alt Hacker News“Who wants a stylus? You have to get ’em and put ’em away, and you lose ’em. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus. So let’s not use a stylus. We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world. We’re going to use a pointing device that we’re all born with—born with ten of them. We’re going to use our fingers.”
— Steve Jobs, 2007
(8 years before the introduction of the Apple Pencil)
Replies
The Pencil isn’t a stylus. At least not primarily. It’s designed for freehand. This is probably why they insisted on it charging via Lightning by removing its end cap. They didn’t want people getting ideas.
For a device that fits in your hand I understand his argument, for something that takes more than one hand to hold, I can see the usefulness of a different "pointer" device, but also, artists use things like the Apple Pencil, it makes way more sense.
And here we are, and the Pencil STILL doesn't work on the defectively oversized trackpads on Apple laptops.
So... we're talking about more than one blunder here.
> (8 years before the introduction of the Apple Pencil)
I have briefly used one of the old PDAs with Windows Mobile and a stylus, and i have an ipad with an apple pencil.
They are two completely different experiences.
A stylus is clunky, particularly if you consider styluses as they were back in the day: pieces of dumb plastic with a specific shape to fit in the PDA itself, to be used on dumb resistive touch screens.
the apple pencil (as well as other modern styluses) are completely different, and work on capacitive touch screens.
When Steve Jobs said that, he was talking about a stylus as a main or even only input device. And he is still right about it. The Apple Pencil for the iPad never was a main input device but an alternative.