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Review of all Apple Pencil features. Seven reasons why the Apple Pencil rules

Are you going to sit down at your iPad and brainstorm on the next brilliant idea, but notice that Apple Pencil stopped working. There are several possible reasons why your Apple Pencil isn't working. Below are some troubleshooting ideas to get your Apple Pencil back to work.

Check the battery

Is your Apple Pencil not charging? Could the battery on your Apple Pencil be dead? To check if your pencil is charged, follow these steps:

1. Check the view widget on the iPad and look at the battery status. Widgets can be found in the " Today" To get there, swipe right from home screen, lock screen, or while you're looking at your notifications.

2. You should see the widget " Batteries" If not, make sure you have it enabled. pencil setting with Bluetooth.

3. If the battery shows 0%, plug it in, recharge and try again.

Bluetooth is turned off

As mentioned in the "Checking the Battery" section, if your Apple Pencil doesn't appear in the list of devices under the battery widgets, or if the Battery widget is missing altogether, Bluetooth is likely disabled. To check this, follow these steps:

1. On iPad, tap " Settings».

2. Touch Bluetooth.

3. Touch the switch to turn on Bluetooth.

4. If you can't get it to turn on, or you see a rotate/download icon, restart your iPad and then try again.

Note: This is also a great way to troubleshoot Bluetooth problems.

5. That's all.

Bluetooth not connected

If your Apple Pencil won't pair, or your iPad hasn't lost pairing, repeating the Bluetooth pairing process may solve your Apple Pencil problems.

1. Make sure your iPad is turned on, unlocked, and Bluetooth is turned on.

2. If you see your Apple Pencil, you may need to re-pair.

3. Tap Apple Pencil, then select Forget this device».

4. Release your Apple Pencil and plug it into the iPad's lightning port.

5. Request Bluetooth Pairing A dialog box should appear. Click " Create a pair" to begin the pairing process.

6. If the dialog box at the top does not appear, continue searching for additional problems.

Pencil tip worn out

If your Apple Pencil is acting erratically or not working at all, the tip of the pencil may be worn out. Replacing the tip is easy.

Note: Although the pencil tip does not have an exact wear time, many owners replace it when the feel, finish, or functionality begins to diminish. If the finish or feel is rough or sandy, you should replace the pencil tip as it may scratch the surface of your iPad.

1. Unscrew the tip counterclockwise until it stops.

2. Replace the old tip with the new one by screwing the tip clockwise until it feels secure in your pencil.

The app does not support Apple Pencil

Not all apps fully support Pencil. To make sure your Apple Pencil is working, open a known supported app. The Notes app is a reliable and great choice for testing your Pencil and should be on your home screen. If it doesn't, you will need to download and reinstall it.

Unsupported iPad model

If your Apple Pencil still doesn't work, make sure your iPad supports it. Apple Pencil works with the 9.7-inch iPad 2018 and all . If your iPad is not one of these models, your iPad does not support Apple Pencil and will not work.

AppleCare Contact Time

If you've completed all of the troubleshooting steps above, it may be time to contact AppleCare; Apple Pencil comes with a one-year limited warranty. If your pencil is no longer covered by warranty, the battery cost is $29 for Apple. You can either buy it at your local store or call AppleCare by phone. You can also visit Apple's website for repairs or replacements.

Using it, iOS newbies may have difficulty connecting and charging. About, how to connect Apple Pencil to iPad Pro and charge it using the tablet or charging cable, we will tell you below.

In contact with

Connecting a stylus to your iPad Pro is easy. First, you need to activate Bluetooth in the tablet settings. To do this, open the Settings application, select the Bluetooth section and activate the corresponding switch.

Next, you need to remove the cap with the aluminum strip from the Apple Pencil. Hide it carefully so as not to lose it (this happens very often). Under the cap there is a Lightning connector, which must be inserted into the corresponding connector on the tablet.

A request to create a pair will appear on the screen. Confirm your request.

You can check if your Apple Pencil is ready for use in the " Settings" To do this, just go to the section Bluetooth and see if there is an accessory with the value “ Connected«.

After each Bluetooth shutdown, the stylus must be reconnected. The connection is restored instantly. Just connect Apple Pencil to iPad Pro and you'll be ready to use it in seconds.

How to charge Apple Pencil

Apple Pencil has a built-in rechargeable battery inside. If the stylus starts to work intermittently, it means it's time to recharge. Fortunately, the charging process is very fast. There are two ways to charge your Apple Pencil.

First way involves connecting the stylus directly to the tablet via the Lightning connector. According to Apple, 15 seconds is enough to provide half an hour of use for the Apple Pencil, and a few minutes of charging will allow you to use it for several hours.

