Do you want an Apple stylus for your iPad?

January 20, 2015

The iPad Pro (or iPad Plus) is one of the latest in a long line of products rumored to be on-deck from Apple, and along with it are rumors of an Apple stylus — a digital pen that can be used to more easily write or draw on the screen. Apple famously said fingers were better for input than styluses at the original Apple event, yet they've accumulated a lot of patents in the area over the years. Meanwhile, companies like Ten One Design, Adonit, FiftyThree, Studio Neat, and others have shipped a lot of third-party stylus pens. Apple, arguably, could make an amazingly engineered, incredibly well integrated stylus if they chose to. But the question is — would you want it?

I've used stylus pens for years. I've used them with Handspring and Palm products that had resistive touch screens. I've used them with Wacom tablets that had digitizers. I've used them on the iPad both without pressure sensitivity and with pressure sensitivity simulated over Bluetooth LE.

The Wacom ones were always the best. Bluetooth LE is okay but less consistent because it depends on each individual app incorporating the matching software developer kit. A digitizer on the iPad Pro would make Wacom-like results possible, including from an Apple stylus.

Absent a digitizer, while an Apple stylus would no doubt connect more easily and enjoy wider-ranging system and app support, it would have to use some other technology or set of technologies to get anywhere near producing Wacom-like (or better?) results.

We won't know anything for certain about an Apple stylus unless and until Apple announces one. Until then, it's just another rumor. We can, however, ask this question — if Apple did make a stylus, would you want it?

Let me know in the poll above and let me know why, or why not, in the comments below!