Some hand spindles--sometimes called "drop" spindles because you drop them like a top--have a sharp point on the bottom, and many have a sharp point at the top of the stick for the reason I explained before. For pictures of ancient spindles, google search words " egyptian flax spindles".
Spindles don't have to be sharp, it's just better when you get experienced to have a point--I don't work with children with sharp spindles.
Now, with the elegant little flax wheels you see in the fairy stories "spinning straw into gold"--they have no spindle at all, but a bobbin that winds in opposition to the string that turns the wheel, powered by the foot that works a pedal. Some wheels have a system of two strings turning the wheel--creating a system of braking. Very complex compared to either the hand spindle or the walking wheel. You feed the fiber into a little hole, and the tension of the fiber is against a smooth peg or even the side opening of the bobbin. No way to prick your finger.
I guess I can really run on about textiles...
The flax wheel was an important innovation in spinning, enabling good speed in producing yarn from fiber. They were not known in Europe before the early Renaissance. The peasant who boasted of his daughter "spinning straw into gold" was perhaps a metaphor of this innovation. Even aristocrats had their spinning wheels in the ladies' salons, though the poorer classes made their own drop spindles. When shepherds and shepherdesses tended their flocks, they also carried fiber and spindle with them to be spun into thread and yarn.
Spinning is easy to learn, but hard to master. It is difficult to turn out consistent thread and yarn.
Spinning can be a very meditative and relaxing hobby, too, which is why Sleeping Beauty was fascinated with the skillful fingers of the spinner in the fairy tale.