Twittersphere Weighs In on Apple Technologies, Pricing During Wednesday Event

Apple’s $100 stylus for the iPad Pro, dubbed Pencil, elicited a range of reactions, with many paraphrasing the late Steve Jobs’ opinions on the need for a stylus with a tablet. Sergey Ivaschuck was among several who quoted Jobs: "If you need to use a pencil with your iPad -- you blew it.” Samsung has sold a stylus with the Note for several years, leading Adrienne Holland to quip: “Apple ‘pencil’... bro, that's a stylus.” Others mocked the price. Neal Karlinsky: “Only Apple could get people to pay $100 for a pencil.” Lino Brescia: “$100 for a pencil really isnt that bad.”

Several commented on the need to power the Pencil. Said Michael Warbux: "You charge the Apple Pencil by discharging your iPad?" And Maria Sun said a charging iPad will be used to charge "another thing that i could do with my finger." The Pencil had its share of supporters. Ben Rimes was "unimpressed" with the Apple event until the debut of the Pencil. "It actually sounds amazing when paired with an iPad," he said.

The updated features in gen-four Apple TV drew verbal applause, although several said voice control isn’t new with Apple TV. Said Fitz Maro: “The #AppleTV is Amazon Fire TV -- starting with voice, and touch.” With an accelerometer and gyroscope now built-in to the Apple TV remote, Viral Pirate said, “So basically #WiiSports are coming to #AppleTV.”

Being able to issue a command, "What did she say?" to hear something that was missed was popular among event followers. Bevan Edwards called the feature that rewinds 15 seconds upon command and temporarily turns on subtitles a "great idea." The Siri integration overall was a hit. Said Torbjörn Ungvall: "Kinda blown away by the new #Apple TV. Siri will be my new friend."

Games players gave a thumbs up to the possibilities available from dedicated Apple TV apps store. Although pricing of Apple TV is higher than streaming media players including Fire TV and Chromecast (and Apple’s $69 streaming player), its beefed-up controller, processing power and third-party app potential makes it more versatile. Twitter users weren't as jolted by the $149 price for the basic 32 GB unit ($199 for the 64 GB model) as they were by other product unveilings during the event.

The 12.9-inch iPad Pro delivered some sticker shock at a starting price of $799, leading to mass speculation that the growing size and power of the iPad could be spelling the end of the low-end laptop. Several tweets repeated the statistic from Apple Senior Vice President-Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller during the event that iPad Pro is faster than 80 percent of portable PCs that shipped in past 12 months. That led to theories like Abhishek Gune’s question: “Is Apple trying to make laptops obsolete with iPad Pro?” Said Graciela Kincaid: "So this #iPadPro is basically now the cheapest Apple laptop."

But with the Pro name, Apple isn’t targeting the average consumer with the high-end tablet. “At the $799 base price point, the iPad Pro is well-positioned to enjoy success in the growing large-screen tablet segment,” said Strategy Analytics analyst Eric Smith. Smith said the tablet is “is increasingly turning into a productivity device, capable of competing for PC replacement dollars with 2-in-1 tablets and large-screen tablets.” The iPad Pro, with its multitasking, “vast screen real estate, and support for stylus and a physical keyboard," he said, "will go toe-to-toe with Window tablets and PCs meant for enterprise and prosumers.”