Hands-On Mac 134 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Hands-On Mac. I've got the new iPad Pro with M4 chip and the Apple Pencil Pro, and today we're going to be talking about what makes the Apple Pencil Pro unique. Stay tuned Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit. Welcome back to Hands on Mac. I am Micah Sargent, and today we are talking about this the Apple Pencil Pro. This is the new Apple Pencil from Apple that features some functionality that you won't get with other Apple Pencils. So I thought it'd be good to talk about what sets this Apple Pencil apart from the competition, other than the fact that it says Pencil Pro on the end of it. So let's take a look at some understanding of what makes this unique by heading over to iPad OS on the new M4 iPad Pro. All right, here we are and, first and foremost, the new Apple Pencil Pro is listed as the main device here on the Apple Pencil features menu, and there are some things that are unique to the Apple Pencil Pro All Apple Pencils or I should say, let's compare this to the Apple Pencil, which looks a lot like the Apple Pencil Pro, and the new Apple Pencil Pro, because these two are very similar in what they're able to do, with a few new features that come to the Pro, so they can both do really fine detail. The precision is very good between the screen of the iPad and the tip of the pencil. They feature low latency, so it doesn't feel like you're drawing and then the software is catching up. They have tilt sensitivity, which means that, depending on how you are tilting the Apple Pencil, you may be able to add some shading with like a watercolor or crayon, versus if you're holding it straight up and down, where that is of course going to provide a more kind of fine line. And pressure sensitivity, meaning that, depending on how hard you press with the Apple Pencil, it is going to make depending, of course, also on the brush or the tool that you're using it's going to make a deeper, darker line or a smaller, finer line. They also both attach magnetically to the side of the iPad and can charge while they are attached to the side of the iPad, and that is also the way that you pair them with an iPad Pro.

It also features Apple Pencil Hover. If you have a device that supports Hover. What that does is it makes a little spot on the screen that shows you where your Apple Pencil currently is and what you might be doing with it. There's also the double tap feature, which lets you change tools by simply tapping twice on the side of the pencil. And then there are three features actually I should say four features that are exclusive to the new Apple Pencil Pro. Barrel roll, which makes changes to the brush and pen tool that you're using based on how you rotate the Apple Pencil itself. Squeeze, which is a new gesture to join the double tap, where, if you squeeze the barrel of the Apple Pencil, it will provide a tool palette for you and actually, depending on which software you're using, it may do different things. And then haptic feedback there's actually inside of here a little haptic engine that will provide some feedback for you whenever you're doing different things with the Apple Pencil. So, in the case of the Apple Pencil Pro, squeezing will provide some haptic feedback and you also have some different movements, or rather some feedback, depending on what you're tapping, on, how you're tapping, and developers will be able to make use of that functionality as well. And then, last is Find my If you lose your Apple Pencil, you can use Find my to find it. All right.

So let's take a look at how some of these features work in practice. So here we are in a notes document and I've got my Apple Pencil and first and foremost, I'm going to tap on the little icon in the top right. That's kind of for markdown or for being able to use different tools. Now, as I take my Apple Pencil and I put it close to the screen this is the hover functionality we were talking about before. Now let me undo that. I want to show you something. As I move my iPad or my Apple Pencil close to the screen, it begins to show me a preview of the tool that I'm using. Now what you're not seeing is I'm actually going to use the barrel roll functionality to kind of turn the iPad, or rather the Apple Pencil, left and right and watch what happens to the current tool that I'm using, which is a pen tool that is a shaped pen. So right now the tool is straight up and down as I turn, as I roll my Apple Pencil to the left, it also rolls the tool to the left, and as I roll my Apple Pencil to the right, it also rolls the tool to the right. Now watch what happens with the tilt sensitivity. If I move my Apple Pencil closer to the screen, you can actually see a shadow from the Apple Pencil letting me know what it looks like if I was hovering this pen tool over the top of the screen.

Now I can go ahead and write something. So let me kind of put my hand down a little bit. I'm going to change the color to green and, by the way, also with the hover functionality, you can see as I'm moving my pen tip closer. It's showing me what I would be selecting by kind of making the colors a little bit larger, and then I will write something out. Let's just go with something easy, which would be my name, and I will kind of make an adjustment here. Actually, let's choose to do excuse me, hands on Mac and I'm rotating the pen so that we get kind of a different or pencil, excuse me, a different angle here and writing this out. Now, for those of you who are listening and not watching, this is probably going to be a more visual episode, so it's well worth tuning in if you can. If you are a member, if you're not a member of Club Twit, consider joining so you can see this a little bit better.

Now, remember that barrel roll was only one of the new features of the Apple Pencil. Another new feature is the squeeze functionality. Right, we'll go back to that chart, and we can see that squeeze and haptic feedback are two other features. So when we go back to the note, I am going to simply press on the sides of this Apple Pencil and up is going to pop a palette that shows me the different tools that I have access to. I can access the Pen Tool, I can access a marker, for example, and so then I can write kind of small here. Oh, this is a colored pencil, excuse me, and so we'll do hands on Mac, and this tool makes adjustments based on how hard I'm pressing and, of course, the tilt sensitivity is in play.

