Steve Jobs conference

The tech giant unveiled a $99 writing tool to pair with the new line of iPad Pros, which can detect pressure from the tip of the Pencil to vary the thickness of the writing strokes. It is precise enough to detail a stroke down to the last pixel, Apple's design guru Jony Ive said in a video describing the new product at Apple's event on Wednesday in San Francisco.

Eric Risberg/AP Photo

Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, introduces the new Apple Pencil at the Apple event in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, on Sept. 9, 2015.

Those perks may not have swayed over the company's former boss, however.

In 2007, Steve Job addressed the crowd at that year's Macworld conference in San Francisco, only to bash the prospect of using a pencil-like stylus on the then-new iPhone.

"Who wants a stylus? You have to get them, and put them away and you lose them - yuck! Nobody wants a stylus, so let's not use a stylus, " he said.

Tim Cook, who has led Apple since Jobs died in 2011, was not on stage during the Pencil announcement, but Ive, Apple's chief design officer, who worked closely with Jobs, was the one to voice the product's introductory video.