Kyle VanHemert writes: "Steve Jobs thought the best stylus was the one between your thumb and your middle finger. The iPad and iPhone were built around that simple idea—that fingers were the ideal tools for interacting with touchscreens—and as a consequence, iPad styluses haven’t been able to do much that our fingertips can’t. Pencil is different. Built by FiftyThree, makers of the beloved iPad sketching app Paper, it proves that a stylus can be far more than a replacement digit.

Here’s Pencil’s appeal in a nutshell: It’s the rare iPad stylus you can actually use like a pencil. One side draws, the other erases. It’s sophisticated enough to make sure your palm will never mark up your canvas or send your app going haywire. In other words, it’s just as easy to operate as the instrument it’s named after. That’s no small feat."