Evernote

markclarijs - Apr 09

I selected wristprotection and the position. But it is not working. How come?