A close look at Microsoft’s new Ink Workspace

Ink Workspace is really more of an Ink Hub

The Ink Workspace is a menu of ink-related apps and features you can access from the taskbar or by clicking a button on your stylus. Not nearly as interesting or useful as the Air Command menu on Samsung’s stylus-equipped models, but certainly a nice start. The Workspace menu doesn’t appear to be configurable (at least not yet), so it’s mostly only useful if you want to get to Microsoft’s new Sketchpad or Screen Sketch apps. You also get one-click access to an updated version of Sticky Notes, and you can search the Windows Store for pen-enabled apps. That would be more useful if Microsoft’s new apps were more useful

Windows has always been at the forefront of making human–computing interaction more natural, and with the digital pen in mind, we have delivered powerful features in Windows 10 such as Web Notes on Microsoft Edge and all the pen goodness we have built right into OneNote. However, we still see that for many of our customers, using a pen on Windows can be a complicated place. With the Anniversary Update to Windows 10, we have set out to greatly simplify your pen experience and deliver on the promise of making your digital pen as easy to use as pen and paper. Because your digital pen leaves digital ink, we can go beyond that and give your ink super powers. With digital ink you can get more done, faster, and in a more natural way.

Screen Sketch is another un-needed new app from Microsoft

Microsoft loves to create great new tools and then, just when everyone falls in love with them, start over. The many iterations of photo galleries and Live tools are a perfect example. So is the new Screen Sketch. Microsoft’s Snip is already an excellent, well-behaved, free tool for capturing screens, windows, or areas of a screen. It has good annotation tools, and reasonable sharing and saving options. Simply binding a key (on the stylus or otherwise) to Snip (which is already pretty easy to access) would have been a lot more useful than inventing a new tool with hardly any features. Screen Sketch only works on an entire screen, doesn’t allow saving directly to disk, and requires learning a new interface.

All in all, it’s good to see Microsoft continuing to improve the Active Stylus on the Surface product line. However, after all these years, and all its investment in pen computing (including the excellent handwriting and equation recognition technology in Office), the company is certainly capable of something a lot more exciting and powerful than the current version of the Ink Workspace — which is essentially a couple trivial apps and a shortcut menu, plus some much-needed updates to Settings.