this last Apple’s big release I was so foolish that I could have been forgiven for paying attention only to the siren sound of the new OLED iPad. I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about these new tablet products and accessories, and believe it or not, it’s not the ultra-luxury, very expensive tablets that excites me the most, but the humble $130 tablets. It’s a stylus.
If you don’t mind dropping a few hundred dollars, 2024 iPad Air If your M4 iPad Pro costs more than $1,000, you should seriously consider buying an Apple Pencil Pro now.
The Apple Pencil has been a staple for a long time, but we never expected it to have such an impact. But the latest version’s new squeeze and barrel roll features don’t feel like mere gimmicks. These essentially change and enhance how you use your stylus and how you use your iPad in general. These few features make both art tools and drafting apps more intuitive and feel more like their analogue counterparts.
It’s just a shame that you can’t use it on many of the other iPads that have come out so far.
How do I use the new features of Apple Pencil Pro?
Barrel rolls on apps like Freeform, Goodnotes, and Zinnia don’t just give you a fun way to play with highlighter. Writing notes using a stylus becomes more realistic. Fountain pens from FreeForm and Goodnotes look more natural than the old iPads. I tested it with the old 2nd generation Apple Pencil and the new Apple Pencil, and they felt pretty much the same, but the new gyroscope made the process surprisingly enjoyable. It’s incredibly accurate on the iPad Pro with no noticeable lag.
I’m not an artist by any means, but I’ve brought the Pencil Pro to apps like Procreate and Procreate Dreams to see what a pencil can bring to a party. Actually, there are quite a lot. In Procreate, you can use pencil shadows to highlight different layers of your work. In Dreams, barrel rolls allow you to easily manipulate the orientation of objects in your scene, essentially an easy-to-use keyframe generator.
As for the squeeze feature, you’d be surprised how much time this can save you in certain apps. If you want to quickly undo something or select a different pen tool, you won’t want to go back to the old-style pencil because it’s so easy to squeeze, bring up the menu, and press again. There’s a small haptic motor on the bottom half, but it’s just there to provide a bit of feedback when using the squeeze feature.
Plus, it has all the features like pressure and tilt sensitivity, but all the less urgent features like Find My connectivity are also welcome. We should also mention the updated “hover” feature, which generates a shadow indicating the current angle of the pen. Simply put, this is by far the best Apple Pencil out there. The price is also the same as the 2nd generation Apple Pencil, $129. Maybe $80 is fine. Apple Pencil USB-Cwhich works with both new and old generations of iPads, but without pressure sensitivity or the new holy grail features of the new stylus.
Apple Pencil Pro is not backward compatible
I really like this stylus. It’s so annoying that I have to tell anyone interested that the stylus doesn’t work on older iPad models. At this time, the only iPads that are compatible with this stylus are the new Pro and Air. Apple said this was due to a reconfiguration of the induction coil connector in the latest iPads, but that’s an excuse. Sure, Apple wants to push the new iPad, but that’s not to say there’s nothing in the new tablet that justifies these limitations.
I’ve been using the new iPad Pro for about a week. That’s plenty of time to share your thoughts on the latest Apple tablet. I really like this tablet. But I think I’d like it more if the device’s software was better at multitasking, taking advantage of the M4 chip. . Tablets, even the most expensive varieties like Apple’s new iPad Pro, can feel like just oversized phones. That’s why accessories like the Magic Keyboard and many third-party keyboard alternatives feel like a must-have.
There are many styluses out there, and many of them work with Apple tablets, including: Adknit Note-M And that logitech crayon. There are also many fake writing devices that are not Apple specific. MSI Pencil 2 with real graphite chips Samsung’s S Pen Creator Edition with tilt sensing function. Most of these have given me decent results, but I’d say none had as much of an impact on my actual use of the device as the Pencil Pro.
I don’t have a habit of writing notes on electronic devices. I carry a journalism notebook and an additional writer’s notebook. I have a weird laundry list of loose thoughts that I need to scribble down from time to time. I find joy in pens. I find myself researching 0.5 seconds and 0.35 seconds in a stationery store that I rarely visit. But if you have a real dream, you’ll have your own fountain pen, a bottle of ink, and some actual calligraphy skills.
The Apple Pencil Pro is the closest I’ve come to thinking about a lifestyle where I rely entirely on a tablet for note-taking. Nothing beats the simple thrill of writing with a Pilot G-2 gel pen on notebook paper, but there’s no shame in whipping out your iPad every once in a while and working on your chicken scratch. If this damn pen was backwards compatible, I’d go buy it.
