If they made the pencil available on ALL iPads they'd probably sell more iPads of every size.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Pencil Teardown Reveals Antenna, Battery and Tiny Folded Logic Board
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The only reason the iPad Pro is faster than the current iPad Air 2 is because they didn't bother releasing a new iPad this year. They're selling last years model still. This move allows them to always have the iPad Pro carry the newest processor, where previously the iPad had always carried the newest. They didn't make the iPad Pro faster than the normal iPad by making it carry a better processor. Instead they just gave it the one that would have gone into the iPad, had they bothered to update it for 2015 as they'd done to every iPad since they were first released.
With that I suppose it does have a little advantage, though not one that will pull a ton away from an normal iPad. Without the Pencil there is one huge less advantage to get people to buy the Pro over the normal one for several hundred dollars less.
The Pencil doesn't make them a ton of profit. Not like the iPad Pro does. Selling more Pencils at the expense of selling less Pros isn't worth it.
Could be, but Steve did say that a post PC world was coming and likened PCs to trucks.
Personally, I think we're only now seeing a glimpse of Apple's post-PC vision because it took this long for the hardware to catch up to it... a few more hardware/software revisions and more pro apps and I think it'll be fully realized.
No. Lithium-polymer batteries last years and 1000 charging cycles or more. It will last past that.
Honestly, if you're complaining that a $99 device won't last more than 3 years, you shouldn't be buying it in the first place.
And believing that 3 years from now the Pencil won't be replaced by the Pencil 2 or 3 is silly. You're essentially complaining that you can't use your iPhone 4 anymore, even though many still do.
My first impression when reading this article was, well duh, how can iFixit expect to service a pen, it makes sense it's not user-serviceable. But then after some investigating I saw this
Which leds me to believe it's not unrealistic or unwarranted to expect the battery to be serviceable after a couple of years. Why throw out a perfectly fine pen, just because of the battery?
Now, I understand some people's argument that claim that after 2-3 years, it's likely that the pen will be so worn-out you might want to replace it anyway, regardless of battery age, but consider this: for some it may wear out, for others not.
People still use expensive real pens for 5+ years and continue to replace ink cartriges. It's not unrealistic to expect battery to be modular and replaceable and I hope people will request this for a future version and not buy into the disposable fiasco Apple wants us to buy into.
Which leds me to believe it's not unrealistic or unwarranted to expect the battery to be serviceable after a couple of years. Why throw out a perfectly fine pen, just because of the battery?
Now, I understand some people's argument that claim that after 2-3 years, it's likely that the pen will be so worn-out you might want to replace it anyway, regardless of battery age, but consider this: for some it may wear out, for others not.
People still use expensive real pens for 5+ years and continue to replace ink cartriges. It's not unrealistic to expect battery to be modular and replaceable and I hope people will request this for a future version and not buy into the disposable fiasco Apple wants us to buy into.
Where exactly are you getting that 1000 load cycles figure from? I was just servicing a macbook air and it was down to just 18% of its capacity after about 4 years of use and 343 load cycles. I've seen other macbooks go down to 50% capacity easily way before the 1000 cycle mark. So I know there are other factors contributing to this, I don't think the 1000 figure is accurate at all.
Many people simply want the larger size, whether for watching videos, using as a laptop replacement, etc. Other people, notably graphic artists/designers want the larger size for use with the pencil.
And there are a lot of people who simply don't want a huge tablet, but still want to have Pencil input capabilities, but will ultimately not want such a large device. There's a ton of margin in the iPad and iPad mini tablets. And there are a lot of people who would like to use the Pencil with a device at that size.
As an example, I would love to use a Pencil with my iPad for drawing and sketching. BUT... I will not buy a huge iPad simply to get that capability, at the expense of ending up with a monster device and paying a lot of money for it.
I'll gladly gladly upgrade my iPad Air if/when it supports the Pencil. Otherwise I'll keep using it because it works great and see no reason to otherwise upgrade.
Apple will make much more money bringing Pencil capability to smaller devices and getting people to upgrade.
holy cow.... its a miniature computer...
God ....look how small that thing is ..... !! (no pun intended)
iFix it does know its only a pencil right ? I wonder why Apple would even want u to replace such a small battery in the first place ...
