Three Pencils were given to the iPads. | Image: Apple
A third, cheaper Apple Pencil now sits in Apple’s lineup of styluses, giving iPad owners more choice than ever. And yet, that choice is fraught with compromises and caveats. There’s still not one Apple Pencil to rule them all, and that’s a problem for shoppers.
Let’s run down what was announced today. The new Apple Pencil is $79, can be magnetically attached to the side of your iPad, and no longer needs to be plugged directly into the iPad’s charging port for power, like the 2015 original. On the newest Pro models, it also supports the hover feature that shows where your Pencil is before you actually touch the screen. These are all good things!
But Apple made some strange omissions, too. Pressure sensitivity, a headlining feature of both…