24 ms·

iPadOS

460 points by pgm8705 7y ago

colechristensen 7y ago
Interesting development, I'd had the impression that they were moving towards MacOS on all devices, but I suppose it comes down to naming as very much is shared, though it would be nice if a small macbook was actually the same as a large ipad with a keyboard.
Apocryphon 7y ago
So much for the prevailing rumor that Apple was going to create fewer platforms by merging macOS with iOS.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  They are doing that, but in terms of frameworks, not the OS.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Take a look at the new Catalyst stuff for that.
- djrogers 7y ago
  That ‘rumor’ was never prevailing - it was a theory, very frequently and quickly shot down by most Apple rumor sources, and by Apple itself at WWDC last year...
- zapzupnz 7y ago
  Never trust rumours. Rumours are tinged with bias. Rather, prefer to trust the horse's mouth and its history. Apple has always said they wouldn't merge macOS and iOS, but they have a history of bringing iOS frameworks to macOS for consistency (AVFoundation was a big one). Rumours are the fodder of those who cannot be bothered to learn about something but want the air of clairvoyance to impress friends; they are the life blood of those kids at school whose uncle definitely works at Nintendo and he has definitely played Pokémon Rainbow but you'll never get to see it because his uncle said it's classified.
  - ryacko 7y ago
    Rumors are spread by those who test the waters, usually.
    - zapzupnz 7y ago
      Nah, then it wouldn't be a rumour, it'd be a leak. If you pay enough attention to the Apple ecosystem and horrendous tech journalism that describes it, you come to know the difference — rumours sound like Windows/Android-user wishlists that macOS/iOS become more like what they're used to, leaks sound like … well, like what Apple would do and does.
    - Grustaf 7y ago
      Sometimes. But there’s never been any rumours about merging iOS and macOS, and Apple has always said the opposite, again and again.
- jrochkind1 7y ago
  Oh, I dunno, it wouldn't surprise me if iPadOS is a step in that direction, and some future laptop runs... iPadOS and there is no more MacOS.
  - stordoff 7y ago
    Calling it iPadOS feels like a step in the wrong direction for that. Calling it iPadOS could make people say "This is an iPad, not a Mac", whereas iOS is a more natural merger.
  - Apocryphon 7y ago
    So a Chromebook move
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      With the ability to run full Google Docs in Safari, I don't really doubt this.
pgm8705 7y ago
Some of the features look pretty great but I can't help but fear the day when they decide to discontinue the Macbook.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- threeseed 7y ago
  MacBooks are selling well and it is their gateway model so crucial for the overall ecosystem. Far more likely is that you see a MacBook with ARM CPU.
- HatchedLake721 7y ago
  And then make all developers use XCode on iPad? Never
MaupitiBlue 7y ago
But no mouse support. :(
- post_break 7y ago
  The only thing I was looking for. Would make me switch from a Mac to an iPad in a blink of an eye.
- Creationer 7y ago
  USB-C/Bluetooth Mouse and Keyboard support, including on extra screens when plugged in, would have been a killer feature. I guess Apple thought it would cannibalise Mac sales too much?
  - closetohome 7y ago
    Pretty sure you can already directly connect a keyboard and second screen.
    - snazz 7y ago
      Does the second screen act as a second monitor or as a mirror?
      - numbsafari 7y ago
        Currently acts as a mirror. :-(
        petecox 7y ago
        Android has the same limitation. i.e. I can connect multiple displays with Android via hdmi and a usb adapter but Displaylink technical support suggested for an extended desktop I'd need to pester Google.
  - farisjarrah 7y ago
    Wouldn't Apple be okay with everyone switching over to their own iOS based ARM products? They wouldn't have to deal with Intel for processors regular CPU's anymore and they wouldn't have to support an extra software architecture on the development side of things.
rhodysurf 7y ago
I am nervous this means Apple will hold back features from iOS to get people to buy an iPad. For example, they announced the new Files app with iPadOS but there is no reason that shouldn't all be available on an iPhone.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  iPhone doesn’t have a screen large enough or a USB connector…how would you use the “new Files app”?
  - rhodysurf 7y ago
    To access SMB shares on the go for one, which is something else they announced in the app.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    It has a USB connector with the appropriate adapter. Pixel 3A comes with a USB C to A (female) adapter in the box which makes it seem like this kind of thing is going mainstream.
  - stingraycharles 7y ago
    Sandisk has a good product for that: https://www.sandisk.com/home/mobile-device-storage/ixpand https://www.sandisk.com/home/mobile-device-storage/ixpand It has both lightning and USB connections.
  - joemi 7y ago
    While I don't think that those necessarily mean it can't work well on iPhone, it does bring up an important point about feature differences between iPad and iPhone, and one that Apple surely considers: They are _different_ devices, and are _different_ sizes. Some functions will work better on one device than on the other, and vice versa, because of this. This is why it makes sense that iPadOS is now a thing, and why features might exist with one and not the other. It shows that Apple is carefully designing the OS for the different devices.
  - zapzupnz 7y ago
runesoerensen 7y ago
More info in the press release https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/06/the-new-ipados-powers-unique-experiences-designed-for-ipad/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/06/the-new-ipados-powers...
- Tepix 7y ago
  Thanks! So it runs on iPad Air 2 and up. That‘s nice! The iPad Air 2 was released in late 2014!
  - snazz 7y ago
    I think it’s reasonable to expect at the very least 5 years of support. It would be very un-nice if it weren’t supported.
    - djrogers 7y ago
      Have you seen an Android tablet support matrix? A year is exceedingly good.
  - skunkworker 7y ago
    My iPad Air 1 is just now being sunsetted. Well It's been a good 5.5 years with continuous updates. It's been my most dependable device ever. No battery replacement, daily use, LTE still works great.
    - rangibaby 7y ago
      I have an iPad 3 from 2012 that still gets a couple of hours of Youtube between charges
sylens 7y ago
the multi-tasking/multi-window looks incredibly complicated, full of hidden gestures/commands that aren't really discoverable