Checking the charge level of the accessory is very simple - you need to connect it to the tablet and bring up the Today screen (in the Notification Center) by swiping your finger across the screen from top to bottom. In the "Widgets" section, a corresponding widget will appear indicating the charge level of the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil.

Second way consists of using a miniature Lightning-Lightning adapter, supplied with the stylus. The adapter often gets lost, so it is best to connect it to the cable when not in use.

In order to charge the Apple Pencil, you need to use an adapter to connect it to a cable, which in turn connects to a computer via a USB port, an AC adapter, a removable battery, or a car USB charger. True, this charging method will take longer than the first.

Apple Pencil is a drawing device for iPad tablets. Initially, the appearance of this gadget caused a mixed reaction among fans of Apple technology. After all, the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, promoted purely manual control of equipment produced by the legendary company, and the stylus, in his opinion, is a relic of the past. Therefore, Apple promised not to produce this, in their opinion, unnecessary accessory.

In support of styluses, it is still worth saying that people of certain professions really need this tool, so the founder of Apple may have been deeply mistaken when making such statements. Since Apple lost its key figure, Steve Jobs, from its leadership team, their views have clearly changed somewhat. They did see a certain category of people in the market who would be interested in the appearance of the Apple Pencil for the iPad Pro.

Specifications

Apple Pencil has the following parameters:

Contents of delivery

The standard set includes:

  • Apple Pencil
  • Lightning adapter
  • Extra tip

Standard equipment, price and description of Apple Pencil

So, the company has released a standard stylus that comes with:

  • Reserve cap for Apple Pencil;
  • Adapter for charging from a cable.

By and large, the Apple Pencil is just an additional accessory for the iPad Pro series tablets, which can be purchased separately. Apple tablets do not come standard with a stylus. Of course, most people can quite successfully operate touch screens with their fingers, and, nevertheless, the new product has found its buyer and has already gained popularity in certain circles, for example, designers, planners and people of other professions never tire of singing the praises of Apple Pencil for iPad Pro .

Some are confused by the cost of the Apple Pencil; in Russia its price tag is close to 8,000 rubles, but do not forget that, for example, styluses for Wacom tablets cost about 10,000 rubles, so the issue of price is moot.

As for the appearance, like other equipment from the company, the Pencil looks excellent. The design of the Apple “pencil” is kept in a laconic style, has a uniform, smooth, glossy surface, only on the rim, under the magnetic cap you can see the inscription (manufacturer’s name), under this cap there is actually a hidden connector that allows you to charge the stylus. The Apple Pencil case is made of durable white plastic.

The reliability of this product has been confirmed by numerous tests. The device is quite light in weight, only 20 grams, which is important for people who constantly use it at work.

Many people know that Apple produces high-quality equipment, where everything is thought out to the smallest detail, and the new gadget is no exception. The engineers designed it in such a way that even if the stylus rolls across the desk, and this will definitely happen, because it has a round shape and is absolutely smooth, the device will stop on its own, while the manufacturer’s logo will always look up.

Interestingly, the Apple Pencil does not have a battery charge indicator; you cannot track the charge level through the tablet. Most likely, the developers divided the calculations into high charging speeds. So, after just 15 seconds of charging, the device can work for half an hour, and to fully charge the device it will take about 10 minutes. A full charge will last for 12 hours.

When describing the Apple Pencil, one cannot help but mention the question that interests many: what devices does it interact with? Apple engineers did not deviate from the company's policy and created a gadget that is suitable only for use in tandem with Apple equipment. Apple Pencil is compatible with:

  • iPad Pro,
  • iPad Air,
  • iPad Mini,
  • iPhone.

Now it’s worth returning to the issue of charging again, since the Apple Pencil only works in conjunction with released Apple tablets, then there should be no problems with fully charging the battery. After all, you can connect a pencil to an existing device.

Apple's new product “understands” over 2000 degrees of pressure. Simply put, by increasing or decreasing pressure on the Apple Pencil, you adjust the thickness of the lines, and by tilting the gadget, you get shading. With these features, the Apple Pencil is very similar to a regular pencil, which certainly adds points to it. In addition, the high accuracy of the stylus reproduction is achieved due to the signal reading frequency, namely 240 times per second.

Using Apple Pencil, you can easily work on devices from the Cupertino company. It easily reproduces the simplest commands, movements on the screen, moving icons, etc., but if you need this gadget for creativity, then in order not to draw with your fingers you will have to master programs that can work with the Apple Pencil. Fortunately, there are many such products on the market today, so no one should have any difficulties with this.

