This Engineer Invented the Apple Pencil — Now He’s Reimagining the Pickleball Machine
When you think about pickleball training equipment, you probably don’t think about Apple products. But maybe you should. The same engineering philosophy that gave us the iPhone’s haptic feedback and the Apple Pencil has now entered the pickleball world through a surprisingly lightweight, app-controlled ball machine that feels more like a carefully crafted consumer gadget than a clunky piece of sports equipment.
The Electron by Hydrogen Sports weighs just 17 pounds, fits in a small roller bag, and can be controlled by tapping locations on your smartphone screen. Behind it is Jonah Harley, an engineer who spent eight years at Apple developing input devices and is credited as the primary inventor of the Apple Pencil. Now he’s brought that same obsession with user experience to solving one of pickleball’s most persistent training challenges: making solo practice actually convenient enough that people will do it regularly.
The Apple Connection That Makes This Machine Different
Jonah Harley’s background isn’t just impressive—it’s directly relevant to why the Electron feels fundamentally different from traditional ball machines. During his time at Apple, Harley led the Input Devices group and was instrumental in creating the Force Touch trackpad and the Taptic Engine that provides haptic feedback in iPhones and Apple Watches today. He holds approximately 50 patents from that era, most notably for his work on the original Apple Pencil.
This isn’t a case of a famous name being slapped onto a product for marketing purposes. The engineering principles Harley learned at Apple—removing friction from user interactions, obsessing over small details that compound into better experiences, and making complex technology feel intuitive—are embedded throughout the Electron’s design. When you use an Apple product for the first time, there’s often a moment where you realize someone actually thought deeply about how you’d interact with it. That same philosophy permeates this pickleball machine.
“In the end, you’re still trying to make a good customer experience,” Harley explained. “It’s just a different scale.” That mindset shows up in everything from the active motor braking that enables rapid speed changes between shots to the seamless firmware updates that improve the machine over time. This is a product designed by someone who understands that the best technology is technology that gets out of your way.
Wilson Tsai, who leads growth and strategy at Hydrogen Sports, sees Harley’s Apple DNA throughout the product. “Think back to when you first used an Apple product,” Tsai said. “The level of detail and care that makes you feel like the designer actually spent time thinking about how you would experience it. That’s very much the heart and care put into Hydrogen Sports.”
Why Most Ball Machines Sit in Garages Collecting Dust
Here’s an uncomfortable truth about pickleball training equipment: owning it and using it are two very different things. Harley discovered this personally when he purchased a traditional ball machine for his own training. At 45 pounds, it required significant effort just to transport. He had to haul it out of his car, into his house to charge it, and then reverse the process to get it to the court. The setup process was elaborate enough that what should have been spontaneous 20-minute practice sessions became logistical projects.
“The one I had was 45 pounds,” Harley recalled. “I had to lug it out of my car into the house to charge it. Getting it to and from the court was a big pain.” After a few weeks of enthusiastic use, the machine started spending more time in his garage than on the court. The barrier wasn’t desire—it was friction. Every time he wanted to practice, he had to overcome the hurdle of setup, transport, and calibration.
This insight became the catalyst for reimagining what a ball machine could be. Traditional machines are heavy because they use outdated lead-acid batteries and legacy brush motors. They require extensive setup because their controls are imprecise knobs and dials that need constant adjustment. They feel like industrial equipment because, functionally, that’s what they are—designs that haven’t fundamentally changed in decades.
Harley’s approach was to start from scratch with modern components. By switching to lithium-ion power tool batteries and lightweight brushless motors, Hydrogen Sports cut the weight to just 17 pounds—less than half what most ball machines weigh. The compact 18V 5Ah quick-swap battery delivers over 1,000 shots per charge while taking up a fraction of the space of older battery technology. The machine includes a carrying strap and fits easily in a small roller bag, transforming it from garage equipment into something genuinely portable.
The result is a machine you might actually grab on your way to the court for a quick session, rather than one that requires planning and determination just to transport. That difference in friction—between “I should practice” and actually practicing—matters more than any specification sheet.
Tap to Aim: Precision Without the Guesswork
Traditional ball machines require you to adjust knobs, run to the other side of the net to see where the ball landed, run back to make adjustments, and repeat this process until you’ve dialed in the shot you want. It’s tedious, imprecise, and fundamentally at odds with the idea of efficient practice. The Electron replaces this entire workflow with something remarkably simpler: you tap where you want the ball to land on a digital court displayed in the app.
This seemingly simple interface masks sophisticated engineering underneath. When you tap a location and specify spin and speed parameters, the machine calculates the exact wheel speeds, launch angle, and trajectory needed to place the ball precisely where you indicated. This is possible because of feedback-controlled brushless motors and motion systems inspired by 3D printer technology—equipment Harley integrated during Hydrogen Sports’ earlier success in the tennis market.