- jordache 7y ago
  yeah but once you learn it, you'll retain the knowledge
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    yeah but once you learn it, you'll retain the knowledge Pretty much the attitude of people learning Windows or MacOS in the late 90's. ("literacy") It's gone from having to win an audience in the early iOS days, to firmly having the audience in the company's grasp.
    - jordache 7y ago
      what's the solution? not implement multi-finger gestures due to complexity and just omit the feature altogether? I'd rather have those capabilities? My drawing apps on iOS all have tons of multi-touch gestures. I appreciate they are there.
      - stcredzero 7y ago
        what's the solution? Who says the situation needs solving? I'm just providing perspective. I'd rather have those capabilities? My drawing apps on iOS all have tons of multi-touch gestures. I appreciate they are there. That's the same attitude people had about Ctrl and Alt key shortcuts and power user features and function keys.
        jordache 7y ago
        >Who says the situation needs solving? Of course it needs to be solved. You have finite screen real estate. Lack of physical buttons. Multi-touch gestures is a natural space for user input.
chronogram 7y ago
> you’ll be able to grab files from USB-C flash drives That sounds useful. Reaching NeXTSTEP functionality soon enough.
- m_mueller 7y ago
  Well, for that it would need Xcode. And multi-user.
cpeterso 7y ago
Will iPadOS include a calculator app?
- McDev 7y ago
  iPads still don't have a calculator app? I find that baffling.
  - sneakernets 7y ago
    They do not. iPad could have had a graphing calculator app at this point, given the surface area, but apple has yet to do so.
    - seandougall 7y ago
      Probably because Apple has increased their campus security in recent decades. :) https://www.pacifict.com/Story/ https://www.pacifict.com/Story/
  - xienze 7y ago
    It's probably because the iPhone calculator app is a four function calculator, and porting that as-is to the iPad would look absolutely comical.
    - sib 7y ago
      They could port a version of the view of the app that shows up when you turn the phone into landscape mode.
      - mandeepj 7y ago
        You meant to say Scientific calculator?
    - kayamon 7y ago
      If you turn it to landscape you get a scientific calculator.
AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
This feels like it could become a repeat of Android Honeycomb, but iOS is a much more mature operating system now than Android was at the time, so I guess we'll have to wait and see.
- ihuman 7y ago
  What happened with Honeycomb?
  - dmix 7y ago
    It got merged back into Android in version 4.
  - sneakernets 7y ago
    AFAIK, Honeycomb was primarily for tablets due to the (then current) UI scaling terribly and primarily being for portrait orientation. This was the era of 320x240 screens, after all, so there was bound to be some issues when scaling that up to tablet resolutions. Since most of the improvements ended up being useful for the upcoming "phablets" as much as tablets, Google just merged those features into Jelly Bean and gave up on a separate tablet UI.
    - kllrnohj 7y ago
      > AFAIK, Honeycomb was primarily for tablets due to the (then current) UI scaling terribly and primarily being for portrait orientation. This was the era of 320x240 screens, after all, so there was bound to be some issues when scaling that up to tablet resolutions. No, not at all. Android's UI has scaled exceptionally well since long before then, and nobody on Android was using 320x240 screens at that time. Android had already long since done the high DPI jump from 320x480 (HTC G1) to 480x800 (Nexus One). You need a UI that takes advantage of the extra screen real-estate, yes, but there was nothing about Android's core UI toolkit that failed to handle that in any way. > Since most of the improvements ended up being useful for the upcoming "phablets" as much as tablets, Google just merged those features into Jelly Bean and gave up on a separate tablet UI. Google never actually forked Android for tablets, so there was nothing to "merge." They just focused on the tablet UIs & devices such that the phone ones had bugs. You can boot up Honeycomb on a phone-sized device and poke about. Everything's basically there, it's just super buggy.
humantiy 7y ago
It seemed like they were on a path to make everything iOS including the laptops. Granted it was more of a iOS-ification, but seemed like the general direction. Now I'm curious if this is a shift in direction if they are going to split ipads from ios.
tosh 7y ago
I hope iPads (and iPhones) also get support for the 3rd party gaming controllers like Xbox or Playstation (like they announced for Apple tv)
- procgen 7y ago
  I was surprised to find that they support the Steam controller when using the Steam Link app.
- virtuallynathan 7y ago
  They are getting it: https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-13-preview/features/ https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-13-preview/features/
bdcravens 7y ago
No information on whether the iPad Pro keyboard is fully compliant in terms of arrow keys, etc. This really gets in the way of things like Cloud 9, hosted VS Code, etc.
- freehunter 7y ago
  As much as people (myself included) wish we could do native development on the iPad, I would quickly settle for just supporting Cloud 9. The only reason I have to bring two laptops and an iPad with me when I travel instead of just one laptop and an iPad is because Cloud 9 doesn't work on an iPad, for absolutely no good reason.
  - antfarm 7y ago
    Off-topic: "Opening workspaces (including access to databases and app frameworks) will be disabled on June 30, 2019. Cloud9 will stop working on December 31, 2019." [https://c9.io/login https://c9.io/login]
    - freehunter 7y ago
      Yes they were bought by Amazon, so c9.io is shutting down but AWS Cloud9 is the replacement.
- 0815test 7y ago
  > arrow keys It has hjkl, right? What more could you need?
OldSchoolJohnny 7y ago
Why are we as developers giving this company any of our business when they've thumbed their noses at us for decades?
- bitwize 7y ago
  Because that's where the high-roller users are.
- asark 7y ago
  Everyone else's software/hardware is just that bad, so Apple can fuck around for years and switching's still a tough sell. That's why I'm still around, anyway. This WWDC looks like a move in the right direction for the first time in a while, at least.
- octorian 7y ago
  Because we as developers also desperately want a UNIX-style system, and our lives are so much easier when we can choose one that won't get us laughed out of the room by commercial software vendors.
