Not just confusing, but inconvenient! If you buy a 10th or 11th gen iPad plus the Apple Pencil that works with it, you have no way to charge that Pencil at all.

It can't charge from the iPad. It can't charge from USB-C. It can't charge from a Lightning charger.

You have to go out and buy a special charger that only charges the Apple Pencil and literally nothing else. It's a completely proprietary connection, a pointlessly inverted version of the Lightning connector, that never could and never will charge anything other than your stylus.

Despite Apple having the option of allowing it to charge from a Lightning cable, or Usb-C, or not charge at all and simply get power from the device light Samsung's S-Pen, Apple chose to opt for None Of The Above and allow the Apple Pencil to charge exclusively from the specific Apple Pencil charger.

Why?

Because screw you. Because Apple makes money when you buy that 20$ charging adapter and doesn't care that you have to carry that adapter with you everywhere now.

They could have made it charge from the iPad charger.

They could have made it charge from the iPhone charger.

They could have made it charge by attaching to the iPad.

They could have powered it wirelessly like Samsung and never need charging at all.

But no. They chose the worst of all worlds, the most painful, expensive, and inconvenient possible option, and allowed it to only charge from a specific "First generation Apple Pencil Charger" that isn't included with the iPad or even the Pencil itself.

That's right, you go out today and buy a brand new iPad and a brand new Apple Pencil, and you can't use the Pencil. At all. You have to also but the separate Apple Pencil Charging Adapter. Because Fuck You. We're Apple and Fuck You.

The 10th and 11th generation iPads work with _both_ the Lightning Apple Pencil and the USB-C Apple Pencil.

The Lightning Apple Pencil was sold at a time when you could plug it directly into the compatible iPad, and it *came with the adapter*.

The current iPad is compatible with both, so you could use your old Apple Pencil with the new iPad.

You cannot buy a Lightning Apple Pencil anymore because Apple doesn’t sell them.

who knows what third-party retailers are doing.

>> Samsung's S-Pen

Is Wacom. Wacom hates magnets. Apple devices are littered with magnets

What does this mean that Wacom hates magnets? I attached a steel plate to the back of my S24 Ultra, in the car it's held on by a big honking magnet. I use the Wacom stylus all the time.

Very curious if there's a fine detail that I'm missing. Thanks.

Put a magnet near the front of screen and try to use spen

I'll try it in the name of science, but I've never encountered this. What is your use case? In the 13 years I've been using Wacom stylii on phones and E-ink devices, I've never encountered this.

Put on a 3rd party wallet style case with magnet that keeps it closed. Parts of the screen near the magnet stop responding to spen for a time.

Just tested on Note 8. Put magnet on the back of phone and area about 10 times the size of the magnet stops working with s-pen

Samsung's Fold devices (1 to 6) are also riddled with magnets (everywhere) and Wacom works fine, and with flexible substrate no less.

That said, apparently it was expensive for them: they got rid of it in this year's iteration.

Wait, so if I have an Apple Pencil Gen1 that seems to be dead, it might "just" be that I can't charge it on my iPad?

If it’s been lying in a drawer for a year, 99% chance the battery is dead

Apple Pencil compatibility chart, for comparison https://f.nooncdn.com/cms/pages/20250530/31608d4ea3ae92b5bbe...

Simpler than the one from the HN-linked blog.

It would make even more sense if sorted by iPad release date.

It's not like someone's going to buy a brand new M-series iPad and then get a 10-year-old first gen pencil for it.

I believe what's what a commenter upstream is trying to complain about, but I couldn't make full sense of what he wrote.

So long as you ignore the Surface RT/Pro 1/Pro 2 (that is, devices from 2013 or previous), all Surface pens since 2014 work with all devices through today. The matrix doesn't seem particularly complicated.

Except for the Surface Go _Laptops_ (different from the Surface Go _tablets_), for which there is no stylus support at all. That said, still an order of magnitude simpler than the Apple one.

Despite Microsoft making a bunch of different versions of pens, they mostly all just work. This post is trying to be exhaustive but the vast majority of people who aren't extremely Deep into the Photoshop game will not need or care about any of this.

Basically, "If the pen fits in the keyboard slot, it just works". I'm currently using a pen from a Surface Pro 7 on my new Surface Pro 12" and it was trivial to connect it and it works great

Doesn't even need to fit in the slot either. One of my Surface Pens is an older one that uses a AAAA battery and doesn't fit in the keyboard slot. It works just fine on my SP11 and older SPX. It just has less features and isn't as good as the newer Slim Pen 2.

Some non-Surfaces too. I’m using a Microsoft Surface Pen “Model 1776” a.k.a. “Ver.4” a.k.a “Surface Pen with no clip” with my Framework Laptop 12 folded all the way around into tablet mode.

Not sure? It seems to me that the pen that launched with the Surface Pro 3 (V2), still works to an extent with the Surface Pro 11? That seems rather good, no?