[HN Gopher] Microsoft Surface Pen Compatibility / Interoperabili...
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Microsoft Surface Pen Compatibility / Interoperability FAQ (2024)
Author : Lammy
Score : 41 points
Date : 2025-10-01 20:08 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (dancharblog.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dancharblog.wordpress.com)
| omcnoe wrote:
| I didn't think it was possible to design a more confusing
| compatibility matrix than the Apple Pencil but there you go.
| mnkypete wrote:
| Not sure? It seems to me that the pen that launched with the
| Surface Pro 3 (V2), still works to an extent with the Surface
| Pro 11? That seems rather good, no?
| pxoe wrote:
| Apple Pencil compatibility chart, for comparison
| https://f.nooncdn.com/cms/pages/20250530/31608d4ea3ae92b5bbe...
| reaperducer wrote:
| Simpler than the one from the HN-linked blog.
|
| It would make even more sense if sorted by iPad release date.
|
| It's not like someone's going to buy a brand new M-series
| iPad and then get a 10-year-old first gen pencil for it.
|
| I believe what's what a commenter upstream is trying to
| complain about, but I couldn't make full sense of what he
| wrote.
| Arainach wrote:
| So long as you ignore the Surface RT/Pro 1/Pro 2 (that is,
| devices from 2013 or previous), all Surface pens since 2014
| work with all devices through today. The matrix doesn't seem
| particularly complicated.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Except for the Surface Go _Laptops_ (different from the
| Surface Go _tablets_), for which there is no stylus support
| at all. That said, still an order of magnitude simpler than
| the Apple one.
| DecentShoes wrote:
| Not just confusing, but inconvenient! If you buy a 10th or 11th
| gen iPad plus the Apple Pencil that works with it, you have no
| way to charge that Pencil at all.
|
| It can't charge from the iPad. It can't charge from USB-C. It
| can't charge from a Lightning charger.
|
| You have to go out and buy a special charger that only charges
| the Apple Pencil and literally nothing else. It's a completely
| proprietary connection, a pointlessly inverted version of the
| Lightning connector, that never could and never will charge
| anything other than your stylus.
|
| Despite Apple having the option of allowing it to charge from a
| Lightning cable, or Usb-C, or not charge at all and simply get
| power from the device light Samsung's S-Pen, Apple chose to opt
| for None Of The Above and allow the Apple Pencil to charge
| exclusively from the specific Apple Pencil charger.
|
| Why?
|
| Because screw you. Because Apple makes money when you buy that
| 20$ charging adapter and doesn't care that you have to carry
| that adapter with you everywhere now.
|
| They could have made it charge from the iPad charger.
|
| They could have made it charge from the iPhone charger.
|
| They could have made it charge by attaching to the iPad.
|
| They could have powered it wirelessly like Samsung and never
| need charging at all.
|
| But no. They chose the worst of all worlds, the most painful,
| expensive, and inconvenient possible option, and allowed it to
| only charge from a specific "First generation Apple Pencil
| Charger" that isn't included with the iPad or even the Pencil
| itself.
|
| That's right, you go out today and buy a brand new iPad and a
| brand new Apple Pencil, and you can't use the Pencil. At all.
| You have to also but the separate Apple Pencil Charging
| Adapter. Because Fuck You. We're Apple and Fuck You.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| >> Samsung's S-Pen
|
| Is Wacom. Wacom hates magnets. Apple devices are littered
| with magnets
| dotancohen wrote:
| What does this mean that Wacom hates magnets? I attached a
| steel plate to the back of my S24 Ultra, in the car it's
| held on by a big honking magnet. I use the Wacom stylus all
| the time.
|
| Very curious if there's a fine detail that I'm missing.
| Thanks.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Put a magnet near the front of screen and try to use spen
| dotancohen wrote:
| I'll try it in the name of science, but I've never
| encountered this. What is your use case? In the 13 years
| I've been using Wacom stylii on phones and E-ink devices,
| I've never encountered this.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Put on a 3rd party wallet style case with magnet that
| keeps it closed. Parts of the screen near the magnet stop
| responding to spen for a time.
|
| Just tested on Note 8. Put magnet on the back of phone
| and area about 10 times the size of the magnet stops
| working with s-pen
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Samsung's Fold devices (1 to 6) are also riddled with
| magnets (everywhere) and Wacom works fine, and with
| flexible substrate no less.
|
| That said, apparently it was expensive for them: they got
| rid of it in this year's iteration.
| astafrig wrote:
| The 10th and 11th generation iPads work with _both_ the
| Lightning Apple Pencil and the USB-C Apple Pencil.
|
| The Lightning Apple Pencil was sold at a time when you could
| plug it directly into the compatible iPad, and it *came with
| the adapter*.
|
| The current iPad is compatible with both, so you could use
| your old Apple Pencil with the new iPad.
|
| You cannot buy a Lightning Apple Pencil anymore because Apple
| doesn't sell them _.
|
| _ who knows what third-party retailers are doing.
| tobi1449 wrote:
| Wait, so if I have an Apple Pencil Gen1 that seems to be
| dead, it might "just" be that I can't charge it on my iPad?
| anaisbetts wrote:
| Despite Microsoft making a bunch of different versions of pens,
| they mostly all just work. This post is trying to be exhaustive
| but the _vast_ majority of people who aren 't extremely Deep
| into the Photoshop game will not need or care about any of
| this.