- threeseed 7y ago
  Weird. As a developer I haven't found Apple to be thumbing their nose at me. Many of their features are genuinely useful for my development e.g. TouchBar.
  - eppsilon 7y ago
    Genuinely curious: how have you found TouchBar useful for development? I think you're the first dev I've seen say that.
    - threeseed 7y ago
      Because I can fully customise it using something like BetterTouchTool. And so in IntelliJ I have custom buttons for executing common commands. I never remembered what each function key does in each app so it's useful for me.
NN88 7y ago
SIDECAR!!
- robohoe 7y ago
  That looks like a fantastic feature, especially due to the fact that you can use Apple Pencil to control your Mac. I wonder if that will cannibalize Wacom sales. Having used both Apple Pencil + iPad Pro and a Wacom tablet (separately), I found it real hard to draw on the Wacom table without seeing what I'm drawing under the pencil.
  - freehunter 7y ago
    Wacom is one thing, but I'm wondering how quickly Duet [1] will shut down. [1] https://www.duetdisplay.com/ https://www.duetdisplay.com/
  - richardjs 7y ago
    Wacom also sells drawing tablets with integrated displays [1]. I've never used them or an Apple Pencil, so I don't know how they compare, but Wacom isn't totally caught out here. On the other hand, I can see a lot of people buying (or already owning) iPad Pros and using this feature who might not buy a dedicated device for it. [1] https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays
- fumar 7y ago
  This should be higher. When I am on the road, this will be a huge help. I like having my email, calendar, and slack on one screen.
- diehunde 7y ago
  Damn, it's going to get tough for the people from Duet Display
fghtr 7y ago
So Apple goes the opposite way compared with Purism: making different OS for every device. What's the point?
- velcrovan 7y ago
  Maybe we’ll be able to discuss this more concretely once Purism has actually shipped a mobile device.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- robenkleene 7y ago
  An way to think about this is that iPadOS is now (presumably) a separate team at Apple. Each year a new version of iPadOS will come out and that team will need to have features for it. When it was just one platform, it felt like iPad features only got implemented when the iOS team had some had spare time away from developing the clearly higher priority iPhone features.
- davemp 7y ago
  Because we’ve learned time after time that one size fits all is a fool’s dream.
EB66 7y ago
As if compiling hybrid mobile apps across all platforms wasn't enough of a pain already ;) Anyone know what this might mean for Cordova users?
TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
What's old is new again! Mac OS became Mac OS X became OS X became macOS. iPhone OS, whatever it was called on the iPod touch and iPad OS merged to be called iOS, and now there's a new iPadOS.
- djrogers 7y ago
  No, the OS on iPads and iPods Touch was always called iOS - the OS was only called iPhone OS for a very short period of time.
  - wuliwong 7y ago
    Your comment contradicts itself. It wasn't always called iOS if it was called iPhone OS "for a very short period of time." And the period of time was not "very short" by my definition at least. According to [0]: > Apple announced iPhone OS 1 at the iPhone keynote on January 9, 2007, and it was released to the public alongside the original iPhone on June 29, 2007. > Apple announced iPhone OS 2 at the iPhone software roadmap keynote in March 2008, and it was released to the public on July 11, 2008 alongside the iPhone 3G. > Apple announced iPhone OS 3 in March 2009, and it was released to the public on June 17, 2009 alongside the iPhone 3GS. > Apple announced iOS 4 in March 2010 and it was released to the public on June 21, 2010 alongside the iPhone 4. It was called iPhone OS for roughly 3 years. About 25% of the time since the OS was released it was called iPhone OS. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history#iPhone_OS_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history#iPhone_OS_...
    - brandonfro 7y ago
      The iPod touch and iPad were not released when iOS was called iPhone OS.
      - george_perez 7y ago
        The iPod touch launched 2 months after the original iPhone launched, and they both ran iPhone OS. Why are you so stubborn over something that can be easily searched and debunked? iPhone OS existed until iPhone OS 3.2.2 when it was renamed to iOS in iOS 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history
ncr100 7y ago
Pencil latency drop to 9ms is best I've seen.
- fumar 7y ago
  Is that for both gen 1 and gen 2 pencils?
  - jgon 7y ago
    The small print on the page that mentions this stat says that the measurements were taken on a new 12.9 inch iPad Pro using the Gen 2 Apple Pencil. Not sure what latency reductions may make their way to the other iPads, but nothing is stated right now.
    - fumar 7y ago
      I have the 10.5 in Pro and Apple Pencil 1. I wonder if the 20 ms vs 9 ms is detectable by the human eye.
      - max76 7y ago
        It might be. On monitors the difference between a 120hz refresh rate and 144hz refresh rate is about 14ms between frames. Some people (claim) to tell the difference.
      - pcr910303 7y ago
        It can be very detectable, I'd say. Try watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4 It shows the difference between from >100ms to ~1ms. It's mind baffling.
        ksec 7y ago
        I wonder how did they manage it. Even the Screen itself has a 1 - 4ms latency. That is excluding the Input latency and Software in between.
LesZedCB 7y ago
I remember when apple was lauded for unifying the forked os for ipad into iOS. i guess they changed their minds.
- zapzupnz 7y ago
  It's just marketing. It's still iOS.
bitL 7y ago
Will there be a multi-user mode? Perfect for separating work from home or multiple clients... It would make iPad so much more usable as a single device for both work and fun.
- eugeniub 7y ago
  Nothing like that was announced
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    Weirdly they did announce this for tvOS, but not their increasingly productivity-focused OS...
    - HatchedLake721 7y ago
      Release on tvOS, test, perfect, release to iPadOS
      - petersteinberg 7y ago
        I doubt this is the case. With the tvOS, you need different profiles for different members of the family. Otherwise your five-year-old ends up seeing a lot of mature TV shows in their recommendations. And the adults see various recommendations meant for small children. If you have small children and Netflix or you don’t have multiple user accounts set up you know what I mean. This is the simple and easy solution for the tvOS because they can’t realistically expect you to purchase multiple Apple TVs for the multiple members of your family. On the other hand, they very much do hope you’ll purchase multiple iPads.
