In his weekly Powered On newsletter, Mark Gurman expects the upcoming iPad Pro, which is expected to be announced at Apple’s “Let loose” event, will pack in the upcoming M4 chip, skipping the M3 chip altogether. At the same time, he also reports that the next-generation Apple Pencil will feature several improvements over the current second-generation Pencil.
Last year saw no updates to the iPad lineup at all. The only iPad accessory that Apple announced was the USB-C model of the Apple Pencil, which is a separate model in the Pencil lineup. So what could Apple bring to its most advanced Pencil?
According to Gurman, he expects the upcoming Pencil to feature haptic feedback for the first time. Apple has done that before with both the Magic Trackpad and the Force Touch trackpad in MacBooks by simulating a click that’s done by the Taptic Engine. With haptic feedback coming to the new Pencil, the Pencil would feel more natural or realistic to sketch across several different drawing tools such as a crayon, pen, pencil, and so on.
In addition to that, the new Pencil will adopt more gestures for greater control of what you’re drawing. Based on several code references in an iPadOS 17.5 beta, the Pencil will have a new ‘squeeze’ gesture that summons a contextual menu to dynamically access common actions based on various scenarios.
The next-generation Pencil is expected to be announced alongside the redesigned Magic Keyboard and new models for both the iPad Air and iPad Pro.
We’re just over one week until Apple’s “Let loose” event, which will go live on May 7 at 7 am PT. You can watch the live stream on Apple’s website or its YouTube channel.
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