Shading may never be the same again. Beyond the Apple Pencil's potential to evolve the way visual artists express themselves, iPads are finally ready for precision input devices.
People laughed as Apple's Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, introduced the $99 Apple Pencil during the company's Hello Siri presentation, but most of the laughter was in response to the name of the precision input device, rather than the pencil itself or Steve Jobs' famous crass words spoken in rebuke of styluses:
RIP Steve Jobs. (h/t @fmanjoo) pic.twitter.com/EAcFtnHNix
— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) September 9, 2015
Jobs made fun of the stylus about eight years ago, about three years before the arrival of the first iPad in 2010. The iPad may not have had much use for a stylus, but it does now.
The iPad has evolved from a device people simply marveled at to a device that has plenty of functionalities as a tablet. As made apparent by Apple's enterprise and healthcare focus at Hello Siri, the iPad is now ready for work in the white collar world.
The iPad Pro offers users more Retina display real estate to work with than any other tablet in the line. If the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is to replace notepads in work places, it needs a way for people to turn their thought into text in the easiest way possible.
With the Apple Pencil, people don't have to put their iPad Pros down to type in text. They can support the tablet with one hand, write with the other and keep their feet moving.
The Apple Pencil and iPad Pro were also made for each other. The iPad Pro's Multi-Touch system can distinguish between finger and stylus input, and will double its scans for new data when it senses the Apple Pencil.
Inside the Apple Pencil, there are sensors that allow it to detect "a range of pressures," according to Apple. Heavier pressures produce heavier lines. The same relationship is true of lighter touch and thinner lines, making the Apple Pencil ideal for drawing and sharing those drawings.
"Two tilt sensors built within the tip of Apple Pencil calculate the exact orientation and angle of your hand," said Apple. "As you naturally write or draw, the relative positions of each of these sensors can be detected by the Multi-Touch display. So you can create shading effects simply by tilting Apple Pencil the way you would a charcoal or conventional pencil."
The Apple Pencil's ability to deliver detailed shading is amplified by the tablet's pinch and push zooming. You can't do that with your standard drawing paper.