- speleding 7y ago
  I'm hoping for this. If you have little kids in your house you cannot safely use the iPad Mail client, for example
  - JustSomeNobody 7y ago
uses 7y ago
As a web developer, what on earth does this mean? > desktop sites are now the default in Safari Surely it's not some kind of meddling with the device width to make responsive web design even more confusing. That would be very odd. My hope is that it's some kind of user agent manipulation that thwarts device sniffing so you don't see a mobile phone stylesheet or get redirected to a mobile site while using your iPad.
- saidajigumi 7y ago
  Yes, this. This bridges some gaps for sites that are built as either mobile-specific (but not truly responsive), or as desktop-only. I would have thought that the whole device detection, mobile-specific thing would have died many years ago, but it is stubbornly persistent. True responsive sites have worked fine for ages, and should continue to do so. On the desktop-only site side, it looks like Apple has also done some interaction refinements for problems touch-based users can hit on these sites, especially around distinct hover vs. click interactions, the need to "tap-twice" to essentially "focus then click", etc.
  - billforsternz 7y ago
    What is your criteria for a "true responsive site" and can you point to a good resource describing implementation details? Asking for a friend :)
    - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
      Renders to a 640x480 CRT and 4K display without looking like crap on either.
    - saidajigumi 7y ago
      Honestly, just using the basics of "responsive web design" (search phrase) is most of it. That is, implementing your site using CSS media queries to adapt your layout across multiple device sizes. Contrast that to using hacky device detection to deliver some entirely separate and "mobile-specific" site. One anti-pattern that often happens is the "mobile" detection is wrong, and delivers some phone-sized UI to a tablet. Instead just leverage CSS to make your site look good at the user's current display width, whatever that is, without having to know anything about the device. This is also great for desktop users, e.g. who might have your site in a browser side-by-side with something else, or similar. All of the "evergreen" browsers have a mobile design view built into their dev tools these days. You can enable that, switch between specific device screen profiles, and continuously drag the "screen size" handles to watch your site's behavior at different sizes. This is great for development, since your web inspector view stays at full size. Combining CSS media queries with CSS flexbox is a hugely powerful way customize the end-user experience for different devices. Flexbox not only makes basic layout adaptations straightforward (or free!), it lets you handle some otherwise tricky cases using tools like reordering support. It's probably also worth searching for "mobile first web design" for further resources.
Rhedox 7y ago
Would've loved to see XCode for i(Pad)OS. Or any kind of developer support.
pathartl 7y ago
Apple in 2009: Web browsing on a desktop is cumbersome and painful Apple in 2019: We've brought the desktop browsing experience to the iPad I mean I get it, they're maturing the platform. But window snapping and home screen widgets seem very "Windows Vista". That combined with the new swipe keyboard and finally adding storage support... it really just seems like playing catch up for things that have existed for over a decade now. I would personally never use a device for professional work unless I had full control over the software on that device. Being locked in by the app store is still a non-starter for me.
- zapzupnz 7y ago
  > it really just seems like playing catch up At the surface level, it does. However, at the implementation level, I think Apple is slowly reimagining all of these things for a new paradigm — and the new paradigm has needed time to evolve slowly, for Apple to see what directions its users and developers wanted to go in, and to take the time to decide how to do things. For example: the sidebar on Vista was next to useless because (A) its widgets didn't tap into any data people wanted, (B) the widgets weren't the right size to show any useful information, and (C) didn't fare any better on Windows 7 because they were buried under windows. iOS widgets, on the other hand, directly tap into applications, can come in variable sizes, have a somewhat uniform presentation style, and one visits the Home screen many more times than one clicks the Show Desktop button on Windows. Windows Vista gadgets and OS X Dashboard widgets seemed to be little toys, the styling to look like a little desktop accessory being more important than their actual utility. The way that iPadOS integrates Today Widgets with the home screen is more like putting useful information directly at users' disposal. Pair this with widgets like Shortcuts, Launch Center Pro, or Pythonista, and you also have a means for quickly starting workflows. iPad's multiple windows isn't really window snapping in the same sense as on Windows. That's just an implementation detail. The actual concept, at least as of iPadOS (as opposed to iOS 11 and 12), is more like macOS' Spaces or Mission Control. All in all, to appreciate something, you have to appreciate all the little details. To me, Today Widgets on the Home screen have the potential to offer productivity improvements similar to Alfred. I'm sure there'll be apps with widgets specifically crafted to take advantage of this.
mmargerum 7y ago
Was kinda hoping for trackpad / mouse support and maybe a laptop form factor.
- scarface74 7y ago
  They didn’t announce it. But they added mouse and trackpad support under Accessibility. https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1135653636145590273?s=21 https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/11356536361455902...
exabrial 7y ago
For awhile apple was trying to "bring iOS features to the desktop", thankfully now they've realized each device form requires a special user interface.
djrogers 7y ago
Looks like they ran out of time for all the features, but MOUSE SUPPORT!!! https://twitter.com/reneritchie/status/1135643633690992640 https://twitter.com/reneritchie/status/1135643633690992640
- clairity 7y ago