Principle of operation

Most often, this gadget is used for drawing. The nuances of its operation can be seen using the standard Notes application as an example. There are three modes here, in each of which the Apple Pencil identifies the angle of the pen and the pressure applied, simulating drawing on real paper. For example, by selecting the “pencil” mode, you can make a sketch, and then, increasing the angle of the device, shade the necessary details of the drawing.

There is another interesting “trick” here - a ruler. With its help you can easily draw straight lines. Simply use your Apple Pencil to draw a line next to this makeshift ruler and the app will reproduce it on the screen. At the same time, at first, when using this technique, a person usually waits for contact from the pencil touching the ruler, and experiences some inconvenience when this does not happen, but after several attempts, users adapt to this.

There are other programs for your iPad that are better suited for drawing and drawing. They have “pens” that allow you to create lines of different thicknesses, “watercolor brushes”, layers and transparency settings.

Comparison with analogues

The main competitor of this stylus is the Adonit Pixel from Adonit. Only professional designers can evaluate the convenience of each option, and the technical components are described in the table below.

Who needs an Apple Pencil?

Initially, Apple released a stylus for people in technical and creative professions, such as planners, designers, and artists. This tool greatly simplifies their work and saves time.

However, later, in addition to people of these professions, Apple Pencil for iPad Pro became a good solution for the management team of companies. Now managers can easily and quickly make the required adjustments to layouts, without writing out all the amendments point by point, working with documents, making comments on them, crossing out individual words or phrases. It’s much more convenient to do all this not using a keyboard and mouse, but using an interesting accessory – the Apple Pencil.


Personal experience after 48 hours of use.

What we have been waiting for for so long has come true. Apple released the iPad Pro, we wrote, and two weeks later the guys from Onlyphones.ru offered to plunge into the world of fine art and test all the capabilities of the Apple Pencil stylus.

What is the iPencil capable of, is it worth the trouble, and how does the owner of an iPad Pro who has an Apple Pencil get their hands on life? Let's talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the stylus.

Reason #1: no delays

For people who use the computer as a professional tool, the greatest enemy of all time remains delay. The sound engineer struggles to minimize the time it takes to convert sound from analog to digital; the designer wins back precious milliseconds by making the next stroke on the graphics tablet. Apple Pencil has no such shortcomings.

As soon as you touch the iPad Pro's huge screen with the tip of the stylus, it instantly responds to your touch. The lines turn out clear and even, and the artist has the feeling that they are drawing on a slate board or a piece of parchment. Response speed This accessory has the highest praise, and the signal reading frequency reaches 240 times per second.

Reason #2: very sensitive

Despite its small size, comparable to the size of a regular ballpoint pen, the Apple Pencil is packed with all sorts of sensors that ensure its smooth and trouble-free operation. The stylus distinguishes not only pressing force(up to 2048 degrees), but also the angle of inclination.

By setting a slight tilt, you can quickly shade a fragment of the drawing, as when working with a regular pencil.

Reason #3: long lasting

Inside the Apple Pencil there is a miniature battery, the capacity of which is only 80 mAh. Despite such a small size, after a full charge the stylus is ready for use. 12 o'clock continuous operation.

Moreover, you always have a universal charger for Apple Pencil at your fingertips. The gadget is equipped with a traditional Lightning port, and a simple connection to the corresponding port of the iPad Pro for just 15 seconds will give the stylus 30 minutes of work. Full charging time is about 50 minutes.

For charging via a regular network, a miniature adapter is provided: an Apple Pencil is inserted on one side, and a Lightning cable on the other.

Reason #4: the palm is not the enemy

Even an experienced artist knows the consequences of touching a drawing with the palm of his hand to a drawing just drawn with a slate or charcoal pencil. This is the case when the hands that created the drawing can ruin it. Apple has provided for this too.

Despite the fact that, according to all the “laws of the genre” of capacitive screen technology, it must respond to the touch of a human hand, when working with the Apple Pencil, you can touch the screen with the edge of your palm, leaning on the tablet screen as if on a regular sheet of paper. The tablet will not go berserk from this action, and the clarity of the stylus will not deteriorate at all.

Reason #5: works through “obstacles”

Another interesting feature of the Apple Pencil is the ability to work through a sheet of paper. Let's assume that you want to copy as accurately as possible a fragment of an original drawing printed on paper.

To do this, just attach the sheet to the iPad Pro screen and trace all the required contours. The tablet counts all the touches of the stylus, despite the fact that between the screen and the tip of the pen there is an impromptu obstacle - a sheet of paper.

Reason #6: instead of a finger

The main purpose of the Apple Pencil is drawing. However, the stylus is compatible with almost all actions that you usually perform when touching the tablet with your fingers.

