There’s a good chance Apple will unveil a new stylus during its Let Loose event, but recently discovered clues suggest we might see an Apple Pencil Pro. User rsuOvO on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) reportedly found multiple references to the Pro model in the code of the company’s Japanese website.
At the time of this writing, you can still find the name by heading over to the web page, and then pressing the Ctrl and U keys at the same time. Scroll to about 60 percent of the way down and you’ll find the name “Apple Pencil Pro” littered throughout.
The surrounding text is in Japanese. Since we can’t read the language, we ran the wording through Google Translate to get an idea of what it’s saying so take the following with a grain of salt. According to the machine translation, it just describes the accompanying GIF animation in detail. The text talks about how the event logo is drawn with shades of green and white before ending with a glossier version of the Apple icon. No other information about the Pencil Pro, what it might look like, or any of its features could be found.
What’s interesting about the code is it cannot be found on the American, European, or UK versions of Apple’s website. We did find strings of text mentioning the Apple Pencil and a description of the same GIF animation, but nothing on a Pro model of any kind. As far as we know, the name doesn’t appear anywhere else.
Analysis: A possible rebranding
Does this mean that Japan is going to receive an exclusive Apple Pencil model or was its appearance on the website just a mistake? It’s probably the latter. As MacRumors points out in their coverage, this could all be a “translation error” or someone somewhere slipped up; both are equally likely.
However, the existence of an Apple Pencil Pro is an interesting concept; one that we can’t ignore as leaks from the past six months have painted the stylus as a very capable device. Back in September 2023, there was a leak claiming the Apple Pencil 3 would have “interchangeable magnetic tips” to help artists tackle different tasks. Then this April, we saw more clues. Recent reports point to the possible inclusion of haptic response in the next stylus. It’s a type of tech that might make it feel like you’re drawing on paper instead of glass. And a report from early last month stated staple features such as pressure sensitivity would be present on the upcoming stylus. This lets you alter the “thickness of your strokes depending on how hard you press down”.
Going back even further, there was another leak claiming the Apple Pencil 3 would have “interchangeable magnetic tips” to help artists tackle different tasks. Features like these better fit a Pro-level model in our opinion. It’s for this reason we believe the Apple Pencil 3, assuming it’s announced at the event, will be rebranded as the Apple Pencil Pro. It’ll exist alongside the original Pencil stylus and Pencil 2 as the high-end option with all the bells and whistles while the other two will be the cheaper options.
That seems to be the most likely scenario. Whoever helps run the Japanese website may have accidentally spilled the beans on the substantial upgrade. If we don’t see the Pencil Pro at the event, it may appear at WWDC 2024. It’s hard to say for sure right now.
We expect Apple’s Let Loose event to be a big one where the world will see several tablets such as two iPad Pro models. If you’re in the market for a new tablet, check out TechRadar’s list of the best iPad for 2024.