Apple Pencil

Tonight I won the Apple Pencil lottery at my local Apple Store. I made the two-hour drive over to New Orleans to pick up an iPad Pro that I’d ordered online for Personal Pickup in store, half because I wanted avoid shipping delays and half because I want to take a chance on iPad Pro accessories being in stock. That paid off thanks to some dumb luck, and now I’ve officially had some hands-on time with the iPad Pro’s digital stylus.

But first, the story of how I caught one of these rare unicorns in the wild…
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With both the iPad Pro’s Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil showing availability of 4-5 weeks, and neither available in-store, Apple has issued a brief statement to Mashable acknowledging the issue and promising ‘regular shipments.’

Customers are very excited for iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and the Smart Keyboard. We have limited supply of Apple Pencil and the Smart Keyboard in Apple Retail stores. Our stores will continue to receive regular shipments and we encourage customers to visit Apple.com for online availability and delivery dates … 

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Following the official release of the iPad Pro yesterday, Apple this evening has launched a pair of new featured sections on the App Store showcasing apps that take advantage of the massive 12.9-inch Retina display the iPad Pro has.

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ArsTechnica has been putting the iPad Pro through its paces in a whole raft of benchmark tests, comparing it to other iOS devices as well as to MacBooks and Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4.

When it comes to other iPads, nothing comes close in Geekbench tests. In single-core tests, the iPad Pro gets an overall score of 3233 against 1831 for the iPad Air 2. The much newer iPhone 6S gets closest, at 2537.

In multi-core tests, the differences look far more modest, but there’s a twist … 
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Today we’re taking a look at the iPad Pro. On the surface, it may look like a giant Netflix machine, but well… it kind of is. This is the biggest iPad ever without a doubt, that packs a 12.9-inch display and obviously has a much larger footprint when compared to the iPad Air 2, this is larger by 78 percent actually. But enough with the small talk, let’s take a look inside of the box..,

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Apple’s design chief Jony Ive told the Telegraph that while his own team has worked using paper sketchbooks for more than 20 years, they are for the first time starting to use the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil instead.

Many of us in the design team have worked together for 20 plus years. We’ve always drawn in our sketchbooks, and for the first time – despite flirting with some alternatives a couple of years ago – I’m seeing people starting to use the iPad and Apple Pencil. Our personal experience has been that there are definitely affordances and opportunities now that you have a much more natural and intuitive environment to make marks, there are clearly things you can do sketching and writing on the iPad which you could never dream of doing in the analogue world.

He said that while he’d started off demonstrating it, he’d then found himself using it for his work … 
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Update: If you order an iPad Pro right now, Apple is quoting Friday delivery. The Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard accessories are already backordered at least 5-7 business days. Some customers are seeing same-day in-store pick up options for iPad Pro.

In September Apple unveiled the long awaited larger iPad Pro to the public, and today customers can finally start placing orders for the 12.9-inch tablet before models hit stores later this week. iPad Pro-only accessories including the Apple Pencil digital stylus and new Smart Keyboard cover are also available to purchase on Apple.com and through the Apple Store app. On Monday Apple announced that the iPad Pro and would be hitting Apple Stores, carriers, and authorized resellers “later this week.”
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We first reported and Apple today announced that iPad Pro will go on sale starting Wednesday with a retail launch later this week, and Apple executives are taking the 12.9-inch tablet on a media tour to hype it up. Apple CEO Tim Cook is traveling around London today, visiting Touchpress and chatting with The Independent, while CNN Money has shared its interview with Eddy Cue showing off the massive iPad.
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As we reported last week, Apple has announced that the iPad Pro will go on sale in 40 countries on Wednesday, November 11th. The ‘epic’ 12.9 inch device will also be available in Apple Retail Stores later in the week.

The iPad Pro costs $799 for the 32 GB base model and maxes out at $1079 for the WiFi + Cellular 128 GB version. The iPad Pro will be available to buy in 40 countries, including the US, UK, Canada, China and Japan …

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Adobe today has rolled out updates to a pair of its iOS apps, adding support for features introduced in the latest version of Apple’s operating system. Adobe Photoshop Fix and Adobe Photoshop Mix have both been updated this evening, the former being bumped to version 1.1 and the latter to version 2.1.

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Ahead of the iPad Pro’s launch in November, sources have shared a couple of tidbits regarding launch plans for the device. We are told that Apple this week has started training its AppleCare support staff to become familiar with troubleshooting the larger tablet. Apple typically prepares its support network on major new products in the couple of weeks prior to the device’s launch. Apple is asking its support centers to complete their training by Friday, November 6th, which indicates that the iPad Pro is likely still on track for the early November launch we previously discussed.

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Michael B. Johnson, who heads the Pixar team that develops the tools used to create its animated movies, tweeted that his team had been given the chance to test the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil – and described palm-rejection as perfect.

Lovely of our friends from Apple to stop by to let us take iPad Pro & Pencil for a test drive […]

It has perfect palm rejection as far as we were able to see … 

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