|
| Basically, "If the pen fits in the keyboard slot, it just
| works". I'm currently using a pen from a Surface Pro 7 on my
| new Surface Pro 12" and it was trivial to connect it and it
| works great
| Lammy wrote:
| Some non-Surfaces too. I'm using a Microsoft Surface Pen
| "Model 1776" a.k.a. "Ver.4" a.k.a "Surface Pen with no clip"
| with my Framework Laptop 12 folded all the way around into
| tablet mode.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Doesn't even need to fit in the slot either. One of my
| Surface Pens is an older one that uses a AAAA battery and
| doesn't fit in the keyboard slot. It works just fine on my
| SP11 and older SPX. It just has less features and isn't as
| good as the newer Slim Pen 2.
| weinzierl wrote:
| I recently learned that there are digital pens now that almost
| perfectly resemble classical traditional writing tools, like the
| black and yellow Staedtler pencil.
|
| I was so disappointed to learn that they won't work with current
| Wacom Cintiq line, and it took me while to figure that out.
|
| Pen compatibility is a mess.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I have been using that Staedtler pencil for almost three years.
| I absolutely love it. I think I'm on only my third or forth
| nib. I've used it with Note and S Ultra devices, and a Boox
| E-ink device.
| WillAdams wrote:
| You will want the Wacom Movink 13 and 14 and MovinkPad 11 for
| that.
|
| For Wacom at least, it's not that bad, there are product lines
| (which are further sub-divided into generations):
|
| - Pro: Intuos/Cintiq
|
| - consumer
|
| - specialized mobile/folding
|
| and the styluses are specific to each, except for products
| which straddle a divide such as the Movink, or the strange case
| of a folding phone where the stylus uses the same frequency as
| the eraser of the consumer line (I suspect to prevent folks
| from damaging the hinge with a hard tip).
|
| That said, it's pretty easy to gut a Wacom stylus and place the
| innards in any shell one wants.
|
| That said, I miss some of the older products --- esp. the
| tracing pucks and the "airbrush" handles and the stylus ID
| which allowed one to assign different tools in Painter to
| different physical styluses and switch by putting one down and
| grabbing another.
|
| That said, it's just magical that I can: take a note on my
| Kindle Scribe, switch to drawing on my Wacom One or Samsung
| Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, and _not_ have to switch tools, since
| they all use the same stylus technology --- best of all, I'll
| never have to spend a weekend at my mother-in-law's w/o a
| stylus, since the stylus in my Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ serves
| as a backup (and for expressive drawing on the go I can get the
| Lamy Wacom Stylus out of my bag).
| bigyabai wrote:
| Another pro for Wacom - in-kernel Linux driver support. My
| brother donated me a Wacom tablet from 2002 that "just works"
| and has full digitizer settings and keybinds in my GNOME
| settings app. Apparently the modern Windows/MacOS Wacom
| driver experience isn't quite so forgiving...
| monarchkumar wrote:
| This is amazing. I recently got a Go 2 (no stylus but want one).
| I am a little apprehensive of Win 11, so until I am sure, I am
| duel booting with Fedora (which is working fine for most part).
|
| > Are there any recommendations for stylus being used on MS
| hardware but running linux?
|
| All references (understandably) assume windoes but there is
| literally no report that I could find for machines running linux.
| I am even unsure weather the requirements are purely hardware
| bound or also require proper software. Any help will be
| appreciated.
| shakna wrote:
| You'll need these two lists for Linux:
|
| + wacom - https://github.com/linuxwacom/input-
| wacom/wiki/Device-IDs
|
| + digimend - https://digimend.github.io/tablets/
|
| Both are in-kernel for most distributions.
| medstrom wrote:
| For Surface devices:
|
| https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-
| surface/wiki/Supporte...
| addaon wrote:
| > duel booting with Fedora
|
| Please report back on who wins the duel. I assume lances, not
| pistols?
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Beyond the obvious business reasons to want to keep money in a
| walled garden with constantly dying plants that require buying
| fresh seeds, are there technical reasons why there are so many
| incompatible pen types?
| dotancohen wrote:
| There are three active stylus technologies. All of them require
| proprietary software support - two of which have strict non-
| forwards nor backwards compatibility.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Really wish that they had stuck w/ Wacom --- the pen technology
| not being the same as my phone (Samsung Galaxy Note 10+), e-book
| reader (Kindle Scribe), and desktop display (Wacom One, probably
| going to update to a Movink 13 or 14) is why I bought a Samsung
| Galaxy Book 12, then when it got long in the tooth, a Samsung
| Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360.
|
| That said, it's hard to take Microsoft seriously on styluses when
| they crippled them to an 11th touch input in Fall Creators
| Update:
|
| https://github.com/TheJoeFin/Windows10-Community/issues/17
|
| I'm getting sick of leaving the Settings app open so that I can
| toggle how the sytlus behaves, depending on which app I'm using,
| so I'm looking into making a cyberdeck w/ an rPi 5 and a Wacom
| One 13 Gen 2 display.
| numpad0 wrote:
| The reasons we're here are: - By far the most
| popular use case of digital pens is drawing arts on a computer.
| Often anime, sometimes 3D. - Wacom is the king for artists.
| They also still hold some patents btw. - Wacom is
| DEFINITELY NOT THE KING for note taking and other non-art
| purposes. Laggy, parallax is huge, API is proprietary, etc.
| - Due to above, both Microsoft and Apple tried to replace Wacom
| by various means with not anime art use cases in mind but not
| ruling it out completely, from buying Israeli startups to
| reinventing stylus. - The situations up until here
| threatened Wacom enough that it started upgrading and fragmenting
| pen implementations. - The situations down to this line
| caused bunch of players to join into the game, further
| fragmenting implementations. - And that had caused bunch of
| incompatible pen implementations, with limited successes with
| various standardization attempts. And here we are. - And by
| the way, Wacom is still the king for most pen buyers.
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