the supreme art of software marketing is convice your users that even your bugs are features.

the supreme art of product development is understand when lack of some feature is a feature in itself

WRT drawing, specifically: no, they dragged their feet on introducing a pen/stylus for years. They insisted it be a "touch-only" device (Wacom's patents on display digitizers surely did not factor in /s), which sucked for those of us who couldn't afford a Cintiq, but who had a perfectly good iPad 2 lying around. There were several valiant, if flawed, stylus efforts befor the Pencil, but with awkward connection, pressure, and power solutions, they were DOA.

Your complaint seems to be that Apple was late to the party (as they often are).

I agree that early third-party styli were a pain - I used various Jot versions, which were better than nothing but not great.

But the Apple pencil + Procreate is actually great, and a fulfillment of the iPad's original promise in the drawing space.

My complaint is that the idea that the decent drawing experience that we have now was part of Apple's master plan for the iPad is incorrect. They resisted it purposely because the iPad was never meant to be a creative device. The issue wasn't limited to visual art; people who wanted to use iPads for its other major creative application - as a music controller - had to use a number of hacks to break it out of the Garageband ghetto.

The core issue is the hobbling of promising hardware because it doesn't fit the platform owner's vision.