Unless you're talking about something else. Exactly what functionality is missing in Illustrator's pen tool?
Larry
Larry, could you expand your question? As far as I have experienced it, the pen tool works very well with this feature in Photoshop. The "rubber band" can also be turned off if you don't want to use it.
The Rubber Band option does make bezier paths. If you have Photoshop, check it out. Some people really like it, and for those, it would make a nice feature addition to Illustrator.
The line you make can be vastly different if you are using Bezier curves to generate your line. Just a simple straight line rubberbanding of the line will not be of much use in this situation.
Larry
If you mean the Freeform Pen tool, I see what you mean. In AI, this could be accomplished easily by adding a visual track to the Pencil tool.
Larry
Larry
It's hard for a beginner to grasp. Especially from a book. It's much easier
to learn by watching. Illustrator 7 and/or 8 used to come with a training CD
that had a video of learning to use the pen tool. That's how I went from
clicking and doing a lot of editing to getting it right in the first pass.