I Am Cringe But I Am Free

I switched over from an iPad pro with procreate to a Samsung tablet and lemme tell you I have WORDS

It's been ages since I owned Samsung anything, I've been balls-deep in the Apple ecosystem for like a decade, and then I got a gaming laptop and realized how shitty imacs were. Then I got a Samsung tablet and realized how shitty ipads are. Procreate is a great drawing app when you're somebody who's never used a professional program to draw and is just getting into the digital art space. Or if you're someone who draws casually, but would like the power to draw professionally and doesn't want a computer/drawing tablet set up. It's a great meet-in-the-middle kind of thing, but the brushes are kind of ass,

(Yes I know you can import brushes, yes I know photoshop brushes are also compatible, yes I know all the settings you can customize for your brushes. The experience is still ASS, and it has a bit to do with ipads filing system, and a bit to do with procreates confusing windows, because you can't actually just download a brush and go, you have to (and this depends on what browser you're using) download them, drag them to an appropriate folder within your ipads files app, unload them, then drag the over to your procreate app, then spend 15 minutes figuring out if procreate made a new folder for them or stuck it in an already existing one.)

the smudge tool high key sucks, the whole app engagement being gestures/icons and not buttons was kind of annoying at best, and straight up caused me to lose hours of work at worst. You have to really fennangle with the app and it's gazillion settings to set it up just right so that it works for you, which is fine. Every app has a learning curve, Photoshop is the same way and that's the industry standard.

But I'm not a professional artist, and ipads are kind of really fucking expensive to buy just for procreate.

And then there's the "how the fuck do you save/back up your art" issue. IpadOS does have a files system, but it's genuinely the worst to navigate, the tagging system barely works, renamimg and sorting stuff is annoying to do, and the search feature doesnt work half the time. Procreate has no option to save (auto or not) anything anywhere, it all stays on the app, and files can get pretty big to just leave them on there. Not to mention if something goes wrong, something gets corrupted, there's no way to restore anything. Once it's gone, it's gone. If you want to back anything up you have to manually, one by one, bring the files over from procreate to the files app, then from the files app to a computer of your choice (and then from there to a hard drive if you want) because guess what, you can't plug a hard drive directly to your ipad, and you can't stick a micro USB in there either. The process of moving my art from my ipad files to my windows laptop was a fresh kind of hell I wouldn't wish upon anyone. Now, I've only had this happen to me once in the 8 years I've had procreate, but there is a very real chance that with an ipad software update procreate will just kill itself and all your art with it. I've since learned to back everything up before my ipad decides to auto update, despite me turning off auto updates.

Ipads also give you no other option than procreate to draw. Yes, ibis paint and auto desk and like 3 other apps are on the app store, but they are ass anus on the iPad, especially in comparison to procreate. They're laggy, they lack a lot of key features, they have ads plastered everywhere, (which you can pay to take those away, but it doesn't really make the app any better), and there's no flexibility with brushes and textures and layers or just anything you'd really need.

The ipad itself kind of sucks too. It's pretty limited in what you can do with it given all the power the pros especially have. There's a video by dankpods on YouTube that explains it better than I can but for something that's trying to be a laptop replacement, it seriously sucks at it. All throughout college I used my ipad for note-taking, projects, assignments, and just general school work, but please don't be me and get yourself an actual laptop. The only thing my ipad was good for was note taking, and that was only because the app notability auto saved all my notes to my Google drive. That's it. The native notes app SUCKS. Multitasking on the ipad? Ass. Researching? Ass. Writing papers? Ass. Hell even the picture in picture thing was so annoying to get working and move out of the way enough to get other stuff done too. I really did try to do everything on there, it was easier and lighter to carry around, but I ended up grabbing my laptop for everything anyways. Ipads are good for watching movies here and there, maybe doodling, taking notes, but that is ALL they're good for.

Side note: I'm Bilingual, and that thing ios does where it changes the language of my keyboard whenever it just assumes I need it is actually so annoying, and I haven't found a way to stop it from doing that outside of just deleting the other keyboards.

The Apple pencil isn't getting away from this rant either. I'll scream this from the top of my lungs, the only reason the Apple pencil costs as much as it does is because it's the ONLY pen you can get for the ipad for drawing. NOTHING ELSE WILL WORK. NOTHING ELSE WILL GIVE YOU PRESSURE SENSITIVITY/TILT SUPPORT. and I personally think that's an incredibly evil scam. Apple can get away with charging whatever they want for the Apple pencil, which is truly no better than the Wacom bamboo one I got for my Samsung, because they've designed in such a way that only they can make their stuff compatible. It's so stupid. $1200 usd for an ipad and the damn thing doesn't even come with the stupid ass pen.

Side side note: scribble or whatever it's called, that thing where you can write with the Apple pencil and it turns it into text? Genuine booty with the Apple pencil/ipad, it's so useless I forget that it's even an option. It takes forever to think what it was that you wrote, even if you have beautiful handwriting. Its laggy, and inaccurate, the auto correct drives me nuts. And good luck trying to use it with any other language that isn't English.

Samsung has the same feature, and so far I've had ZERO issues with it. It goes letter by letter rather than word by word like the ipad does, it's so much better at accurately typing what I wrote, there virtually no lag, and it works just as well with other languages.

I've had my Samsung tablet for about 2 months, and it was, one, cheaper! The screen and colors are beautiful, krita and infinite painter are great drawing apps (the sketch posted here was done in infinite painter) the tablet CAME WITH A PEN, which admittedly was kinda shit for drawing specifically, but i got another one because there are other options!!! Other affordable well working options!!! Infinite painter and krita save backups of your art locally! AND I can both stick a micro USB AND a hard drive in it! It runs smoother than my ipad ever did, taking notes on it is a much smoother experience, apps are more diverse, and multitasking works so much better. I also think the aspect ratio of Samsung tablets make more sense for art/creative works than the ipads since it's more monitor/computer screen shaped but that's just me.

Side side side note: you have to charge the Apple pencil to use it at all, and the only way to store it is on the charger, which makes the pencil hot if actively charging, and ruins the battery capacity over time. I've had my 2nd gen apple pencil for about 4 years, (I had the Apple pencil 1st gen for the same amount of time before that) and the battery has depleted a bit, though it still lasts a pretty long time. They do last a good day or two with little use off the charger, and about 6 hours of constant use be it note taking or drawing. I havent had too many issues with finding it dead and having to wait for it to charge, it charges pretty fast, but it still happens.

The Samsung s pen doesn't need to be charged to work. It has a battery, but you only need it for the Bluetooth features like gesture and whatnot, but I don't use them at all, so I don't charge it since the placement of the charger is awkward. But it doesn't matter cause it works anyways. Same with the Wacom pen I bought with it! It doesn't charge at all it just works!