“I would like a ball to land medium deep on my backhand side, with 1,000 RPM of backspin at 50 miles an hour,” Harley explained as an example. “The machine figures out, ‘Here’s the angle I need. Here’s the wheel speed.'” The user doesn’t need to think about mechanical details—they just specify the desired outcome and the machine handles the physics.
The Electron’s capabilities include top speeds exceeding 70 mph, up to 1,500 RPM of topspin or backspin, full side-to-side programmability, motorized elevation for varied trajectories, and predictive landing control based on launch physics. But what makes these specifications meaningful is how easily they’re accessible. Creating a custom drill takes seconds: tap a few locations on the court, adjust speeds if desired, and you’re ready to go.
“Suddenly the usability was just so different,” Harley said. “In a matter of four taps, you’d say, ‘I want a ball here, here, here at these three different speeds.’ You could make any routine you wanted in seconds.” This is the same design philosophy that made the Apple Pencil intuitive—complex technology that feels natural because the interface matches how you actually think about the task.
Engineering for Pickleball’s Unique Challenges
Harley initially assumed that adapting Hydrogen Sports’ successful tennis machine technology to pickleball would be straightforward. After all, both sports involve hitting balls over a net. This assumption proved incorrect in ways that required fundamental redesigns.
“I thought it would just be, ‘Okay, pickleball is a little bigger than a tennis ball—adjust a few minor things,'” he recalled. “It was a lot trickier than I expected.” The core problem is that pickleballs don’t compress like tennis balls. Tennis balls deform when they hit the throwing wheels, which helps with grip and spin generation. Pickleballs, being much harder, don’t compress—which means the wheels themselves need to handle that compliance.
Hydrogen Sports redesigned the throwing wheels from scratch, creating contoured, ribbed wheels that move the compliance into the wheel rather than relying on ball compression. This engineering solution enables consistent grip, spin, and velocity across the full range of shots—from soft kitchen feeds to high-velocity drives to high, looping lobs that replicate real game situations.
The optional Apex Stand extends the machine’s versatility by raising it up to seven feet, enabling it to replicate attacks from shoulder height or above. This addresses a critical training scenario that most ball machines simply can’t deliver: realistic kitchen line play where balls are coming at you from net height rather than bouncing up from ground level. If you struggle with hand speed battles at the kitchen, this capability becomes essential for meaningful practice.
The Electron can fire balls every two seconds with programmable timing variability between shots. Its pre-load chamber and optical sensor allow precise “shot-on-demand” control, including a dedicated Coach Mode. “For coaches, instead of being the ball feeder all day long, they can just press a button and get an immediate shot,” Harley explained. An Apple Watch app even allows real-time control from the opposite side of the court, enabling coaches or practice partners to trigger shots without walking back to the machine.
Understanding Ball Machines: A Primer for Newcomers
If you’re new to pickleball or haven’t considered using a ball machine for training, the concept is straightforward but the implications for skill development are significant. A ball machine is essentially a device that launches pickleballs at you in controlled patterns, allowing you to practice shots repetitively without needing a partner.
The fundamental advantage of ball machine training is repetition with consistency. When practicing with a partner, every ball comes at you slightly differently—different speeds, spins, trajectories, and placements. This variability is valuable for game-like practice, but it makes it difficult to groove specific shots into muscle memory. If you’re trying to perfect your backhand cross-court dink, you need to hit that exact shot dozens or hundreds of times with minimal variation. A ball machine provides that consistency.
Traditional ball machines work by using rotating wheels to launch balls. When a ball passes between two spinning wheels, it gets grabbed and launched in the direction the wheels are pointing. By varying the speed of the wheels and their orientation, the machine can control where the ball goes, how fast it travels, and what kind of spin it has. Topspin happens when the wheels spin the ball forward, making it dive down after it crosses the net. Backspin happens when the wheels spin the ball backward, making it float and potentially pop up after bouncing.
The challenge with older ball machines is that adjusting these parameters required mechanical adjustments—turning knobs that changed wheel speeds or physically repositioning the machine. This made it difficult to create varied drills that simulate real game situations, where you might need to handle a wide ball, then a short ball, then a ball hit right at you in quick succession.
Modern app-controlled machines like the Electron solve this by making all adjustments electronic and programmable. Instead of manually changing settings between each type of shot, you program a sequence once and the machine executes it repeatedly. This means you can practice realistic scenarios—like a third-shot drop followed by a dink exchange followed by a speed-up opportunity—rather than just hitting the same shot over and over from the same location.