If I'm taking my Apple Pencil and putting it almost what is it? Parallel to the screen, it turns into a shading option, as opposed to if I have it straight up and down, where it's actually letting me write with a fine line. Now, haptic feedback is something that you are not going to be able to experience from where you are, but just trust that, as I'm using this, I am able to feel the presses on the screen or the presses that I'm doing on the side. It just kind of gives a little bit of a feedback that feels as if I am pressing something on the Apple Pencil. Now, the last feature is Find my, and I'm just going to kind of describe this feature based on, you know, privacy concerns. If I pull that up, it will show my current location, but with Find my, it does use the connectivity between the Apple Pencil and the iPad to help you narrow in on where your Apple Pencil might be. So it uses the actual wireless signal between the two to determine how strong or weak the signal is. So as you move around with your iPad, you're able to get closer and closer and closer to it, and it will say that it should be within reach, if it is within reach.

Last but not least, I do want to show you one other thing, which is just the settings for the Apple Pencil and how those look with the Apple Pencil Pro. So what we will do is we will launch the Settings app on the iPad and we will scroll down on the left until we get to Apple Pencil and you'll see that I have the Apple Pencil Pro listed here and we have some options. So before we do the top actions, I'm going to go to effects, because all of these are toggleable. It doesn't take us to a new screen. So hover is, of course, the ability to have something show up on screen whenever we are about to write on the screen or tap something on the screen to let us know that we're in the right place. Tool preview gives you, as you might imagine, a preview of what the tool is looking like, how it's positioned and what the you know color might be, as that is being drawn on the screen. Shadow was that feature that I showed you where, as you got kind of got closer and moved your Apple Pencil closer to the screen to a parallel position, it actually showed that shadow of the tool that you would be using, and then haptics, which of course give you that physical feedback of the device that you're using.

Now, only draw with Apple Pencil is something that I have, which says that if you have an Apple Pencil connected to an iPad, then when you are using that Apple Pencil you can draw with it, but if you move your finger across the screen, it will not let you draw with your finger. This is helpful if you want to make sure that you don't accidentally sketch over something with your hand, accidentally sketch over something with your hand. You only want the Apple Pencil's input to serve as the thing making the drawing on your screen and then Scribble is, of course, the ability to hand write text and have it converted into plain text on the page. And then you have gestures for the Apple Pencil specifically, which says that if you swipe up from the bottom left corner of the screen, do something. If you swipe up from the bottom right corner of the screen, do something. So right now, if I take my Apple Pencil, put it on the bottom left corner of the screen and swipe up, it immediately takes a screenshot of the page. You can change these so that it's a quick note, it's a screenshot or it does nothing. A quick note is, of course, the ability to bring up a little note that you have and these are special notes, again called quick notes so then you could write something quickly if you were in the middle of a conversation. Meeting is, whoops, rescheduled, and this is terrible handwriting because I am using it at almost a 90 degree angle. So we'll tap done on that. That quick note I'm going to have to remove because otherwise I'm going to be like what is this Now?

Last but not least, let's head into the actions. Of course, we know that the double tap gesture lets you switch between tools. So what this does is right now I have it set to when I double tap, please switch between the current tool that I'm using and the eraser. I always want to have the eraser ready for me if I need it. You could have that switch between the current tool and the last tool you used. So if you're using a, if you're using the pencil and the last thing you used was a brush, it'll switch to the brush and then back to the pencil and then back to the brush.

It can show your color palette so you can change colors, your ink attributes, so you can change how thick or thin the line is and also the opacity of the line. And then, of course, you can just turn it off and then allow double tap only with hover. That means that if you have your Apple Pencil really far away from the screen and you double tap while you have this feature on, it will not do anything. It is only when you are within range that that hover functionality shows up, that it will actually double tap, that the double tap will register. And then, of course, squeeze. Now, squeeze is once again the ability to squeeze the side of the Apple Pencil Pro and have it trigger something. I currently have it set to the default, which is to show the tool palette. You could have it switch between the current tool and the eraser, switch between the current tool and the last used tool, show the color palette, show ink attributes, as we just talked about. Turn it off, or you can have it trigger a shortcut. So, if you want, you can set this with functionality to actually run a shortcut when you squeeze the Apple Pencil. Apple also gives you the ability to choose the amount of pressure that is needed to activate squeeze, so you can turn that up or down, depending. That is some of the well, actually rather all of the settings for the Apple Pencil on the iPad.

Folks, that is going to bring us to the end of this episode of Hands-on Mac. I wanted to show you the new Apple Pencil Pro and everything you're able to do with it, plus give you a little rundown of what's possible in the settings for the Apple Pencil. If you have got, if you just recently purchased a new app iPad Pro or Apple Pencil Pro or Magic Keyboard or any of the in-between I'd love to hear about it. Micah at twittv is where you can get in touch with me. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Hands on Mac. I will be back next week with another episode. Until then, I hope you have a great week weekend, depending on when you're listening to this. Bye-bye.