Charging the Apple Pencil: Failed Design or Genius?
MKBHD recently mockingly tweeted about the way the Apple Pencil charges. True, it does look ridiculous out of context. True, when Apple first introduced this method of charging I thought it was insane. True, when charging it seems that it would be pretty easy to snap the charging end into the iPad. But, after using the iPad Pro + Apple Pencil since it was released almost 2 years ago I completely disagree that this is a flawed design.
Sure, it does look of ridiculous but when you are out in a coffee shop or in a meeting and you need to charge your Apple Pencil the last thing you want to do is pull out a charger plus a dongle to quick charge the device. Plus, when I leave the house to do some writing I just want to grab my iPad, which has an all day charge. I never need to think about bringing a charger with my iPad. I really don’t want to think about bringing a charger or even making sure my Apple Pencil is charged before I go out. The genius of the design is that I can insert the Apple Pencil in my iPad and charge it. A 5-minute charge always gives me plenty of juice for the rest of my session (actually a 15-second charge gives you 30 minutes!). At the very least, if I get up to go to the restroom or take a quick walk I can plug in the pencil and when I return it is good to go.
Additionally, and this is often forgot, the Apple Pencil does ship with a dongle to connect to any lightning cable. So, if you don’t want to be embarrassed by using this ridiculous design then just plug it in like you would any other device.
So, when people make comments about the so called failed design and how it is ridiculous with charging the Apple Pencil, it just seems to be made by people who don’t actually use the device in real life. Because in actual use you wouldn’t want it any other way.