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January 19, 2016
Follow-up on iPad Pro and Apple Pencil
I've now had the iPad Pro for a good couple of months and the Apple Pencil for a month and a half. How do I use them? Have they changed my life?
As far as the iPad Pro goes, it has totally replaced my iPad Air 2. I don't think I've used the Air 2 once since I got the Pro. However, I am doing the exact same things on the Pro that I used to do on the smaller Air 2. The split screen functionality is not good or compelling enough to really work with two apps at once, and it's nowhere near universally supported.
So I use the Pro just as a larger iPad. Although the Pro is significantly heavier than the Air 2, and almost a bit unwieldy, apparently the bigger screen and the fact that it's a good bit quicker than the Air 2 are enough for me to use the larger Pro.
I'm disappointed that there really are no apps that are truly "pro" in the sense that they add undeniable value to a larger device, make it a professional tool instead of just the device that the iPad always has been. For now, there really is no difference.
How about the Apple Pencil? As someone who has worked with and written about pen computing technology for over 20 years, I should be a primary candidate for the Apple Pencil. I should be thrilled that Apple is finally recognizing the pen as the important productivity tool it can be.
But I am not.
I played around a bit with the Apple Pencil when I first got it, but haven't used it since. That's not because I am no longer a fan of pens. It's because Apple just didn't get it right. The Apple Pen is too large, too slippery, and too poorly supported. You never know if an app will really support it or just part of what the Pencil can do.
And having a pen with a battery is just unappealing, especially when its primary charging mechanism, to stick the pen into the Pro's Lightning connector, is just too bizarre. As is, when I look at the Pencil and feel like I want to try it again, the first thing that comes into my mind is that it probably needs charging first. And I move on.
Add to that the fact that there's no garage for the pen on the big Pro, and the $99 Pencil seems almost like an effort by Apple to emphasize Steve Jobs' point: we don't need a pen!
All this baffles me. I really wanted to like the Pencil. But the way Apple went about it is like Microsoft went about the Kinect. An expensive add-on that shows flashes of brilliance, but overall just doesn't work well enough for people to want it.
Posted by conradb212 at 10:04 PM