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Big Backing For 'Universal Stylus' Campaign (bbc.com)
Google has backed an effort to standardise touch-screen styluses so they can be used on many devices. From a report: The Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) was launched, in 2015, to encourage companies to produce styluses that work on rivals' products Dell, Intel, Lenovo, LG and graphics tablet-maker Wacom have all backed the project. However, Apple, Microsoft and Samsung have not. One expert suggested the big brands would keep their proprietary pens. Styluses designed to work with modern touch-screen devices and graphics tablets usually contain sensors to detect pressure, movement and orientation of the pen.
...is there are so many to choose from. We had a standard connector for charging phones: microUSB. Apple and Samsung chose to go with a proprietary connector instead. The lighting cable is at least available from third parties; the Apple version cost $22 at BestBuy. The Samsung Galaxy S8 and presumably the S9 as well use a proprietary cable, only available from Samsung as far as I know. Apple sells a $99 Apple Pen; what monetary interest could they have in supporting a universal stylus?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Nor do I. After all, what incentive does a leader in a particular category have for giving up their competitive advantage? To my eyes, this push for a standard is an attempt to stem the tide among the crowd that's interested in these sorts of things (among which I am not a member).
Apple currently provides the best stylus in the consumer tablet space, hands down. The Apple Pencil uses a proprietary Bluetooth chip that pushes its wireless latency to a far lower point than anything else on the market, and it only works with the iPad Pro, which has a 120 Hz refresh rate. Between the low latency and fast refresh, it seem as if you're simply writing on a physical pad of paper. Even as a person who has no interest in styluses, it was shocking how much of a difference those factors made over Wacoms and other products I've tried over the years.
A quick anecdote: my non-techie wife dabbles in watercoloring and sketching, and after a brief stop by the Apple Store a few months back, she went from being completely ambivalent about the Pencil to being blown away by it. When I told her that it only worked on the newest iPad Pro, she immediately changed her plans for her next tablet. She had been planning to pick up an iPad mini once her current mini got too long in the tooth, but now she plans to get a Pro. I've heard similar anecdotes from a handful of other friends who dabble in art, several of whom have dropped their use of dedicated devices like Wacoms that ostensibly do the same things, simply because the Pencil was so much better than whatever they already had.
I don't doubt that art professionals have access to better tools, or else tools that address needs the Pencil doesn't address, but at least in the consumer tablet space the Pencil is far and away the best thing available. If someone is interested in an inferior stylus, dumb styluses already work just fine. If someone wants a wireless, pressure-sensitive stylus, why would Apple support a device that is almost certainly worse than what they already have, particularly when what they already have is so compelling to the people interested in it that it's driving sales of more expensive iPads, despite the added cost of the Pro and the obscene $100 price of the Pencil.