Apple filings show Cupertino interested in bringing the stylus back from the grave

Before the advent of capacitive touch screen technology, many devices on the market came with the resistive variant that required strong physical presses. Such devices, usually personal digital assistants, better known as PDAs, came with an accessory called a stylus. Show one to a teenager and they’ll laugh that such a concept existed, but Apple is taking the stylus very seriously. According to recent patent filings, Apple is working on two implementations of the stylus for their iOS products. The first is a throwback to the plastic sticks we had in the 90s, but adds some magic by heating the tip. Why? So it’ll move across a screen in a more fluid fashion and be easier for the touch panel to recognize. Such a stylus would either have a battery inside or a heatsink that would draw heat away from your hand and direct it to the tip. The other stylus is one that’s more a pen than anything else. It’ll feature wireless transmitters so that anything you write with it can be transfered, wirelessly, to a device that can then capture your notes. Such a stylus wouldn’t require the need to use any special paper, and according to a report from someone who “works at Apple on the iPad”, introducing this stylus would be to “reach a wider number of children in school.”

At this point you’re thinking baloney, Apple will never do this, and we’re going to have to agree with you on that. Apple files patents for nearly everything under the sun, but it doesn’t mean that they’ll bring a device to market that uses said patents anytime soon or even ever. Remember that when you tell people that you heard a friend of a friend say they have inside information about a new upcoming Apple product. That’s code for bullshit.