  yes, finally! voice control (an accessibility feature for now) lays the groundwork for more pervasive computing for all, but mouse support fills a hole until that happens. i don't think voice control will replace physical controls, but do think it will grow in usage over time to become an important augment to physical controls. now i'm just waiting for pervasive handwriting input with realtime OCR and indexing (for instant search), which can replace all sorts of note-taking and annotation workflows (and the requisite printing to paper that now often entails).
ChuckMcM 7y ago
Yay! I am sick and tired of crappy iPhone ports to the iPad where it wants to turn my iPad pro into a ginormous phone screen. At least now I hope that crap goes away. It has been fascinating to watch the evolution of the iPad version of iOS and the desktop version of Windows 10 to better support a screen/pen/detachable keyboard sort of world.
- dperfect 7y ago
  I don't think this will do anything to help with the "crappy iPhone [app] ports to the iPad", at least not for a while. Those apps will still be there, and they'll likely still be approved in the future. From my understanding, "iPadOS" is essentially just a marketing signal that the iPad-version of the OS will have more features unique to iPad. For developers, Xcode will still have the option to compile the same codebase for iOS and iPadOS. It's up to the developer to take advantage of more screen real estate when available, though SwiftUI will probably make that easier on the developer (i.e., more likely to show up in the apps you use).
  - ramraj07 7y ago
    The biggest plus here is going to be that we can use desktop-grade web apps on the iPad. That has single handedly been the biggest hurdle!
socialist_coder 7y ago
I'm having a hard time finding any info about how this affects iOS / iPadOS app development. Do you still just build & submit once and it targets both platforms?
darzu 7y ago
Honestly these new changes (esp. the second monitor for MacOS support, if it works well) will probably finally get me to buy an iPad. This all looks very good to me. Real file system browser; much better multi-tasking; closer integration with macbook.
- youeseh 7y ago
  I might switch to writing code on an iPad. Even after all these years of writing code using a keyboard, I still think better with a pen.. I realize that I'll be pushing text slower with a pen, but I'm that hoping the quality will improve!
  - darzu 7y ago
    This sounds.. crazy to me but hey if it works for you that's great and maybe you should post something! I'd be curious to see a workflow that uses handwritten code.
- freetime2 7y ago
  I think we've crossed the point where, for most people, an iPad (or surface) makes more sense for personal use than a laptop. I have one of the recent iPad Air models and find it more enjoyable to use for everyday tasks like web browsing, light photo editing and sharing, goofing off on youtube, etc. Had I known I was going to like it so much, I probably would have sprung for the more expensive iPad Pro model with face ID, the new pencil, etc. My personal laptop mostly sits unused these days. Admittedly there are some tasks, like booking travel for example, where I still prefer to use a laptop - but those seem to be less and less of an issue over time. For development work, I don't see my MacBook Pro going away any time soon. But I do see the iPad becoming more incorporated into my professional workflow. It sits on my desk while I'm working and I use it to run things like iTunes, email, slack, and personal reminders - where they feel like less of a distraction than when I run those things on my desktop. Integration between my macbook and ipad is already pretty great when it comes to handoff, airdrop, messages, notes, etc - and Apple seems committed to continued improvement as I think they realize that seamless integration is one of the things that makes people stick within their ecosystem.
universenz 7y ago
The most exciting aspect of this is the resizable text / view port zoom in Safari. Productivity is going to go through the roof!
lukejduncan 7y ago
Finger cross this includes a first class calculator...
- kondro 7y ago
  Just buy PCalc and support an awesome indie developer.
  - ianai 7y ago
    Are there any other options? Pcalc actually has many people complaining about lack of features.
    - WillPostForFood 7y ago
      It's an untraditional calculator, but I love Soulver from Acqualia. It is always one of the first things I install on a new iPhone or Mac. https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/iphone/ https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/iphone/
      - valtism 7y ago
        Soulver is amazing, and totally changes the way you use a calculator.
      - RBerenguel 7y ago
        Alternatively, I use a lot for a long while Tydlig. Sadly it has been stagnant for a while (I'd like to be able to save "sheets", for instance). But its interaction mode (akin to a spreadsheet, in a sense) is very refreshing. http://tydligapp.com http://tydligapp.com
        tsar_nikolai 7y ago
        +1 for tydlig, among the first apps I install on every new iPhone
- george_perez 7y ago
jrochkind1 7y ago
On the road to phasing out MacOS?
davemp 7y ago
> Apple Pencil latency is dropping from 20ms to 9ms, This is why I respect Apple. Most tech forums would have been flooded people whinging about how mere humans can’t perceive such low latencies and how improving them is a waste. Meanwhile Apple knows not to leave anything on the table for UX.
- headsoup 7y ago
  Actually I think it highlights how well Apple manage their message and keep people focused on them: most people probably don't notice or actually care about the difference in latency, and 9ms is not the best in the market, yet it becomes a 'good news story' validating Apple
  - azinman2 7y ago
    Who is faster?
    - michelb 7y ago
      Curious about this as well..Surface Pro has 21 ms in best conditions I think, depending on the app.
  - HugoDaniel 7y ago
    Latencies bellow 16ms require a refresh rate higher than 60Hz. For 9ms you need at least 90Hz. Don't know many who do that. Specially if you take in consideration the battery hit that the faster update rate requires.
    - anbop 7y ago
      iPad Pro refresh rate is 120hz.
      - oceanplexian 7y ago
        Yeah I was going to say. The iPad Pro display has a 120hz refresh rate and it's highly noticeable, and IMHO far superior to any other mobile device display.
getcrunk 7y ago
What about mouse support?
m0zg 7y ago
I wish they'd introduce multiple accounts on the iPad. That, and let me directly and securely access files (and in particular my humongous photo library) on my Mac over WiFi, without all the iCloud bullshit. I know it's not going to happen, and Apple will continue to pretend this is not something users want, but one can have dreams, am I right?
kmlx 7y ago
now that both the mouse and the local storage work, can we finally code on this thing with a real local codebase and server?

