(OPINION) Apple’s latest event brought a ton of new products including multiple sized iPad Airs, M4 toting iPad Pros and even a pro-level upgrade for the iPad’s trusty stylus, the Apple Pencil. Known as the Apple Pencil Pro, this new device is already breaking my brain.
From first impressions, the Apple Pencil Pro definitely seems like quite an impressive device. On top of familiar features that we’ve come to appreciate from Apple’s iPad accessory, the Apple Pencil Pro now features an all-new squeeze button, a gyroscope for recognising rotation, haptic feedback and even Find My support (great news for anyone who’s lost of one of these things in the past).
As far as accessories go, that’s quite a solid amount of upgrades and I have no doubt that digital artists are already lining up to put down a pre-order for the Apple Pencil Pro, and you might be wondering exactly how much more these features will set you back.
Here’s the thing, the Apple Pencil Pro and the Apple Pencil 2 are the same price.
I’ve now rewatched the pricing portion of Apple’s event multiple times and refreshed the Apple Store plenty just to double check that I’m not missing something but so far as I can tell, Apple has decided to lump the Apple Pencil Pro with the same £129/$129 price tag as the lesser powered Apple Pencil 2.
On the one hand, this is definitely a rare win where consumers are concerned, and it does offer up something of an obvious winner when pitching the two devices against one another, but it does beg the question: what is Apple’s strategy here?
After all, Apple is known for being a luxury brand and if you want to opt for more storage or even a different style of chassis, the company has been more than ready to charge you quite a bit extra for the pleasure.
There was no mention during the presentation about sunsetting the Apple Pencil 2 or even bringing the price down to reflect the cost of the Apple Pencil Pro, so again I have to ask, what is Apple trying to do here?
It’s not the type of company to overlook such an obvious oddity, so if there is some kind of plan behind it all then I’d love to know, otherwise I’ll be stuck here refreshing my browser until Tim Cook himself tells me that it’s not a mistake.
