http://www.macuser.co.uk/8830-uspto-pub ... #more-8830

And there I was thinking that Apple was against such things. Mind you, given that even Adobe are jumping on the stylus bandwagon, Apple probably feels that it has to respond in some fashion.

Big tech companies patent lots of things they never actually end up selling.

Given the issue of patent trolls (especially in America) you'd have to consider them [LIFTED] nuts to not patent everything they could, regardless of whether they have any intention of selling / using it at the time.

Don't WACOM already have a patent for this, when not, then donkey's years of prior art...

Since when did that ever matter

That's sufficiently unique to differ from anything Wacom have offered, I think. AFAIK, they've only offered a single point of contact; does anyone know different?

There are "brush-like" styluses around, but they offer nothing that a dumb stylus would. Anyone who has handled a paint brush will know that the bristles do a lot more than offer a point of contact, yet so far no one has invented a brush-like stylus that offers the kind of input that would make simulating a brush in software possible.

So if Apple are looking for a stylus that can do more than offer a point of contact + optional pressure data (which some stylii do via Bluetooth), then it could be interesting.