460 points by pgm8705 7y ago

Interesting development, I'd had the impression that they were moving towards MacOS on all devices, but I suppose it comes down to naming as very much is shared, though it would be nice if a small macbook was actually the same as a large ipad with a keyboard.

Apocryphon 7y ago

So much for the prevailing rumor that Apple was going to create fewer platforms by merging macOS with iOS.

gridlockd 7y ago
They are doing that, but in terms of frameworks, not the OS.
saagarjha 7y ago
Take a look at the new Catalyst stuff for that.
djrogers 7y ago
That ‘rumor’ was never prevailing - it was a theory, very frequently and quickly shot down by most Apple rumor sources, and by Apple itself at WWDC last year...
zapzupnz 7y ago
Never trust rumours. Rumours are tinged with bias. Rather, prefer to trust the horse's mouth and its history. Apple has always said they wouldn't merge macOS and iOS, but they have a history of bringing iOS frameworks to macOS for consistency (AVFoundation was a big one). Rumours are the fodder of those who cannot be bothered to learn about something but want the air of clairvoyance to impress friends; they are the life blood of those kids at school whose uncle definitely works at Nintendo and he has definitely played Pokémon Rainbow but you'll never get to see it because his uncle said it's classified.
- ryacko 7y ago
  Rumors are spread by those who test the waters, usually.
  - zapzupnz 7y ago
    Nah, then it wouldn't be a rumour, it'd be a leak. If you pay enough attention to the Apple ecosystem and horrendous tech journalism that describes it, you come to know the difference — rumours sound like Windows/Android-user wishlists that macOS/iOS become more like what they're used to, leaks sound like … well, like what Apple would do and does.
  - Grustaf 7y ago
    Sometimes. But there’s never been any rumours about merging iOS and macOS, and Apple has always said the opposite, again and again.
jrochkind1 7y ago
Oh, I dunno, it wouldn't surprise me if iPadOS is a step in that direction, and some future laptop runs... iPadOS and there is no more MacOS.
- stordoff 7y ago
  Calling it iPadOS feels like a step in the wrong direction for that. Calling it iPadOS could make people say "This is an iPad, not a Mac", whereas iOS is a more natural merger.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  So a Chromebook move
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    With the ability to run full Google Docs in Safari, I don't really doubt this.

