A Stylus? Why Apple Is Defying Steve Jobs

One of the Apple announcements getting a lot of attention is the company's $99 stylus—called the Apple Pencil—for the iPad Pro. As Apple watchers were quick to point out, Steve Jobs himself hated the idea. "Who wants a stylus?" he asked in 2007. "You have to get em', put em' away. You lose them. Yuck." And in 2010, he said, "If you see a stylus, they blew it." ABC rounds up some of the immediate, snarky reactions, like this. A Gizmodo blogger sees the development as a sign that Tim Cook and his team "feel confident enough in their own leadership to ignore the now very infamous words of Jobs." More importantly, it looks like a good product, one that's a "necessity if Apple wants to compete for the business of design and engineering professionals who need a stylus to do their jobs on a tablet."

And at the Verge, a blogger notes that it's a much different world now than when Jobs first condemned the stylus. "What's missing from the reactions is the obvious acknowledgment that Jobs was not only talking about using a stylus with an entirely different product—the 3.5-inch iPhone 1—but he was referring to both styluses and screens that have been blown out of the water by newer technology." For one thing, the iPad Pro has a nearly 13-inch screen. Competitors such as Microsoft and Samsung already have similar technology on the market, and Cook is showing that he's OK playing catch-up when he thinks the time is right. Still, it's a notable shift. As Fast Company declares in its headline about the Apple Pencil, "The Steve Jobs Era Is Over." (More on Apple's new toys here.)