Will the apple pencil work on ipad air 2

I just bought the Jot a few weeks ago so I am feeling somewhat cheated at the moment. I do love the expansive real estate of the iPad Pro tho.

Some Good News.

I just did a test with Procreate and the Adonit Jot Touch w/pixelpoint and once Bluetooth is turned on in iPad Settings App and the stylus is activated in Procreate, the stylus IS functioning as it should with pressure, tilt and palm rejection appears to be working well.

The "trick" with most drawing apps and styluses that utilise palm rejection is that you need to rest your palms on the screen, FIRST, before you begin drawing on the screen.

My Adonit Jot Touch feels great using this on the bigger screen. This feels more like putting pencil/pen/brush to paper.

Can't wait to do some really intense artworks on this larger screen iPad.

I am just loving this.

Very happy with this,so far!

I was really "on the fence" about spending this kind of major cash on a tablet device since this is THE MOST money I have EVER spent on an iPad or any iDevice!

I spent an hour in my local Apple Store twice and tried out both the iPad Pro and Air 2 and then left and drove around for awhile and got myself some lunch to mull over this potential purchase before I finally committed to the purchase of my shiney new iPad Pro.

I think purchasing this for a more natural, expressive, extensive and more confident and complete drawing, illlustration and painting experience away from my Mac and on the go was money well spent!

I, also, have Astropad on this iPad. Astropad turns your iPad into a wireless,visual drawing tablet NOT unlike that of a Wacom Cintiq drawing tablet/second screen monitor.

I can't WAIT to see how Asrtropad will perform on this iPad Pro with my 27 inch screen iMac with Photoshop, Painter and SketchBook pro on OS X!

I think this larger screen iPad is a winner and will be a winner for Apple!

That's good news indeed. Congradulations.

bobseufert wrote:

That's good news indeed. Congra*d*ulations.

Howdy Michel [via AlohaBob's reply]

methinks Bob's "typo" might be Freudian Slip - you have indeed shown that iPad(s) are not "toys" in the hands of determined Power Users

Interesting and Well Done!

Now would be interesting, now that the Pencil is on the market, to check out the functionality with the Air 2. Will have to wander into my local Apple store and check it out.....

RW

I tried the Apple Pencil at my Local Apple store on an iPad Air 2. It only works as a basic stylus on the iPad Air 2.

No advanced functionalities! No pressure. No tilt sensing. No palm rejection.

Why pay $100 dollars for just "normal, run of the mill" basic stylus functionality, from an exclusively produced Apple stylus, when there better options out there that work with the iPad Air 2

The Apple Pencil ONLY FULLY FUNCTIONS WITH THE IPAD PRO ONLY!

It is designed to interact with the brand new screen technology that only the iPad Pro has.

See Bluetooth, smart styluses from Adonit, Wacom, Adobe, Pencil by 53, Pogo and other smart stylii that make the claim that they are fully compatible with the iPad Air 2.

Good Luck!

So it works exactly like the name and Apple's description. Why are you shouting at us?

Because many wanting an Apple Pencil posting in here are stubborn!

They want the Apple pencil sooo bad to work on other newer iPad model like it does on the iPad Pro, but this is simply NOT the case.

If some users want to spend their money on an Apple Pencil just to get basic stylus functionality, then, they can go ahead and do just that.

Just don't expect it to work as it does on the iPad Pro.

None of the Bluetooth functionality works on an iPad Air 2.

Seems to me there are better, cheaper basic or smart Bluetooth stylus alternatives that will work much better on an iPad Air 2 or iPad Mini 4.

What you view as "stubborn" is also known as optimism. So Apple screwed the pooch and hard coded iOS to prevent pairing outside of the iPad Pro. This is something they can also reverse after they achieve the sales goals they are after for the iPad Pro. Obviously not all the features of the Pencil will ever work with the older iPads (tilt being the obvious one) but you've been just as "stubborn" in saying it will never work. You just had the fortuity of being correct in your guesses thus far.

Yes, there are other options, but better? I've got the Adjonit Touch, and at times it loses Bluetooth connection with the iPad, even fresh off the charger. And when it does it, it does it repeatedly, sometimes once every minutes or two. It's a frustrating experience, but we're the stubborn ones for hoping for a better option?

When you next feel the need to disparage others, recall this: https://xkcd.com/386/

Apple did not "screw the pooch" nor did they hard code the iOS to prevent pairing. They designed the Apple Pencil to work with the screen technology on the iPad Pro. Perhaps the iPad Air 3 will have the same screen technology and the iPad Pencil will work with it, or some version of it, but for now it is called iPad Pencil for iPad Pro for a reason.