pgm8705 7y ago

Some of the features look pretty great but I can't help but fear the day when they decide to discontinue the Macbook.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
threeseed 7y ago
MacBooks are selling well and it is their gateway model so crucial for the overall ecosystem. Far more likely is that you see a MacBook with ARM CPU.
HatchedLake721 7y ago
And then make all developers use XCode on iPad? Never

MaupitiBlue 7y ago

But no mouse support. :(

post_break 7y ago
The only thing I was looking for. Would make me switch from a Mac to an iPad in a blink of an eye.
Creationer 7y ago
USB-C/Bluetooth Mouse and Keyboard support, including on extra screens when plugged in, would have been a killer feature. I guess Apple thought it would cannibalise Mac sales too much?
- closetohome 7y ago
  Pretty sure you can already directly connect a keyboard and second screen.
  - snazz 7y ago
    Does the second screen act as a second monitor or as a mirror?
    - numbsafari 7y ago
      Currently acts as a mirror. :-(
      - petecox 7y ago
        Android has the same limitation. i.e. I can connect multiple displays with Android via hdmi and a usb adapter but Displaylink technical support suggested for an extended desktop I'd need to pester Google.
- farisjarrah 7y ago
  Wouldn't Apple be okay with everyone switching over to their own iOS based ARM products? They wouldn't have to deal with Intel for processors regular CPU's anymore and they wouldn't have to support an extra software architecture on the development side of things.

rhodysurf 7y ago

I am nervous this means Apple will hold back features from iOS to get people to buy an iPad. For example, they announced the new Files app with iPadOS but there is no reason that shouldn't all be available on an iPhone.

saagarjha 7y ago
iPhone doesn’t have a screen large enough or a USB connector…how would you use the “new Files app”?
- rhodysurf 7y ago
  To access SMB shares on the go for one, which is something else they announced in the app.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  It has a USB connector with the appropriate adapter. Pixel 3A comes with a USB C to A (female) adapter in the box which makes it seem like this kind of thing is going mainstream.
- stingraycharles 7y ago
  Sandisk has a good product for that: https://www.sandisk.com/home/mobile-device-storage/ixpand https://www.sandisk.com/home/mobile-device-storage/ixpand It has both lightning and USB connections.
- joemi 7y ago
  While I don't think that those necessarily mean it can't work well on iPhone, it does bring up an important point about feature differences between iPad and iPhone, and one that Apple surely considers: They are _different_ devices, and are _different_ sizes. Some functions will work better on one device than on the other, and vice versa, because of this. This is why it makes sense that iPadOS is now a thing, and why features might exist with one and not the other. It shows that Apple is carefully designing the OS for the different devices.
- zapzupnz 7y ago

runesoerensen 7y ago

More info in the press release https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/06/the-new-ipados-powers-unique-experiences-designed-for-ipad/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/06/the-new-ipados-powers...

Tepix 7y ago
Thanks! So it runs on iPad Air 2 and up. That‘s nice! The iPad Air 2 was released in late 2014!
- snazz 7y ago
  I think it’s reasonable to expect at the very least 5 years of support. It would be very un-nice if it weren’t supported.
  - djrogers 7y ago
    Have you seen an Android tablet support matrix? A year is exceedingly good.
- skunkworker 7y ago
  My iPad Air 1 is just now being sunsetted. Well It's been a good 5.5 years with continuous updates. It's been my most dependable device ever. No battery replacement, daily use, LTE still works great.
  - rangibaby 7y ago
    I have an iPad 3 from 2012 that still gets a couple of hours of Youtube between charges

sylens 7y ago

the multi-tasking/multi-window looks incredibly complicated, full of hidden gestures/commands that aren't really discoverable

jordache 7y ago
yeah but once you learn it, you'll retain the knowledge
- stcredzero 7y ago
  yeah but once you learn it, you'll retain the knowledge Pretty much the attitude of people learning Windows or MacOS in the late 90's. ("literacy") It's gone from having to win an audience in the early iOS days, to firmly having the audience in the company's grasp.
  - jordache 7y ago
    what's the solution? not implement multi-finger gestures due to complexity and just omit the feature altogether? I'd rather have those capabilities? My drawing apps on iOS all have tons of multi-touch gestures. I appreciate they are there.
    - stcredzero 7y ago
      what's the solution? Who says the situation needs solving? I'm just providing perspective. I'd rather have those capabilities? My drawing apps on iOS all have tons of multi-touch gestures. I appreciate they are there. That's the same attitude people had about Ctrl and Alt key shortcuts and power user features and function keys.
      - jordache 7y ago
        >Who says the situation needs solving? Of course it needs to be solved. You have finite screen real estate. Lack of physical buttons. Multi-touch gestures is a natural space for user input.

chronogram 7y ago

> you’ll be able to grab files from USB-C flash drives That sounds useful. Reaching NeXTSTEP functionality soon enough.

m_mueller 7y ago
Well, for that it would need Xcode. And multi-user.

cpeterso 7y ago

Will iPadOS include a calculator app?

