If you have got been taking a look to shop for one of the vital absolute best iPads, one in all your concerns has almost certainly been a stylus – the Apple Pencil is a well-liked stylus for the corporate’s pills that allows you to comic strip, take notes, and simply navigate round iPadOS.
Since first being presented, the Apple Pencil for iPads has long past via two other iterations – the unique model used to be presented in 2015 and the second-gen fashion got here alongside in 2018, to paintings on more moderen iPads.
Those two variations of the iPad stylus have lived in comfy unity, operating for various kinds of iPad, however one alternate within the new iPad (2022) threatens to destroy all of that.
Apple Pencil issues
Despite being a well-liked accent, the unique iPad is not with out its problems. Primarily, it fees in a atypical type: it’s a must to take a cap off the top of it and plug that finish into the Lightning Port to your iPad.
Upon doing this, you needed to depart the stylus plugged into the pill at a unusual attitude for fairly a while, because of this there used to be a perfect chance of by accident strolling into the prolonged Pencil and breaking the rate plug off from the remainder of it.
This is a kind of Apple design selections that has been mocked mercilessly, similar to the wi-fi mouse with the plug at the backside of the item. It’s no marvel the Apple Pencil 2 used to be extra widespread, because it makes use of magnets to snap to the highest of the iPad the place it fees wirelessly.
The upward thrust of the Apple Pencil 2
The Apple Pencil 2 has discovered itself followed by way of an increasing number of iPads, together with the Pro, Air, and in 2021 Mini strains, through the years.
The explanation why for that is easy: Lightning ports are slowly shedding off iPads. The Air line misplaced the port in 2020 whilst the Mini did in 2021. Now it is simply the entry-level fashions left.
Without Lightning ports, the unique Apple Pencil has no handy means of charging; now not except you are prepared to mess around with more than a few adaptors and dongles that Apple has bought prior to now. The transfer to USB-C has been accompanied by way of a design overhaul for iPads, to facilitate the magnetic clip for charging the Apple Pencil 2.
And that is the place the issue lies.
A USB-C iPad (2022)
A brand new leak means that Apple’s entry-level iPad in 2022 may get a USB-C port as an alternative of Lightning. This would make it the overall iPad line to drop Apple’s proprietary charging tech, although iPhones nonetheless use it.
If this took place, the first-gen Apple Pencil can be utterly redundant. There can be no new iPads that might facilitate it, making it most likely that Apple would retire the older machine.
Unlike iPhones, Apple does not promote previous-gen iPads, so it would not want to stay the accent round to beef up other slates. No, there’d be no explanation why for the corporate to make any further of the seven-year-old stick.
Sure, some third-party outlets would most likely have inventory of the unique Apple Pencil, but when Apple did totally include USB-C, the stylus’ days can be numbered.
The long run of the Apple Pencil 3
Apple isn’t any stranger to discontinuing its tech. It does so mainly once a year when new iterations of its annual merchandise pop out – and the unique, awkward Apple Pencil needed to move sooner or later.
And it is about time – the process of charging the stylus is so silly that it by no means must have made it previous the drafting board.
Still, because the first-ever Apple Pencil, if the corporate did retire it, it would be large information.
If Apple handiest has one stylus to make, we might like to peer it glance to the longer term, and release an Apple Pencil 3. The second-gen stick has somewhat awkward controls and does not include as many helpful options as Samsung’s S Pen, and there are many issues that Apple may do with it to strengthen.
As it stands, there are many Apple Pencil choices that might thieve some limelight if Apple did cut back its stylus presence.