mac_128

rotateleftbyte said:

Huawei is clearly going for Apple's throat.

Driving west on the A4/M4 out of central London last night, every one of the electronic billboards was promoting the Mate 20. Many had the words

"The Mate 20... What the iPhone XS should have been."

'nuff said I think.

No more than Apple went after Microsoft with their Mac vs. PC ads. There’s nothing particularly nefarious about that advertising practice alone. Apple was the first trillion dollar company. They have a target on their back. No surprise there.

I just discovered to my chagrin that News doesn’t actually save the article locally, but only creates a bookmark to the URL. Imagine how foolish I felt having earmarked all those interesting articles at the airport to read on the plane, only to find I’d lost access to them when I got on the plane. It looks like The only way to do it with Apples tools is to send them to a Safari reading list, then open each article in Safari to load the content for offline reading. anybody found a better way?

dysamoria said:

I hadn’t even thought about not being able to use the old pencil on a new iPad Pro. That’s an even more irritating prospect. Is this absolutely confirmed?

Yes. Various people have confirmed that while the old Pencil can be plugged into the new iPad with a Lightning to USB-C adapter, the Pencil does not pair, nor does it function on the new iPad which is otherwise capable of charging it.

9secondkox2 said:

mac_128 said:

redgeminipa said:

9secondkox2 said:

The part about compatibility doesn’t make much sense to me. 

Will it with the first iPad Pro or no?

charging doesn’t equal compatibility. I can charge it in my MacBook Pro when needed. 

Can you clarify?


iman all Apple ecosystem guy. And it feels really weird having your two year old investment shorted like that. 

For a major accessory improvement to not work at all would be strange. An adapter would also be an easy solution. 

On the Mac side, accessories work if you keep the os updated. 

On the iPad side, it seems an artificially imposed rip if indeed there is no compatibility. 

Even if your ipad doesnt make use of EVERY capability (I.e. greater accuracy due to registers in the iPad hardware), as much functionality as the original pencil had should still be there. 

Case in point: old pencil gets stolen. Need to buy new. Sees new one doesn’t roll away when put on desk. Wants that. Buys it. No work. Sad. 

The charging bit can be done if someone doesn’t mind not sticking it on the iPad. The compatibility should t be a problem unless it’s Apple ripping recent customers. Can you imagine being the person who bought a pro months before and now hecan only use old accessories? Ouch. 

Just being real. 

Watching the video will answer your questions. Even reading the article will answer them. Don’t ask questions that have already been answered. It’s IMPOSSIBLE to charge the new Pencil any other way than wirelessly on the new iPad Pro. The original pencil is still being made and sold, as it’s compatible with the base iPad, as well as previous Pro models. Apple updates iPads and iPhones every year, as they’ve done for years. If you’re so worried that things are going to change drastically with the next update, then hold off until then to purchase. If you don’t like what you see, there are still plenty of places to purchase the previous versions at a discount.

“IMPOSSIBLE” you say? I seriously doubt that a stand-alone charging pad accessory couldn’t be created for it, either by Apple or a third party. The bigger question is whether the radios used for pairing or operation are somehow fundamentally different than the old iPad, in which case that would be a more significant hurdle.

Thank YOU. The only thing that is impossible is to have a discussion where legit concerns are mentioned without someone getting triggered. It's not impossible to make the new pencil backwards compatible. It's quite simple. Your suggestion is a case in point. So that leaves me with the original question asked that some folks would rather lump in with the charging aspect. I'll repeat it for those who would think rather than blindly follow: is the new pencil compatible with the iPad Pro from a few months ago if it were charged? It still pairs via Bluetooth, so it shouldn't be too big a deal. 

I think the answer is no. Apple does not appear to support wireless pairing on the old iPads, even though technically speaking it should be possible. The old Pencil pairs via Lightning, not wirelessly, so assuming the new Pencil pairs via the standard Bluetooth radio present in both old and new iPads, then Apple would have to write new software for the old iPad to implement it. It’s possible even if they are the same BT protocols, pairing the new Pencil requires confirmation the Pencil is attached via wireless charging. Again, that should be a simple matter of programming an alternate method in the old iPad software, but the reality is we don’t really know for sure. It’s possible that even if a wireless charging adapter were available that plugs into the Lightning port, and the pairing process uses the same BT radios (or a compatible radio built-into the charging dongle), that the method of communicating Pencil strokes and taps has changed completely — in which case, the Pencil wouldn’t work on its most fundamental level.

The reality is, until the new Pencil has been dissected a bit further by someone to explain how exactly it works, we won’t really know if Apple imposed the limitation, or if it’s a hardware limitation that prevents it from working.

What I do know is that the old Pencil will charge via the new iPad Pro, but won’t pair. That to me seems like an imposed limitation, in which Apple chose not support the same hardware pairing it had on the old iPad, by adapting the code via USB-C. If so, one could extrapolate the same mentality about the new Pencil being backward compatible. That said, if the wireless radio protocol the new Pencil uses is incompatible with the old Pencil’s radio, then that might be one major problem Apple can’t overcome. Or, lets say it could be by updating the firmware on the old Pencil to support the new iPad. But then let’s say the old Pencil won’t work with the old iPad anymore — then it gets really confusing not knowing whether an old Pencil will work or not anymore, and that’s a big problem.

So until we know more, it’s kind of a moot theoretical debate. As it stands, neither Pencil is fully compatible with another generation of iPad.

redgeminipa said:

9secondkox2 said:

The part about compatibility doesn’t make much sense to me. 

Will it with the first iPad Pro or no?

charging doesn’t equal compatibility. I can charge it in my MacBook Pro when needed. 

Can you clarify?


iman all Apple ecosystem guy. And it feels really weird having your two year old investment shorted like that. 

For a major accessory improvement to not work at all would be strange. An adapter would also be an easy solution. 

On the Mac side, accessories work if you keep the os updated. 

On the iPad side, it seems an artificially imposed rip if indeed there is no compatibility. 

Even if your ipad doesnt make use of EVERY capability (I.e. greater accuracy due to registers in the iPad hardware), as much functionality as the original pencil had should still be there. 

Case in point: old pencil gets stolen. Need to buy new. Sees new one doesn’t roll away when put on desk. Wants that. Buys it. No work. Sad. 

The charging bit can be done if someone doesn’t mind not sticking it on the iPad. The compatibility should t be a problem unless it’s Apple ripping recent customers. Can you imagine being the person who bought a pro months before and now hecan only use old accessories? Ouch. 

Just being real. 

Watching the video will answer your questions. Even reading the article will answer them. Don’t ask questions that have already been answered. It’s IMPOSSIBLE to charge the new Pencil any other way than wirelessly on the new iPad Pro. The original pencil is still being made and sold, as it’s compatible with the base iPad, as well as previous Pro models. Apple updates iPads and iPhones every year, as they’ve done for years. If you’re so worried that things are going to change drastically with the next update, then hold off until then to purchase. If you don’t like what you see, there are still plenty of places to purchase the previous versions at a discount.

“IMPOSSIBLE” you say? I seriously doubt that a stand-alone charging pad accessory couldn’t be created for it, either by Apple or a third party. The bigger question is whether the radios used for pairing or operation are somehow fundamentally different than the old iPad, in which case that would be a more significant hurdle.