I thought u make stuff miniature so it CAN'T be replaced now-days...
On the plus side, Apple must be very pleased with themselves.... They finally did it and scored a 1.
God ....look how small that thing is ..... !! (no pun intended)
iFix it does know its only a pencil right ? I wonder why Apple would even want u to replace such a small battery in the first place ...
I thought u make stuff miniature so it CAN'T be replaced now-days...
On the plus side, Apple must be very pleased with themselves.... They finally did it and scored a 1.
If you needed replacement at just 343 cycles then you were either leaving it on the charger too much or something else was wrong with the battery. 343 is incredibly low.
According to Apple:
http://www.apple.com/batteries/service-and-recycling/
Why would you even think you could repair something like this yourself?
Going back to Apple pencil, I agree the battery should be modular, not soldered to board, because that makes your $100 device automatically obsolete in a few years.
Think about it, you can use a Macbook with degraded battery plugged and that'd be fine. What will happen when your pen holds only half the charge it originally did, lets say 50-70% capacity, you'd be writting/taking notes and battery would die constantly. And you can't replace battery, will need to buy new one.
I think the criticism is warranted and going forward I hope they do something similar to the pen in Surface 4:
This is Apple we're talking about. You're never going to get a pencil with all kinds of buttons on it.
Wait, so you think Apple intentionally made the pencil more complex than necessary so they could charge $99 for it? Really?
Last edited:
Yes they are likely lithium.
Lithium batteries don't just degrade, there are a few reasons for their degradation.
One of the big contributions to the degradation or 'ageing' of the battery is quick discharging i.e when you start playing those games with high brightness etc using up your battery quickly.
Another big reason for ageing is temperature, which the iPhone and Macbook experience a wide range of temperature that batteries dont which speeds up the ageing process.
In the case of the Pencil, there is no heat generated internally, leaving the temperature relatively nice and the current draw on it is always constant never increasing quickly. Will likely result it in lasting longer than your iPhone or Mac battery.
Ive had a Macbook battery last me 3.5 years and 1400 cycles so I dont see why this Pencil wont last 5 years.
If I am not mistaken Apple has been going away from user accessible batteries for awhile. Part of their green initiative. I bet they will take dead pencils for recycling.
That's a pretty tightly packed device there. I also imagine it makes for easier manufacturing.
That's a pretty tightly packed device there. I also imagine it makes for easier manufacturing.
That would be the first gen Pentium, the 133Mhz released around 1995 has a GeekBench Score of a 51..
The problem is not how long it'll last, the problem is at which point it will degrade to less than 80% capacity. Suppose you use these for note taking at school, all day, every day, you really think after 2 years it won't degrade? A degraded battery and no way to replace it means you'll have to recharge more often, or use the pen with a cable which would be pretty silly/funny if that ever happens.
My meaning of it'll last = Battery life is still useable to that date.
And as I said in my post, degradation in this type of usage is a lot less compared to other lithium ion uses/situations.
The only thing that would contribute to accelerated degrading is deep discharging, i.e you use it to the very last second every single time.
But even then it doesn't go under the same stress as laptops/iPhones nor does it operate anywhere near those operating temperatures.
More teardown ******** from the ******s at iFixit.
The guy who runs that site needs to do something useful and more productive with his life.
The guy who runs that site needs to do something useful and more productive with his life.
Last edited:
Of course there are going to be batteries that fail early, and ones that seem to last forever. Batteries aren't an exact science.
I just checked, my 14 month old MacBook Pro, with 280 cycles is currently sitting at 93%. That's pretty much on track with Apple's estimation of 80% after 3 years and/or 1000 cycles.
I just checked, my 14 month old MacBook Pro, with 280 cycles is currently sitting at 93%. That's pretty much on track with Apple's estimation of 80% after 3 years and/or 1000 cycles.
Wouldn't be an apple product if it wasn't built to have a limited life span to force you to buy the next generation.
Remember when they used to make things with replaceable batteries ? Well i do, my 2008 macbook pro is still going strong today
Remember when they used to make things with replaceable batteries ? Well i do, my 2008 macbook pro is still going strong today
Why would you make the presumption that something can't be repaired without knowing anything about it?