“When the iPad fits a task well, there’s no question for me that it’s superior to a laptop. It’s not better at everything, but in a few ways it beats the pants off of a Mac,” Gabe writes for MacDrifter. “The Apple Pencil is one aspect that keeps me coming back to my iPad Pro.”
“The Apple Pencil is so perfectly tuned as a stylus that I’d argue the best thing that Apple could do to increase sales of the higher end models is to include the Pencil,” Gabe writes. “I’ve owned an Apple Pencil since their first release and it’s only now, with the new iPad Pro, that I think it’s reached a point of magic.”
“In most of the apps I’ll mention below, the performance is so close to actual pen on paper that it’s easy to forget that it’s not,” Gabe writes. “Which is kind of the point.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you haven’t used an Apple Pencil yet and you’re near an Apple Store, go in and try one – it truly is magical!
Apple Pencil is a fantastic product.
I can think of many uses with your pencil, you sexy, sexy man! Don’t forget the iLube.
Leonardo da Vinci would have appreciated the Apple Pencil. Being left-handed as he was, I think different about “ergonomics” than might the right-handed majority of quill-wielders. Thomas Jefferson was also a lefty, and as he penned the Declaration, I imagine he had more interstitial time to reflect upon what he was writing as the ink dried. That accrued to our infinite blessing of freedom. Far-fetched supposition? Perhaps, but that is precisely the mother of invention. It is the moments between the moments where inspiration has a lucky strike, and something new gets born.
according to monticello.org, TJ was a rightie…
(Thomas Jefferson was right-handed. However, in the fall of 1786, after breaking his right wrist in Paris, Jefferson temporarily used his left hand for writing letters.)
Eight US Presidents were/are left-handed:
• James A. Garfield (R)
• Herbert Hoover (R) (disputed)
• Harry Truman (D) (may have been ambidextrous)
• Gerald Ford (R)
• Ronald Reagan (R) (switched to right hand for writing in school; perhaps ambidextrous)
• George H.W. Bush (R)
• Bill Clinton (D)
• Barack Obama (D)
Not fully realized until Apple supports pencil within its own apps! I can’t even sign a document in pages. But yes, thanks to apps like Notability, Procreate, etc, it truly is great. When used as a stylus, copy and paste is a breeze.
You are right, it would be better to be able to sign or draw directly inside of a Pages document. But try this workaround: make your signature on Notes and export it to Camera Roll via the export icon. Open it on Photos and crop the excess blank areas around your signature.
Now you have an image that you can insert into any document that allows importing images.
Not as great as what you suggest, but it works.
Surface + pen + Word (or any other app) – no problem.
Since you’re looking to solve a problem..simply posting a solution.
Typing this on an iPad Pro 12.9 . Use it everyday, fantastic magazine reader due to size (my local library has Zinio so hundreds of ‘free’ magazines), love the pencil, great product but it doesn’t match the Wacom pen for my 27 inch Cintiq.
— Apple pencil is best tablet stylus but the Wacom still has an edge in response and accuracy.
— Apple pencil looks nice but the ugly Wacom is ergonomic (you can even change size of ‘grip’ barrel as option). way more comfortable drawing for hours
— Wacom has ERASER on one end, way faster
–Wacom does NOT NEED A BATTERY — so no tedious Apple pencil recharging.
apple iPad Pro great product but it has to cater for wider audience like executives vs just artists like myself so they had to make it ‘slim’ and pretty etc vs pure functionality , for the majority it is great.
typo: last line refers to the ‘pencil’ (as slim) etc.
people down voting, so you’ve used an apple pencil vs Wacom for hours and years to compare like me?
Is just accepting everything Apple does as ‘good’ — and down voting everyone with factual points which you are not able to refute — smart? Look at the pro Macs, complain and you might get changes like now faster upgrades (Kaby Lake came fast) and more powerful GPUs.
don’t you want Apple to implement ‘no battery’ pens and erasers on the end?
I don’t watch a lot of TV, maybe more complainers going factually what they think is wrong with it might have got TV changes faster?
Davewrite..you’re on MACDAILYNEWS. ANY statement that is critical of Apple tech vs the competition is going to get ripped to shreds, no matter how much sense it makes. Trust me, I’ve got extensive experience doing the same.
There is nothing better than drawing directly on the surface of the screen, just like pencil and paper…it’s natural. Wacom requires you to draw blind on a surface while looking up at the image you’re rendering on the monitor.
eh…
I draw directly on the screen on a Cintiq. You are confusing the Intuous etc with a Cintiq.
mine is even larger than the 24 inch shown here:
beyond cool, but I would assume your set-up is slightly higher price than an Apple Pencil.
thinking about it the great response I get from the Cintiq pen is that the Cintiq is being powered by my Mac Pro (48 GB RAM) with a powerful GTX 980 Ti. The GPU is driving the pixels (not the pen).
With that in mind it’s amazing what the iPad Pro and pencil can do as a mobile setup (space constraints for the processor , mobile GPU etc).
the apple pencil and the wacom pen are about the same price if you buy them separately . The 27 inch Cintiq costs about 2K with pen included, touch model more and you have to add the Mac. (I also have the more expensive Wacom Art Pen which tracks and rotates the actual shape of a brush – say a rectangle brush can be horizontal or vertical ).
with software I believe you can actually convert an iPad Pro linked to a Mac into a Cintiq and USE DESKTOP MAC APPS like full photoshop on the iPad.
“…and USE DESKTOP MAC APPS like full photoshop on the iPad.”
ooh.
One software is called Astropad. I never tried it as I have two Cintiqs for my own use but here it is :
Cool..Surface Studio is like this too. I’ve used it, it’s fantastic.
Both of these very advanced tech. (To those whose eyes are open to things other than a slice of fruit; the closed-eyes folks will use the typical shallow response – ignore or trash this post.)
hey botty, even if you made a tech error here I much more appreciate communicating with you over ‘tech’ rather than political issues.
So have a good day.
——
Note: friends, the iPad Pro has way better ‘Touch’ capabilities (for games etc) than the Cintiq. The Cintiq HD shown here doesn’t even have touch ( the QHD Touch model does but since Mac apps are not really touch designed like iOS touch functions are not very good) — only thing it is superior to the iPad Pro is the pencil/stylus for drawing.
like i said I use both.
“..you made a tech error here..”
I sure did, thanks for the correction. mea culpa.
You mean like this:
How about a large screen iOS device on a tilt stand.
Exactly.
The Pencil is overpriced, should be useable system wide (Apple apps, for instance) and included on all iPad Pro models.
Bought an Apple Pencil when it first came out with the iPad Pro. Used it a couple of times (even bought some apps that use it) but it just wasn’t in my normal set of use cases for the iPad, so it sat dormant for about a year. My wife decided to get an app that used the pencil so I gave her mine. Alas, after sitting around for a year not being used, the battery was completely shot. Fortunately, I had AppleCare so Apple replaced it. However, it is a bit disconcerting that the battery was shot after about a year and a half.
After a year, could no longer charge by sticking it into the end of the iPad like a stick on an oversized lollipop..what a shame..ugly as the whole process is in the first place.
On the other hand, users like me have been using a pen on a Surface for over a year, and haven’t needed to charge it once. And it still has 67% left in the AAAA battery that I can replace in 2 minutes when (if!) the time comes.
That’s called advanced tech – since we’re all on the topic.
I will buy a new iPad mini the second Apple add pencil support. If any product was destined for pencil support is the mini. The note talker’s ultimate device.