- The Apple Pencil Pro adds a ton of new features at the same price as the old model.
- Paired with the new iPad Pro, it’s a portable production studio.
- No, Apple still hasn’t put an eraser on the other end.
Maybe the biggest announcement at yesterday’s Apple event wasn’t an iPad, but the new Apple Pencil Pro.
The Apple Pencil Pro looks pretty much exactly the same as the previous model—a pencil-shaped tube of white plastic with no buttons, ports, or blinking LEDs. But inside, it’s a whole new game, and unlike the new iPad Air or the new iPad Pro, the new Pencil lets you do a whole lot more stuff you could never do before. It is especially suited for anyone who draws, paints, or retouches.
“Squeezing the Pencil and getting the haptic feedback feels like squeezing the AirPods Pro’s stem, but there is real, tactile feedback since there’s a haptic motor inside the new Pencil. I dig it, and the addition of a gesture is a nice way to simplify the interface while still providing quick access to drawing tools,” writes iPad superfan Federico Viticci on his Mac Stories blog.
Pencil In
First up, what’s new? The Apple Pencil Pro gains a gyroscope, a squeeze gesture, a haptic engine for physical feedback, and whatever chip is required to add Find My, which it now has (pro tip: it’s probably down the back of the sofa).
All of these additions are worth a look. The gyroscope lets the iPad know when you roll the pencil, a gesture Apple has branded the “barrel roll.” By default, this works just like it would if you rolled a real, asymmetrical brush or chisel-tipped marker, rotating the virtual brush on the screen.
It’s a nice intuitive addition, and third-party developers can use the barrel-roll gesture to trigger other functions. It could presumably zoom in and out or trigger shortcuts in non-drawing apps.
Then there’s the squeeze, which replaces the double-tap in the previous Apple Pencil. Squeeze the barrel, and a new radial menu pops up on the screen. By default, this lets you select the pen or pencil type, along with some other customization options, but again, third-party app makers can do what they want with it.
When you squeeze the barrel, the new Taptic engine issues a little haptic bump to let you know you’ve done it. This is a huge improvement over the old feedback-less double-tap. I gave up using the tap gesture on my Pencil because it was just too hard to know what state it was in.
The haptics go further. Apple’s example was to give a haptic buzz when you have correctly centered an element while dragging and dropping it in a design app.
The combination of the new Apple Pencil Pro and the amazing, bright OLED screen on the new iPad Pro looks like it could be the ultimate portable design studio for designers and photographers on the go or just on the sofa, but there are still a few reasons you might prefer the more established options from Wacom.
Screen Size
Wacom is known for its various pen tablets, including its amazing Cintiq line, which is essentially an external display for your computer with stylus support. These styluses have thousands of levels of sensitivity, actual physical buttons that can be customized, and—perhaps most important of all—much bigger screens than the iPad Pro.
Wacom’s flagship Cintiq line, for example, comes in a 4K 24-inch version, which also has a nice wide bezel or border around the screen so you have somewhere to rest your palm when drawing at the edge of your canvas. It’s $2,700, and you need a computer to plug it into, but as computer drawing experiences go, it’s hard to beat.
“The iPad Pro offers incredible portability and the convenience of an all-in-one device, but I still think some artists might prefer the precision and familiarity of a Mac with a Wacom setup for more complex projects or specific software compatibility,” Rene Ymzon, engineer and tech expert at motion engineering company Advanced Motion Controls, told Lifewire via email. “For those who value mobility and versatility, the iPad Pro with Apple Pencil Pro could very well be the ultimate digital drawing setup.”
But the iPad doesn’t have to be that. As mentioned above, the iPad and Apple Pencil combo is incredibly portable, even more so now that the new M4 iPads are both thinner and lighter than the previous generation. Add in the new pencil features, the brighter display, and the option for a matte screen (at a $100 premium) on the 1TB and 2TB storage models, and you have something utterly compelling for many visual artists.
But for the rest of us? The current Apple Pencil you already own is probably just fine—unless you are planning to upgrade to the new iPad Pro, in which case your perfectly good old Apple Pencil will not be compatible.
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News Summary:
- How the New Apple Pencil Pro Is Like an Art Studio in a Beautiful Stick
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