Here’s my iPad-focused New Year’s resolution
In 2022, this is what I’m doing to develop an entirely new skill with my iPad.
Right at the end of 2021 I made a fairly radical change in my tech lifestyle: I switched from a 12.9-inch iPad Pro with Apple’s Magic Keyboard case to an iPad Air with no keyboard at all. I plan to write soon about why I made that change, but it certainly left me without an input method I had long relied on. So my iPad-focused New Year’s resolution is all about helping me get used to writing with the Apple Pencil.
I’ve experimented with Apple Pencil going all the way back to the first generation with the original 11-inch iPad Pro. That first Apple Pencil was a really good first effort with a product like that, but it was certainly limited. To charge it, you connected it to your iPad’s Lightning port, making your iPad look like a really big lollipop. It worked, and was actually clever, but it always felt very fragile. I always feared it would snap off in the port and render both products useless.
Apple Pencil 2 took the concept and rendered it to near perfection. It charges inductively when magnetically attached to the side of the iPad. It also pairs that way, which is just brilliant. Having one side of the Pencil flat is great in several ways. Firstly, it facilitates a magnetic attachment that is firm without being so secure you have to wrench it off. Secondly it prevents the Pencil from rolling away when you set it on a desk or table. Thirdly, it provides an easy surface for double-tapping to alternate between writing and erasing modes. It also feels perfect in the hand; the weighting is excellent. In short, it’s a wonderfully designed product that I’ve mostly avoided using for two reasons: 1) I lack artistic talent and 2) I have terrible handwriting that I hate.
On that latter point, Apple introduced a feature in iPadOS 14 called Scribble. When activated, it takes your chicken-scratch handwriting and converts it into printed text. And that’s how I’m going to be using Apple Pencil in 2022. My company holds two weekly all-hands meetings. My goal for 2022 is to take notes using my iPad Air and Apple Pencil at all of those meetings. I did that for the first two meetings this week, and I really enjoyed the experience. I can already see improvement, both in my actual handwriting and in how I’ve adapted to using Apple Pencil and the on-screen tools, and I also think it’s going to really help me retain what I’m learning in these meetings. If nothing else it’ll be nice to be able to look back and reference these notes in the future.
Do you have any Apple-related New Year’s resolutions or goals? If so, I’d love to hear what they are!
John, what app do you plan on taking notes in?