John Gruber’s take on the new iPads and why they only support the original Apple Pencil

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John Gruber’s list of reasons the new iPads only support the original Apple Pencil:

  • The Pencil 2 requires an iPad with flat sides for the magnetic charging and pairing.

  • The flat sides of the newest iPad Pros go hand-in-hand, design-wise, with the edge-to-edge (or “edge-to-edge” if you prefer) round-corned displays, and Face ID instead of Touch ID. Those things all add to the price of iPad Pros.

  • In theory Apple could have given these new iPads flat sides just to support the new Pencil, sticking with the square-cornered display, larger chin and forehead, and Touch ID — but that’s not how Apple rolls. Such design elements are integrated with the whole.

And:

If Apple had wanted the new Pencil 2 to work on all new iPads, they would’ve had to put a Lightning plug on the new Pencil in addition to supporting conductive charging and pairing. But that’s really not how Apple rolls — that would have ruined one of the things that makes the new Pencil so much nicer than the old Pencil. Better to have a messy product lineup where some new iPads only support the new Pencil and others only support the old Pencil than to have a messy new Pencil.

All fair points. To get a sense of how Apple is handling this, take a look at the Apple Pencil buy page. If you are buying an Apple Pencil, Apple steers you here to make sure you don’t buy the wrong product.

My only quibble is with the product name. The original Apple Pencil is clearly very different from Apple Pencil 2. Both belong to the same product line, but Apple has a traditional of calling out the differences. Consider Apple Watch Series 4, or MacBook Pro 2018. Not sure why they didn’t do that here, but c’est la vie.