The new iPad requires a $9 dongle if you want to use the Apple Pencil

Apple introduced a caller iPad connected Tuesday, and it looks similar a bully upgrade, with a full redesign. But there's 1 happening that's conscionable a small silly astir it: The $99 optional Apple Pencil requires a dongle to complaint and brace with the caller iPad.

Unlike the iPad Air, iPad Pro and iPad Mini, the caller iPad lone supports the first-generation Apple Pencil. That's not a large woody successful itself, arsenic overmuch arsenic I'd similar to spot added enactment for the much comfy Apple Pencil 2, which charges connected the broadside of those aforementioned iPads.

But since Apple made the determination from a Lightning larboard to USB-C, you can't conscionable instrumentality the Apple Pencil into the iPad's charging larboard to foodstuff it up. (That itself was ever a small weird, but it worked.) Instead, you person to bargain 1 of Apple's $9 dongles. You'll plug the Apple Pencil into that dongle, and past plug the dongle into the iPad. That's the lone mode to brace the Pencil with the caller iPad, too.

So, conscionable a connection of informing to radical who whitethorn already ain an Apple Pencil, oregon who whitethorn beryllium upgrading to the caller iPad: Prepare to walk different $9 if you privation to usage the Pencil with this iPad.

Apple has made akin moves successful the past.

It removed the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 successful 2016, past included a dongle successful the container until 2018, aft which you had to bargain a $9 dongle to usage your earbuds with the iPhone.

In 2021, with the iPhone 12, Apple removed the charger and earphones from the box. It said that move, praised by sustainability experts, was to trim its interaction connected the environment. Still, it meant anyone who didn't already person a $19 charger ceramic had to bargain one, and it apt helped spur radical to bargain $19 EarPods oregon $129 AirPods.

Apple declined to remark connected the latest move.