If your Touch is dropping the BT connection there may be a problem with either the Touch or your iPad. Or you have interference that is interfering with the signal. Take the Touch to a store that sells iPads and try it with an iPad Air there and see if the signal drops. If yes it is your stylus, if no it is probably your iPad. Get one or the other serviced.

Bet you dollars to donuts that the Pencil communicates with the iPad Pro via good old bluetooth (easy test, turn off the bluetooth connection and try using the pressure and tilt functionalities) . Also that the pressure sensor is in the Pencil, not the screen. That the position is detected the same way your finger is. These are not new technologies of the screen, these are common approaches used in every other stylus out there.

I strongly suspect that tilt detection is done by a sensor/transponder part way up the pencil, that transmits/measures a signal to or from the screen. THIS would be something specific to the new screen technology.

If what I've guessed at is true, then there's no reason the Pencil can't join to older iPads (obviously not so old that they don't have a thunderbolt port) outside of the iOS having a hardware check that prevents joining it.

Even if my guesses are way off, iOS9 has support for the Apple Pencil built in. iOS9 is on the older iPads. Inserting a Pencil into the Thunderbolt on a non iPad Pro doesn't display a joining notice, therefore Apple hard coded the iOS to prevent even attempts at pairing the Pencil with models that do not match a preset list. That's how code works. If Apple DIDN'T code that check in there, it would attempt to join the Pencil, regardless of model. So your guess of them not hard coding the iOS to prevent pairing fails the litmus test.

[thinking outside the box]

What if the complexity of the communication of the "orientation in 3-D space" of BOTH the iPad (Pro or not) AND the Pencil is so processor intensive that it requires the Pro's speed/power to do the job?

just sayin'

Not saying it doesn't use Bluetooth but I'm saying Apple already explained how it works in conjunction with the new screen technology in this years introduction of the product. Did you watch it? If you do then you won't have to guess.

Apple made the ApplePencil to connect/pairing to Bluetooth by plugging its lightning connector into the lightning connector of the iPad Pro.

Apple didn't make the Bluetooth connnection to the iPad Pro by simply activating the Bluetooth on the IPad Pro and touch the screen on the iPad Pro.

If it loses the Bluetooth connection to the iPad Pro ( which it did twice to me) you had to plug it into the iPad Pro's lightning connector.

That I think that is why it is impossible to pair with Bluetooth on any other new iPad model.

I tried this on the iPad Air 2. I activated Bluetooth on the Air 2 and plugged the Apple pencil into the lightning port and nothing happened.

There was no Bluetooth pairing of both devices.

So, what do you think that means?

BTW, I have been an Apple user for a very long time and I have come to know that when Apple introduces a new accessory for their products and it is specifically mentions that it only works with certain hardware devices, they MEAN it will ONLY work with those devices.

Apple did this ALL the time with certain accessories or peripherals that only worked with certain Mac computer models, but wouldn't work with others even though other model Macs clearly looked as if they could've supported that peripheral device on Macs that had similar specs, but may have had some other lesser hardware issue.

The newest instance of this? The notorius stand alone enclosed Apple USB optical SuperDrive. That drive was coded to only work with Macs that did NOT come with a built-in SuperDrive. Why??. There is absolutely no reason in the world that this device shouldn't work on older Macs that still have built-in optical drives. It's an external drive for crying out loud!!!

Apple put code into OS X for newer Mac models so that drive would work fine, but crippled that drive from functioning on older model Macs.

Apple placed an "artificial" restriction by leaving code out for that drive to work across ALL Mac models. Stupid as this is simply an external USB connected peripheral device.

But users needing a new external optical drive for their older Macs, becuase their internal optical drives died, still purchase this drive expecting it to work with no issues, only to find out that a simple external USB device thst should work, has always worked in the past, suddenly, no longer works!

Users immediiately, if not sooner, found a way to hack a preference file in OS X to allow that drive to work with ANY Mac and this hack and its procedures are well documented online.

So, that is why my insight wasn't a guess, it was entirely based on Apple's previous selling and marketing behaviours!

Also, still proving my previous reply...stubborn!

That would relate to the tilt functionality, which I don't doubt is specifically related to the screen tech. Once you mark off the Tilt box, I don't see how the tracking the Pencil would require much/any more processing power then tracking any other stylus.

If you're talking about the accelerated polling of position advertised on the iPad Pro, I don't have any guesses regarding the capability of non-pro iPads to duplicate this functionality, as there is likely a few pieces in the chain there that I'm not familiar with, not limited to the processor, the controller that reads screen input, and the bus used to connect them.