Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Stylus for SD on iPad 4 Mini?

The question is in the title. I’d really like an Apple Pencil, but they don’t work on the iPad 4 Mini.

Has anyone found anything that works well in SkyDemon (and elsewhere, but SD is the main thing.)

EGKB Biggin Hill

They’re mostly as bad as each other as they are just emulating a finger.

The iPad will, by design, reject anything much smaller than a finger so to work around this there are some ‘active’ ones available which electrically try and fool the iPad into thinking a finger is present. This allows them to have a smaller tip (<2mm rather than finger size). Have never tried them though.

Perhaps just buy a bunch of cheap ones from Amazon / eBay and see if any of them are any good? I don’t think you can trust reviews because they are so unreliable. You get a load of five star and one star reviews for the same stylus…

The new iPad Mini 5 is compatible with the previous generation Apple Pencil (weird, but true), but that’s a costly upgrade!

Perhaps just buy a bunch of cheap ones from Amazon / eBay

The trouble is that those with the best reviews (Wacom Bamboo fine tip active blah blah) are very far from cheap.

EGKB Biggin Hill

Another issue is that the best of the available features seem only to work on certain apps.

I am sure that SD is not included, so I would like to know what the performance is like on its notepad. indeed, is there any point in getting an expensive Bluetooth one if you are not using one of the selected apps?

I guess alternatively I could use one of the approved apps for notetaking. I was just hoping someone had the experience.

EGKB Biggin Hill

A £2 one is fine for scribbling on the SD notepad – honestly. Just get one that feels nice. I’ve got an aluminium one (no longer available or I’d share the link with you) that feels good in the hand and works fine. It was less than a fiver and came with some replaceable tips. I’m still on the original one, but I fly as many hours in two years as you do in a week!

SD doesn’t capture the scribbles in particular high fidelity anyway – try scribbling quickly and you’ll see it’s made up of line segments. An expensive stylus is wasted.

Yes, but I may start using a notepad that works properly with the bamboo, for example.

There is nothing especially convenient about the SD scratchpad compared to another app.

EGKB Biggin Hill

The next version of iOS has a specific variant for iPad, which will enable Apple pencil on the iPad mini 4. You can download the beta now, but although it’s pretty stable I would not suggest it for flying until the official release (or even its first revision, given Apple’s recent track record)

Last Edited by denopa at 20 Aug 17:05
EGTF, LFTF

That’s just the news I wanted! Thank you!

Any idea of release date?

EGKB Biggin Hill

I really like the apple pencil. With iPad pro and iPadOS13 it works great. Going to use FF for the North Atlantic plotting next month.

Any time soon Timothy. They are up beta 6 and normally only do 6 or 7.

Last Edited by JasonC at 20 Aug 19:46
EGTK Oxford
i’m really glad I asked the question!
EGKB Biggin Hill
24 Posts
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top