Nobody is denying that the Apple Pencil is one of the best touchscreen stylus devices around, offering an uncanny tactile feel that you’ll seldom find elsewhere. But after Apple threw a USB-C port in, it begged the question: what’s next? According to a fresh patent filed by Apple, a Pencil that’ll work just about anywhere, no screen required.
Proper pencil-pusher
Yesterday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple a patent that mentions this next-generation leap for the Apple Pencil, mentioning the addition of optical sensors and a trackball that would enable the device to work without a touch-sensitive screen handy. That means a wall, desk, or even your leg if you’re in a pinch. Or, you could stick with the obvious and just use the screen of the iPad it’s hooked up to.
The advanced sensors described in the patent can track motion, orientation, and position in 3D space, without ever hitting the screen. One iteration mentions how the Pencil could use optical flow sensors to accomplish the feat, in conjunction with a tip that’s made up of a transparent (or at least semi-transparent) material — like cover glass — that would allow light to pass through and the sensor to determine motion, tilt, rotation, and more.
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This, in conjunction with the trackball (reportedly feeding the internal optical sensors inside rather than a mechanical encoder) outlined in the plans, would allow Apple’s patent dreams to become reality. Other sensors could include force input, inertial and magnetic measurements, and vision measurements. This would make the Pencil an ideal companion of the Vision Pro, possibly enabling sketches in a 3D space and/or gesture recognition.
Still, there’s no telling when or even if Apple will put these plans to use. Still, we don’t see why this wouldn’t be an area Apple would focus on, particularly to appease those stubborn buyers who still proudly defend the first-gen Pencil even all these years later, and give them something new to throw their cash at.
