Hacks by developers show that the iPad Pro's Apple Pencil could do more beyond drawing and writing. The device's pressure sensitivity is often used to get darker and thicker marks by pressing it harder.
Hamza Sood, a developer, tweeted a short video that shows the pencil being used to peek and pop a note in the Notes app, a 3D Touch gesture that only the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus officially supports. He did it by jailbreaking the iPad Pro to hook iOS to interpret pressure data from the sensors in the pencil as pressure data for the 3D Touch feature, according to 9to5Mac.
An Apple Pencil is needed for that hack because the sensors to measure the pressure are found on the pencil's tip, not on the iPad Pro screen. Sood provided more hacking tips for Pencil owners on GitHub.
On Monday, developer Simon Gladman shared three experimental apps on different ways to use the Pencil, reports Engadget.
By using PencilSynth, an AudioKit-powered synthesizer, user could manipulate sound by moving the Pencil around the screen and changing the angle. Rotating the Pencil around a pivot point would allow the user to manipulate the hue/saturation, brightness/contrast and gamma/exposure using the PencilController image editor app. By using PencilScale, a homemade harness, the user attaches his weight to the Pencil and the total weight is reflected on the display.
In his blog, Gladman writes, "PencilSynth and my Pencil-based image processing app are, I think, demonstrations that the Pencil is an excellent input device for controlling continuous values across multiple dimensions."
These four hacks show that the device is more than a writing implement that is if consumers can get their hands on the Pencil which is in short supply and being sold on eBay at exorbitant prices.