Will This Pencil Work?

"I was … heartbroken."

Last time I wrote about both the iPad that Ellie and I each got, and my rekindled interest in an Apple Pencil for my iPad. My finger is so fat and flat when I think of using it to place the insertion point in a document, or to highlight a specific bit of text, my stomach turns over. Using it to hand-write text is beyond imagining.

Writing with my finger yields text that is WAY TOO BIG to be of much use.

The S-pen for my Samsung Note solved all those problems, and the prospect of solving them with the Apple Pencil that Benjamin had let me experiment with on his iPad Pro got me salivating … remembering my S-Pen … mourning the loss of the S-Pen when moving to my current
( native stylus-less ) smartphone.

I wrote to Benjamin, "Please bring your Apple Pencil to dinner next week."

"Just so you know, it works with the iPad Pro, and nothing else," he replied.

I was, as I said, heartbroken.

Undaunted ( or foolish beyond belief; you decide ), I took my iPad to dinner and Benjamin brought his Apple Pencil. Benjamin, who keeps up with technology much more than I ( he's still working in it for his livelihood, I am retired from working in it ) recognized my iPad: it is a new device from Apple, one that Apple was more or less just introducing when he bought his iPad Pro.

The pencil's connector, where the eraser would be if it were a lead pencil, plugs into its own charger or into the iPad Pro's power input port. It connects with the iPad Pro via blue tooth. My iPad's power port is the same as that of an iPad Pro and, of course, my iPad also has blue tooth. Both Benjamin and I wondered … "will this work?" We plugged the pencil in, and, viola, it connected to my iPad! I wrote with it, it works. Alleluia!

I almost immediately sent a text message to Ellie: "Good news: the Apple pencil works with my iPad; better news: my birthday is coming up pretty soon."

Last time I ended my post on a heartbroken note; this time I end anticipating an "Apple Surprise" for my birthday.

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