Si F Sweetman

Here come the Lizard Guys.

Here come the Lizard Guys.

Dragons. Everyone's got 'em. Who needs 'em? They're just like us!

I recently bought a new set of tips for my Apple Pencil from Pen.Tips. I bought the Lite version product just as a tester. The idea behind this product is that it provides a way to give you a bit more friction on the surface of the glass of your iPad as you draw on it. Some people use screen covers that give your tablet a kind of paper texture. I've never used those (I know they wear out relatively quickly), but this iss a little piece of rubber that fits over the tip of your Apple Pencil. Literally that's what it is and it does about what you'd expect that to do, but here are my initial thoughts.

Disclaimers: I have been using slick surfaced tablets for 16 years. I am used the the level of friction that you get off a Wacom stylus on plastic and the slightly glidier slickness of the Apple Pencil on glass for the last 5 years now. I don't especially mind it. All sketching here was done in Procreate.

Initial impressions of this are, I'd say: not worth the money. When not on sale, a pack of 5 of these goes for $28. On sale, about $10. Rather than friction (and through that a degree of control) coming through texture like on paper, this is rubber. There isn't a different feeling as you drag it across the glass, it's mostly just slower. It makes longer strokes often feel awful to do, if not preventing some of them entirely. It made making series of quick semi-parallel marks feel sluggish which is not ideal when you're doing something like hatching in a pencil sketch.

It's not all bad though. There are two areas where I think I felt a distinct improvement. The first is that it felt easier to control strokes through pressure. I was able to much more easily create a consistent grade of full pressure to none. The second is the tilt function. If you aren't familiar, certain brushes change when you tilt the brush and use the side of the tip, like shading with a pencil. With the default apple pencil on glass, this is kind of awful, and I effectively never used it purposefully. With these tips, it works well enough that I'd consider it.

Time will tell if I end up thinking these things are worth it, but at the moment I just think almost 30 bucks is a little much to be asking for what you're getting.