Apple may be working on a new Pencil that works with Vision Pro

Macworld

If you’ve been hoping Apple would release new accessories that enhance the Vision Pro experience, you may be in luck. MacRumors cites “a source familiar with the matter” in its report that Apple has internally tested a new Apple Pencil accessor that supports visionOS. Beyond that, almost nothing is really known about the hardware or how it would work.

Obviously, the hand and object tracking of Apple Vision Pro is nearly good enough to just use any pen or pencil to “draw in the air” with Vision Pro. No new hardware would be required for such a thing, just a refinement of the tracking already present in the visionOS operating system. But an Apple Pencil might allow one to literally draw on any hard surface in their environment, with tilt and pressure sensitivity, thus turning any hard and smooth surface into a virtual canvas.

Previous rumors of a 3rd-generation Apple Pencil suggested it may have a color-sampling tip, which would also provide a good reason for the accessory to work with Apple Vision Pro, allowing creators to literally tap anything in their environment to “absorb” its color and then painting/drawing/sculpting with it in augmented reality. It would be a neat trick and an excellent way to showcase the incredible real-world potential for Apple Vision Pro.

Obviously, support for Apple Pencil—current or future models—would require a new version of visionOS and new frameworks for developers. If Apple Pencil support is coming to Vision Pro, there’s no sense of whether this would come with visionOS 2 (expected to be announced at WWDC and released this fall) or an update to the current version of visionOS with version 1.2 expected soon.

Virtual Reality