Last month it was discovered that through some clever hacks, the iPhone 6s/6s Plus’ 3D Touch display could be manipulated to be used as a weighing scale of sorts. Safe to say that Apple wasn’t too pleased by this as this was not the intended function of 3D Touch, so we have to wonder how they might feel about this.
It seems that developer Simon Gladman (the same guy behind the iPhone 6s/6s Plus weighing scale) has created several demo apps, one of which relies on the Apple Pencil to act as a pseudo weighing scale. Dubbed PencilScale, according to Gladman, this took some modifications and tinkering.
He writes on his blog, “PencilScale requires some additional special hardware that I’ve had to create myself using the advanced manufacturing facilities in my kitchen. The custom harness is in two parts: a base unit and a platform that sits on top of the Pencil. Luckily, Apple actually supplied the necessary raw materials in their packaging.”
We say “pseudo” because the end result is a rough calculation of the weight in grams, so if you’re hoping to measure very precise units then this probably isn’t the tool for you. However it does a very good job of demonstrating how the Apple Pencil could be used as more than just a stylus, but once again it seems unlikely that Apple will be too happy about this. In any case check out the demo in the video above for the details.
Filed in . Read more about Apple Pencil and iPad Pro.