A year after iPad, Microsoft Office brings hand-written annotations to iPhone apps

Microsoft announced support for hand-written or drawn annotations on the iPad the day after Apple launched the Apple Pencil. It’s taken the company almost a year, but it has finally brought the same feature to the iPhone versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint …

iPhones of course don’t support the Apple Pencil, so support here is for writing or drawing with your finger. To use the feature, open the new Draw tab. The Verge notes that you can choose between a pen, highlighter and eraser, and adjust the thickness and color of the pen.

The updated versions of all three apps are now available as free downloads from iTunes. If you prefer more precise writing than is possible with your finger, you can of course use any of the many dumb styli out there and pray for forgiveness from Steve.