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Speaker 1: Apple is sketching out a different accessory strategy. It just made the brand new pencil stylus cheaper than before. But Apple didn’t just cut the price, it also cut out some features. So what’s Apple’s goal here? This is a perfect week for me to talk about the pencil because Apple accessories have been on my mind. I’ve been tinkering with accessories while trying the iPhone 15 Pro Max. And as we transition away from lightning ports, a lot of folks might be investing in extra [00:00:30] charging stuff, even though we sometimes still need lightning cables. And frankly, we’re just in this really clumsy stage right now with how we charge Apple products. So of course, my eyes go wide when Apple says they got a new accessory for cheaper. It’s part of the goal to get everything to U S B C, but it doesn’t have all the cool charging tricks like other models as we learn about the new pencil this week.
Speaker 1: There’s one more thing I want to talk about. When are we going to get out of this awkward apple accessory charging phase of juggling different dongles [00:01:00] cords and mounts? Although I think I found a way to make this phase a little less annoying, at least for me. I’m Bridget Carey, and this is one more thing. Alright, so we get news of a new pencil, but no new iPads this year. There was a lot of buzz that maybe a new iPad would drop this month, but nope. Apple just came out with a new pencil. This looks like the first year that Apple will not be releasing some sort of new iPad. And I wouldn’t hold your breath for something still coming at this point in the year. [00:01:30] Although there have been plenty of rumors of new iPads in the works possibly coming next year. Credit to our iPad reviewer, Scott Stein, who called it back in September saying that this might be the year to wait on the iPad.
Speaker 1: But hey, new pencil, right? Yeah, it comes out in November. It joins the U SS B C club. So you can use a U S B C cable to pair and charge with any iPad that has a U SS B C port, and it’s got a little sliding cap that hides the port. You see, charging [00:02:00] the previous pencil was a bit of a sloppy dongle dance to make the iPad 10th generation model connect to the lightning pencil. So yeah, fixing the pencil port was obviously a priority and this new one has a magnet so it can snap to the iPad. But yes, there is a, but the U S B C pencil cannot do what the last version could do. When it magnetically attaches to some iPads, it does not charge the pencil. That was possible with the second gen pencil from 2018, which could wirelessly [00:02:30] charge on the iPad Pro Air and Mini.
Speaker 1: It’s kind of hard to keep up with how different iPads can charge pencils in different ways, and that’s my point. It’s been messy. The new version of the pencil also is missing pressure sensitivity, something the first two models had, and it does not have double tap to change tools and without all of that, apple got the price down to $79 cheaper than the first pencil. If you’re a student, the education discount actually brings the price [00:03:00] down to $69. And right there, that is your answer to why Apple went simple for a lower price. This is to make it more enticing as an education accessory because the student discount means it is the same price as other competing stylist pens like the Logitech crayon or the Targus iPad stylus. So yes, we got a cheaper pencil, no extra adapters, but you still need to have a cord to charge it.
Speaker 1: Maybe someday the pencil will grow up to have U SS V C and magnetic [00:03:30] wireless charging. If you got a new iPhone 15, you may feel like that right now you are between a few different types of chargers in the home and office, maybe charging your phone with U S B C, but charging earbud cases with lightning. And I’m also buying extra cords for the car. And I also had to start looking into new travel battery packs that could work with newer cords. You see, there’s this ripple effect of changes ever since I’m now using U S B C. This whole new adjustment to charging routines got me playing around [00:04:00] with Mag Safe more. And yeah, I know MagSafe is old stuff, but I never really felt like I cared much about it before and yet now having multiple cords in the house with different chargers and add to the fact that my husband uses an older iPhone.
Speaker 1: It just got me thinking more about trying. MagSafe stands to make things cleaner when sharing a space between different iPhone models. You can find some charging stands online for around $30, or you can go up to $80 like this sleek one from Nomad, which I use by my desk. There [00:04:30] are a lot of choices out there, but here’s my little twist. You see, my husband has an older iPhone se long lived touch id, am I right? And that version does not have a safe magnetic ring, but it does do wireless charging from the back. So I got creative. I spent about $15 on Amazon to get him a case that had a safe ring on the back and then bam, it now locks the phone into place to charge on these MagSafe stands. So you don’t necessarily need a whole new phone to bring everyone [00:05:00] in the house up to speed on MagSafe perks.
Speaker 1: Some of you have been waiting for an update on my case Life after ditching fine woven. Well, when you combine the fact that I needed a new case with all of these charging stumbles, and you could say I found a few things to try, I first dove into the pop socket life. Yeah, very millennial me. I am well aware of that. And this Aura case is awesome, which led me into discovering how Anchor makes Pop socket power packs. [00:05:30] And I was today years old when I finally tried switching different pop socket designs to be festive. It just twists. And even if you don’t care for the pop of the socket, they make this do hickey mount that you can put on your car a C vent to attach any phone with a magnet. And at this point things are just clicking in my life, but the PopSocket case has a cutout for the action button. So I wanted to try other cases and that led me to moth’s soft [00:06:00] wannabe leather case. And that opened me up to a slew of more
Speaker 2: Snap-on do
Speaker 1: Hickeys. Moft makes a battery pack, but it also has these wild little stands that can go up with it and prop up your phone. And would you look at this tripod? Why am I tripod ing? I don’t
Speaker 2: Know. And yet I feel like I need this
Speaker 1: And it goes flat. And then I started mixing up brands like Velvet Caviar has a bunch of cute designs and also it has a strong magnet, [00:06:30] and now I’m just slapping all sorts of things together. But maybe you need less pink and more sporty, like this tough case from Nomad, and you could do that. You could do that because it all just works. I just wish that Apple accessories were this easy to work together. As I was prepping for this report, I was reminded that awkward accessories can take a long time to fix. I am still charging my work’s magic mouse upside down with a lightning cable. I like to tell [00:07:00] myself that this is just a short, awkward few years, but I have a feeling that until everything can charge with a dock and a snap, then we’re going to be a little goofy for a
Speaker 2: While.
Speaker 1: What have you found to be your growing pains in the world of charging and accessories? Please share in the comments and I’ll be back next Friday with one more Apple thing to talk about. See you next time.
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