For Gomercentral’s first review, an eager Apple agreed to give us a look at a product that - wow - hasn’t even been announced to the public yet. I must have done something right to Steve Jobs in a previous life. Maybe I gave him an organic orange in the desert.

 

 

The first step for iPen disassembly is to unscrew the middle joints, by twisting in opposite clockwise directions the upper and lower shafts. Once that is done, you can easily remove the ballpoint stem and upper spring. Don’t worry about ribbon cables; any electronic components are tucked away neatly in the aluminum alloy casing.

 

 

 

As you can see from the photos above, Apple has again placed simplicity above all other design concerns. Next, for a thorough disassembly, let’s have a look at the front nub of the pen, which unscrews easily from the lower shaft.

 

 

Also as is evident from the picture, the chassis also contains a mechanism which helps push the ballpoint stem down through the nub, exposing the writing ball which is coated in a writing material Apple dubs “ink”.

 

And that’s it! You can see the beautiful lack of complexity in the iPen’s design. What’s more, is that unlike many other devices that are similar in price and function to the iPen, this device allows you to swap out components from other manufacturers; our labs were able to use a stem from a gel pen, which worked perfectly well in the iPen.

 

 

Now, in using the iPen, we discovered that while we liked the use of “ink” on paper, it has several shortcomings. For one thing, there is no USB 2.0 port. Also, there is a stunning lack of memory in the existing configuration. When you order yours, be sure to add several bytes of extra RAM (our demo model crashed after writing for only fifteen minutes, although that could’ve been the tester’s arm cramping up). Also, noticeably absent are an LCD display, a keyboard, and a mouse. We’re not quite sure if this is yet another Mac Mini type deal, but something more like an iMac would’ve been nice. Also, be sure you have your own headphones, because this puppy doesn’t even come with standard-issue Apple earbuds. Which is good, considering another thing missing is a 3.5” stereo minijack input.

 

All in all though, we were please with the iPen’s output, which we were able to continue prolifically for several minutes. It even prints in multiple languages (see below).

 

 

The iPen comes in three colors: blue, green, and black. All are $0.15, except for the black one, which costs $200 more. All come preloaded with ink, plastic stem, and AppleWorks 6.

 

✭✭✭✭ - 4 Stars out of 5