For players serious about improvement, this matters because pickleball skill development isn’t just about being able to hit individual shots—it’s about transitioning between different shots and responding to varied situations. A machine that can replicate these patterns provides significantly more valuable practice than one that can only deliver uniform repetition.
The Details That Compound Into Better Experiences
The Electron’s thoughtful design shows up in details that seem small individually but compound into a substantially different user experience. The machine uses active motor braking, which means it can change wheel speeds rapidly between shots rather than waiting for momentum to bleed off naturally. This enables quick transitions between different shot types within a drill sequence.
The brushless motors maintain consistent wheel RPM regardless of battery level, which means the last shot in a session is as precise as the first. Many older machines gradually lose performance as batteries drain, requiring constant recalibration. The Electron eliminates this variable entirely.
The machine supports seamless firmware updates that can improve performance and add features over time—a concept familiar from consumer electronics but rare in sports training equipment. Both tennis and pickleball machines can be controlled within the same app ecosystem, which matters for facilities or coaches who work with both sports.
Ball capacity sits around 72 balls, roughly one standard bulk pack. This represents a deliberate balance between having enough balls for extended practice sessions and maintaining portability. More capacity means more weight and bulk—Harley chose to optimize for the machine you’ll actually bring to the court rather than the machine that can run longest between refills.
These aren’t flashy features that make for exciting marketing claims. They’re the kind of details that someone who spent years at Apple obsessing over user experience would naturally prioritize—small improvements that remove friction and make the product feel polished rather than merely functional.
Performance Meets Accessibility in Pricing
The Electron launches at $1,695, positioning it below several competing smart pickleball machines currently retailing above $2,000. According to Tsai, the pricing strategy reflects Hydrogen Sports’ belief that advanced training equipment should be accessible rather than premium-priced niche products.
“We feel like the customer gets a ton of value,” Tsai explained. “We’re cheaper without any compromise to performance—and lighter as well.” This pricing becomes particularly interesting when you consider what you’re getting: app-controlled precision, 70+ mph speeds, 1,500 RPM spin capability, programmable drills, and genuinely portable form factor all for less than many machines with fewer features.
The value proposition isn’t just about specifications on paper—it’s about whether the machine actually changes your practice habits. A $2,500 machine that sits in your garage because it’s too cumbersome to use regularly delivers zero value regardless of its capabilities. A $1,695 machine that you grab spontaneously for 20-minute practice sessions multiple times per week delivers compounding value through consistent skill development.
This is where Harley’s focus on removing friction matters most. The goal wasn’t to build the most powerful or feature-rich machine theoretically possible. The goal was to build the machine people would actually use most often. “We want this to be the machine you’ll use the most,” Harley said, reflecting on his personal experience with equipment that gathered dust. “My tennis machine was such an adventure to get set up and going that I used it for a few weeks, and then it kind of started to sit.”
What This Means for Pickleball Training
The broader context for the Electron’s launch is a pickleball market where players are increasingly serious about skill development but often plateau because they lack access to quality repetition. Playing games is fun and important, but it’s an inefficient way to groove specific shots or work on particular weaknesses. You might only get a few opportunities to practice your backhand drop in an entire game, and those opportunities come with game pressure and consequence.
Ball machine training solves this by providing low-stakes repetition where you can experiment, fail, adjust, and try again immediately. The limitation has always been that setting up and using ball machines was enough of a hassle that many players simply didn’t bother. The machines existed, but the friction between wanting to practice and actually practicing was high enough that intention rarely translated to action.
What Harley and Hydrogen Sports have done is engineer away much of that friction. The machine is light enough to transport easily. The setup is quick enough to enable spontaneous practice. The controls are intuitive enough that you spend time hitting balls rather than calibrating equipment. These aren’t revolutionary changes individually—they’re incremental improvements to usability that collectively change whether people actually use the product.
This is the same approach that made Apple products successful: understanding that the best technology is technology that disappears, that gets out of the way and lets you focus on what you’re actually trying to accomplish. In this case, that means spending your court time working on your kitchen game rather than fiddling with knobs and dials.
For players stuck on a performance plateau, trying to speed up hands at the kitchen, survive the transition zone, or groove third-shot drops with repeatability, the Electron offers precision without hassle. That combination—accessible advanced training—might be exactly what moves recreational players past the barriers that game play alone can’t overcome.
From Input Devices to Impact on Court
There’s something almost poetic about an engineer who helped define how millions of people interact with their most-used devices now focusing on how pickleball players interact with training equipment. The Apple Pencil made digital creation feel natural by removing the interface friction between intention and execution. The Electron attempts something similar for pickleball practice: making the
