New Delhi: At the ‘Let Loose’ event, Apple introduced a the next gen iPad Pro with a Tandem OLED display and the new M4 chip, along with two new iPad Air variants. Apple also introduced the Apple Pencil Pro, to support the slew of new iPads. The Pencil Pro is aimed at artists, students and professionals.
Squeezing the pencil can be used to trigger custom contextual menus, such as a tool palette in a drawing app, or line weights and colours. At the ‘cap’ of a pencil, a haptic engine provides feedback on the squeezing. There is a gyroscope on the barrel as well, that allows users to roll the pencil, to change the orientation of shaped brushes for example, and precisely control any tool that the pencil is representing.
The Apple Pencil Pro now supports Find My devices capabilities. The Pencil Pro charges and pairs magnetically with compatible models. The demo showcased the Pencil Pro being used in the Procreate app, with a combination of hover and squeeze actions to select and work on particular layers. The haptic engine is used to give feedback on alignment of objects being moved.
Apple has designed the Pencil Pro experience to be precise and intuitive, for drawing, note-taking and marking up documents on the iPad. It offers pixel-perfect precision, low latency, tilt sensitivity and support for palm rejection. The low latency makes it feel like you are writing naturally on paper because of how responsive the drawing or writing is.
The tilt sensitivity is great for shading and other effects, with the pressure sensitivity responding naturally to a range of pressures from a light touch to deeper presses. Apple is offering free engraving to personalise the Pencil Pro. The tool is great for artists, illustrators and designers, and can also be useful in meetings, classes and brainstorming sessions.