要写一篇文章讲述传说中的苹果（Apple）智能笔——它当然会被戏称为iPen，就不能不提乔布斯的两个著名论断。

    • “没人想要一支手写笔。”（2007年１月）

    • “如果你看到一支手写笔，那么他们一定搞砸了。”（2010年4月）

    因此，每当苹果有手写笔专利获批（比如今年4月的一项专利）或是申请另一项专利（比如上周这项专利，这也是今年为止第10件了）时，人们经常会引用乔帮主的这两句遗训来烘托讽刺效果。

    但如果你看看2007年Macworld大会上的主旨演讲，也就是乔布斯发布iPhone那次，你会发现，他亲口说出的话，其实和人们印象中的不完全一致。

    他语气略带夸张地说：“我们如何和它（指iPhone）互动？我们不想随身带着鼠标，对吧？那么我们怎么办呢？噢，手写笔，对吗？我们可以用手写笔。（停顿）不是。（大笑）谁想用手写笔呢？你得把它们拿出来再放回去，还会弄丢。呸，没人想用手写笔。”

    注意，乔布斯并没有说，永远都没有人想用手写笔。他说的是没人想在手机上以手写笔作为主要输入方式。对于这项工作来说，手指更加胜任。

    从亚马逊网站就可以看出，手写笔已经形成了一个市场，虽然规模还不是很庞大。你可以在亚马逊上花6.99美元买上三个。

    科技博客苹果专利(Patently Apple)撰稿人杰克•帕彻已经注册了32个手写笔专利，这显然说明苹果的工程师团队已经在研究生产一支更好的手写笔。

    据帕彻表示，iPen差不多是苹果耗时最长的项目之一。苹果支付(Apple Pay)在首次注册专利后的第52个月就上线了。苹果手表(Apple Watch)从首次浮出到出货不到30个月。然而帕彻表示，苹果早在六七年前就开始注册手写笔的专利，也就是在首款iPhone刚出货不久的时候。

    帕彻表示：“如果它没有机会成为一个真实产品，苹果为什么要历时六年多，在这个项目上耗费这么多工程师的时间和资金？”

    他补充道，如果苹果真的要推出智能手写笔的话，它最可能与传说中的iPad Pro一起面世。iPad Pro是一款为设计、工程和图像专业人士打造的巨屏平板，有望于2015年上半年问世。

    帕彻曾于2011年写道：“乔布斯并不喜欢以前那种基本上就是一根塑料棍的‘傻瓜手写笔’，所以他决定，重新发明手写笔。”彼时乔布斯仍然在世。

    我通常避免撰写与专利有关的报道，因为大多数苹果注册的专利从来没有变成实物。但一年注册10项专利，实在是一个不容忽视的数字。对我来说，这就像去年夏天的智能手表一样，让人感觉苹果的智能手写笔离我们已经不远了。（财富中文网）

    译者：朴成奎

    You can’t write a story about the rumored Apple smart pen — or iPen as it’s inevitably dubbed — without referring to two of Steve Jobs’ most famous dicta:

    • “Nobody wants a stylus” (January 2007)

    • “If you see a stylus, they blew it.” (April 2010)

    So when an Apple stylus patent gets approved (as one did in April), or another gets filed (as one did last week, the 10th so far this year), one of these quotes is usually trotted out for ironic effect.

    But if you watch the video that started it — the Macworld 2007 keynote where Jobs unveiled the iPhone — you’ll see that what he actually said isn’t what people remember him saying.

    “How are we going to communicate with this,” he asks rhetorically, referring to the iPhone. “We don’t want to carry around a mouse, right? So what are we going to do? Oh, a stylus, right? We’re going to use a stylus. (Pause) Nooo. (Big laugh) Who wants a stylus? You have to get them and put them away and you lose them. Yuck. Nobody wants a stylus.”

    Note that Jobs didn’t say nobody would ever want a stylus. He said nobody wants a stylus as the primary input on a mobile phone. For that, fingers are better.

    That there already is a stylus market — albeit a modest one — is evident on Amazon, where you can buy them on sale in packets of three for $6.99.

    That Apple has a team of engineers working on building a better one is evident from the collection of more than 32 filings that Patently Apple’s Jack Purcher has helpfully assembled.

    According to Purcher, the iPen is one of Apple’s longest-running projects, if not the longest. Apple Pay emerged 52 months after after its first public filing. Apple Watch is scheduled to ship less than 30 months after it first surfaced. Apple started filing stylus patents, according to Purcher, six or seven years ago, shortly after the iPhone shipped.

    “Why is Apple spending so much engineering time and money on a project for 6+ years,” Purcher says, “if there isn’t a real chance of this becoming a real product down the line?”

    If there is to be an Apple smart pen, he adds, we’ll probably see it roll out with the rumored iPad Pro. That jumbo-sized tablet, made with design, engineering and graphics professionals in mind, is now expected in first half of 2015.

    “Steve Jobs wasn’t a big fan of the ‘dumb stylus’ of yesteryear that was basically a tiny plastic stick,” Purcherwrote in 2011, when Jobs was still alive. “And so he set out to reinvent it.”

    I usually stay away from patent stories because most of what Apple files never ships. But 10 patents in one year is too many to ignore. To me, this feels like the watch did last summer. It feels like we’re getting close.