Open links, launch applications, scroll, interact with menu items, type (support for third-party keyboards and keyboards that allow handwriting input is implemented) - Apple Pencil can do it all. The limitations of the accessory include the inability to open the Notification Center, Control Center, or switch to Slide Over or Split View mode. Most likely, this limitation is purely software in nature, but “Apple decided so.”

Reason #7: Application support

To realize a truly good product, the ingenuity of engineers and the bright vision of a designer are not enough. Need software support. The number of apps compatible with the Apple Pencil is growing exponentially.

Already today the following are compatible with the Apple stylus: Pixelmator, Adobe Comp CC, Paper, Adobe Phoroshop Mix, Adobe Photoshop Fix, AutoCAD 360, Autodesk SketchBook, Evernote, Adobe Illustrator Draw, Canva and a number of other applications. The inclusion of stylus support by developers allows not only to optimize the interaction of the accessory with the interface, but also to enable support for iOS functions such as Split View.

A little about the sad

Ask any marketer and he will confidently answer that the “ideal product” does not exist. Apple Pencil was no exception, and the list of disadvantages of the “Apple pencil” looks something like this:

  • The stylus is compatible only and only with the iPad Pro. It will not work with other devices, including Apple products.
  • Unavailable multitasking. Apple Pencil does not allow you to switch to Split View and Slide Over modes - the main innovations of iOS 9. You can only make this transition using your finger.
  • No eraser. For users familiar with alternative styluses that work with capacitive screens, one of the advantages of this product category is the presence of an eraser. Touch the screen with the other end of the stylus and activate the eraser mode. Apple Pencil doesn't have this option.
  • Apple Pencil does not support multi-touch gestures. However, not a single stylus can do this.

A skeptical user will probably classify Apple’s latest development as “expensive and unnecessary toys.” A professional designer or artist, being a creative person, will think about purchasing an Apple Pencil, because the desire to experiment is the main engine of creativity. A fan of Apple products and a user who has been waiting for a “big iPad” will take the stylus without a doubt.

Where to buy Apple Pencil? We suggest stopping at the online store Onlyphones.ru. Firstly, it is available today; secondly, among the impressive range of accessories for Apple devices, you will definitely want to buy “something else”.

The downside is that after drawing in this application, the vector has to be cleaned up quite a bit, since a lot of extra points are formed. On the plus side, you can drag a picture from your iPad directly into Illustrator with the press of one button, and it’s incredibly convenient!

There is also a very cool drawing application called Procreate - it is also free, it costs about $6, and, unlike Adobe Draw, you can only draw a raster, which then needs to be converted into a vector. There are a lot of settings, brushes and other nice things, but for me personally, drawing there, as they say, didn’t work out, I don’t know why (but I know that many people adore it).

#2 PROCESSING CONTOURS

However, for this method to work, you will need an additional application, which is called Astropad and costs money. With this application you can “cast” your computer screen to your iPad. That is, by launching Illustrator and the Astropad application, you can turn the iPad Pro into a kind of Syntic (for those who don’t know, this is a graphics tablet from Wacom that allows you to draw “directly on yourself”).

If you already have Syntik, again, this cleaning method will not surprise you. But since my role is played by the Wacom Bamboo, which lies on the side of the computer and does not have its own screen (that is, it essentially works as a more convenient semblance of a mouse), I really liked being able to edit “directly on the screen” using the iPad Pro.

In theory, you can draw just the same way - right in Illustrator, but when working through Astropad, there is still a slight delay in the appearance of lines, and therefore I prefer to use this application for “finishing” pictures. I open the image after the trace in Illustrator, connect the iPad via a USB cable (this makes the connection more reliable), launch Astropad and use the pencil tool to edit the lines. On the downside, in the CC version the selection is constantly canceling itself, so you have to keep one hand on the keyboard to press CMD + A (and who came up with the idea of ​​canceling the saving of the selection when working with this tool? Obviously some evil person)

#3 RECORDING THE DRAWING PROCESS

Nowadays, videos are trending, showing how quickly, easily and coolly you draw. Well, or even not cool, but you draw - everyone likes to watch the accelerated process. Therefore, if you are thinking about how to promote yourself on social networks, then recording a video of the drawing process is it. I must admit, I’m ignoring this trend for now - not because I don’t understand its importance, but rather because in my current habitat it’s too dark to shoot decent videos (and it’s already a little cold to draw outside). Well, I have a terrible habit of hanging over the drawing, which greatly complicates the process of shooting top view (one top of my head is visible, which, as I found out, is not very photogenic for me :)).

And yes, you can record the process without an iPad Pro. But it’s cool when I drew a picture and recorded a video :)