Greater productivity compared to annotating on a PDF in an iPad app such as Notability or PDF expert with my fingers. Which I did a decent job of, but the speed and quality just cannot be compared to a dedicated stylus, especially one of the Apple Pencil's caliber. It's also faster, since I don't have to keep zooming in and out of PDFs just to ensure decent handwriting.
Fewer problems than the 3rd party styluses I have experimented with so far. They never captured handwriting all that well or smoothly, and none have felt as satisfying to hold and use than the Apple Pencil. The Apple Pencil is probably the first stylus where I didn't feel like I was "fighting the hardware". It works so well that it's the first stylus that has made me actually want to write more and experiment more with drawing / inking apps on my iPad to see how far I can push this "new found power".
Currently playing around with the app "Paper" to evaluate its viability as a presentation tool. This is something I normally would not have bothered with prior to owning the Apple Pencil because the user experience simply sucked.
110% agree with you.
****To the main topic...
I was really close to buying a cintiq, then the Pro was announced and when I got the pencil I was sold, no latency, no lag, great size and weight, with absolute accuracy. I haven't picked up a graphite pencil since December. (And I only did that for my last art class.) Since then all my illustrations, sketches, and everything else has been drawn on my iPad with the Apple Pencil. This is IMO by far the greatest Apple Product besides iMac 5K. The Pencil is being used to help me get through school and will do so when I get into my animation program in 2017. I think the complaints of the no magnets or not being able to stick to the iPad are silly, OP have you ever carried around an art case full of 300+ pencils, pens, markers, paint brushes, and paper? I spent over $250 just to finish 1/4 of a drawing before I ran out of money. the Apple Pencil is INDEED innovative and brilliant. All those supplies get heavy and are bloody expensive, (good Oil Pencils for instance are around 200 dollars for a set of 150.) Add in paint brushes, art pens, paint and the fact that all that has to be re-purchased several times during a full school year, and you end up with over $1000+ dollars for art supplies, (or 600 just for oil pencils.) The Apple Pencil takes care of the role of graphite pencil, oil pencil, pen, marker, paint brush and most everything else I use to draw.
All I have to do with the iPad is slip it into a bag, then put the 1 pencil in the slot designated for a traditional pencil and boom I have a barely 2 pound organized bag to carry around school instead of a 5+ pound messy bag. The money is a silly complaint IMO too, as you either buy the iPad knowing you'll use it to its full extent or you simply pass and buy another product. Again as I stated above, art supplies are very, very expensive but the Apple Pencil allows me to not have to rely on other drawing tools as much, or constantly re purchase them, (saving me money and stress, as school debt is ridiculous enough, one purchase for an iPad and no more several hundred dollar art supply runs.)
I think Apple is doing fine, they have stumbled a bit in QC on some of their products, for me the darn home buttons on the iPhone are a joke, OS has bugs here and there, But Apple sends out fixes that work within a week or 2 at most, and when they do any problem I may have had is gone.
Sure it would be nice not to have an issue in the first place, but honestly... Compared to Windows' constant ridiculous and downright useless updates... Apple is still 1000x better.
*not an Apple fanboy, but merely a person who has found the right tools (finally) for the jobs that need to get done.
Kal.
