You realise that this very adapter that is "now" shipping with the iPad Pro is exactly the cap you are describing here?
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Apple Pencil to Ship With Adapter for Charging With Lightning Cable
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Leaving out an eraser was a serious design flaw, lol. But whatever.
Here's hoping there'll be an eraser accessory that plugs onto the lightning dongle(?) on the pencil someday.
Very true. I'm shocked they couldn't think of something so you don't lose the cap.
Having a removable cap is a bad idea itself. In a sense, it's just like removable batteries - bad UX.
Apple had to make trade-offs with regard to how they dealt with the charging port. From my experience with the thin rubber connectors that could have been used for the cap, they end up breaking, which would then make people mad. If the port was just exposed, then it wouldn't look clean, like a seamless pencil.
I'm sure there will be some lost caps, but I would hope that Apple designed the pencil cap in such a way that makes it a firm connection - so it doesn't just fall off while packed in your bag.
And just think, the bag and accessory market gets to have fun designing new bags and accessory holders for the Pencil...just to ensure you don't lose the cap.
It will be interesting to see what kind of adoption rate there is with it and the iPad Pro - and how it works for things other than drawing / art. I still like my collection of Field Notes books and there is nothing (that I've tried so far) that comes close to the hand / textural satisfaction when writing / drawing with a really nice classic wooden pencil. The only problem I run into is when I forget my sharpener when traveling. I used to carry a pocket knife for just such occasions, but that ended after 9/11.
It's a bloody pencil
Don't make a removable cap unless u'r gonna put an eraser in there.
Now, i'm betting money on what will be more in limited use. this or the Apple watch, so far i have $100 down for the pencil.
I would have added a strap-loop on the end to the cap and pencil so u can't loose it, but hey Apple never thinks of these things do they... They just wanna make "great products"
Don't make a removable cap unless u'r gonna put an eraser in there.
Now, i'm betting money on what will be more in limited use. this or the Apple watch, so far i have $100 down for the pencil.
I would have added a strap-loop on the end to the cap and pencil so u can't loose it, but hey Apple never thinks of these things do they... They just wanna make "great products"
The next pencil could have something like a twist-up plug for recharging. Totally possible to keep it elegant, and no lost caps are ever involved since the pencil itself would be the cap.It's a bloody pencil
Don't make a removable cap unless u'r gonna put an eraser in there.
Now, i'm betting money on what will be more in limited use. this or the Apple watch, so far i have $100 down for the pencil.
I would have added a strap-loop on the end to the cap and pencil so u can't loose it, but hey Apple never thinks of these things do they... They just wanna make "great products"
They could have made the port female and stuck a double sided plug between the eraser and the pen. That would have been neat.
Could they not have made this "adapter" just the end part of the pencil. That way it's on there 99% of the time and you can just simply plug a lightening cable in. But in instances where you don't have one you can pop it off an do the quick charge from your iPad.
That's what I've been saying:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-lightning-cable.1933257/page-5#post-22167593
It's a far better solution than what Apple came up with. But then again, they won't sell an extra adapter that way either. So the question becomes ... "Better" for who?
I miss the Apple that touted simplicity and user experience as priority number 1. For a 99 dollar accessory of this kind, they should have met us with a no compromise design.
I don't know.... Is that a Usb c lightning cable in you pocket. Or a usb a? Or are you packing an adapter?
Of course, if you just want to dock a couple pencils who am I to judge.
I love the way the pencil can charge via the iPad. It's super convenient, fast and requires no separate cable.
"Oh my pencil is almost dead...let me plug it into the iPad and take a bathroom break, or make a phone call, or smell the roses for a minute"
People here are acting like plugging it into an iPad will cause some sort of Earth destroying disaster. It charges in a minute! Are you such a slave to your work that you can't take a 60 second break? Do people seriously assume that you'll be walking around with the pencil awkwardly hanging from the bottom of your iPad and poking into your stomach? (Flip the iPad...problem solved! Or just put the darn thing down for a minute)
Silly season on the macrumors forum these days.
"Oh my pencil is almost dead...let me plug it into the iPad and take a bathroom break, or make a phone call, or smell the roses for a minute"
People here are acting like plugging it into an iPad will cause some sort of Earth destroying disaster. It charges in a minute! Are you such a slave to your work that you can't take a 60 second break? Do people seriously assume that you'll be walking around with the pencil awkwardly hanging from the bottom of your iPad and poking into your stomach? (Flip the iPad...problem solved! Or just put the darn thing down for a minute)
Silly season on the macrumors forum these days.
A build in double male adapter would make the pencil a three part design, instead of two and thus create more opportunity for failure. A female port on the pencil is much harder to clean and to maintain than a male port and may create problems with the $99 accessory itself. While a double male adapter no matter the price just as easily can get lost as a double female adapter. If you got to say, it's all a matter of opinion and preference, than you didn't come up with a noticeable better solution, just another solution.
But can you honestly expect anything different? This is a pro-Apple forum. It's futile to expect the majority of people to treat Apple the same as they would treat the competitors of Apple, much like expecting most users of a pro-Microsoft forum to do the same for Microsoft.
A male-male adaptor that you keep under the cap (with female at pencil end) is much better. Should only add 1mm or so to total length of pencil.
Honestly I'm thinking the only reason they did this at all was to charge the pencil from the iPad, but given the size of it, seems like a really stupid idea, not only was it guaranteed to snap off by accident, but it would also damage the iPad's port. This is really one of those cases where the thinness of the device works against it.
If I had designed it, I'd have put the charging "pins" and a tiny magnet in a "pen cap", and thus putting the "pen cap" on the pencil and putting it against the keyboard power port. I think this is one of those cases where the fact that it's a "battery pen" works against it.
Microsoft's Wacom Batteryless Digitizer in the Surface Pro 2, was the correct way to go for a tablet. Too bad they screwed that up and replaced it with nTrig for the sake of making the SP3 thinner.
I agree. It makes the time when you need to charged the pencil quickly, really easy. Yes it means a full charge is more complicated but you're not needing to use the pencil at that time.
If it was the other way and the pencil dies you'd be fumbling around for a cable to plug into the iPad or wall socket just to finish what you're doing.
This has got to be the best comment on this thread that I've read so far. People should be happy at the fact that Apple have managed to get 30 minutes out of a 15 second charge!! Instead people are moaning about losing the cap off the end of the Pencil, if people were more careful with their stuff it wouldn't happen! It's not Apple's responsibility that people are not more organised. Also the
Pencil isn't even out yet so we don't know.