McDev 7y ago
iPads still don't have a calculator app? I find that baffling.
- sneakernets 7y ago
  They do not. iPad could have had a graphing calculator app at this point, given the surface area, but apple has yet to do so.
  - seandougall 7y ago
    Probably because Apple has increased their campus security in recent decades. :) https://www.pacifict.com/Story/ https://www.pacifict.com/Story/
- xienze 7y ago
  It's probably because the iPhone calculator app is a four function calculator, and porting that as-is to the iPad would look absolutely comical.
  - sib 7y ago
    They could port a version of the view of the app that shows up when you turn the phone into landscape mode.
    - mandeepj 7y ago
      You meant to say Scientific calculator?
  - kayamon 7y ago
    If you turn it to landscape you get a scientific calculator.

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago

This feels like it could become a repeat of Android Honeycomb, but iOS is a much more mature operating system now than Android was at the time, so I guess we'll have to wait and see.

ihuman 7y ago
What happened with Honeycomb?
- dmix 7y ago
  It got merged back into Android in version 4.
- sneakernets 7y ago
  AFAIK, Honeycomb was primarily for tablets due to the (then current) UI scaling terribly and primarily being for portrait orientation. This was the era of 320x240 screens, after all, so there was bound to be some issues when scaling that up to tablet resolutions. Since most of the improvements ended up being useful for the upcoming "phablets" as much as tablets, Google just merged those features into Jelly Bean and gave up on a separate tablet UI.
  - kllrnohj 7y ago
    > AFAIK, Honeycomb was primarily for tablets due to the (then current) UI scaling terribly and primarily being for portrait orientation. This was the era of 320x240 screens, after all, so there was bound to be some issues when scaling that up to tablet resolutions. No, not at all. Android's UI has scaled exceptionally well since long before then, and nobody on Android was using 320x240 screens at that time. Android had already long since done the high DPI jump from 320x480 (HTC G1) to 480x800 (Nexus One). You need a UI that takes advantage of the extra screen real-estate, yes, but there was nothing about Android's core UI toolkit that failed to handle that in any way. > Since most of the improvements ended up being useful for the upcoming "phablets" as much as tablets, Google just merged those features into Jelly Bean and gave up on a separate tablet UI. Google never actually forked Android for tablets, so there was nothing to "merge." They just focused on the tablet UIs & devices such that the phone ones had bugs. You can boot up Honeycomb on a phone-sized device and poke about. Everything's basically there, it's just super buggy.

humantiy 7y ago

It seemed like they were on a path to make everything iOS including the laptops. Granted it was more of a iOS-ification, but seemed like the general direction. Now I'm curious if this is a shift in direction if they are going to split ipads from ios.

tosh 7y ago

I hope iPads (and iPhones) also get support for the 3rd party gaming controllers like Xbox or Playstation (like they announced for Apple tv)

procgen 7y ago
I was surprised to find that they support the Steam controller when using the Steam Link app.
virtuallynathan 7y ago
They are getting it: https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-13-preview/features/ https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-13-preview/features/

bdcravens 7y ago

No information on whether the iPad Pro keyboard is fully compliant in terms of arrow keys, etc. This really gets in the way of things like Cloud 9, hosted VS Code, etc.

freehunter 7y ago
As much as people (myself included) wish we could do native development on the iPad, I would quickly settle for just supporting Cloud 9. The only reason I have to bring two laptops and an iPad with me when I travel instead of just one laptop and an iPad is because Cloud 9 doesn't work on an iPad, for absolutely no good reason.
- antfarm 7y ago
  Off-topic: "Opening workspaces (including access to databases and app frameworks) will be disabled on June 30, 2019. Cloud9 will stop working on December 31, 2019." [https://c9.io/login https://c9.io/login]
  - freehunter 7y ago
    Yes they were bought by Amazon, so c9.io is shutting down but AWS Cloud9 is the replacement.
0815test 7y ago
> arrow keys It has hjkl, right? What more could you need?

OldSchoolJohnny 7y ago

Why are we as developers giving this company any of our business when they've thumbed their noses at us for decades?

bitwize 7y ago
Because that's where the high-roller users are.
asark 7y ago
Everyone else's software/hardware is just that bad, so Apple can fuck around for years and switching's still a tough sell. That's why I'm still around, anyway. This WWDC looks like a move in the right direction for the first time in a while, at least.
octorian 7y ago
Because we as developers also desperately want a UNIX-style system, and our lives are so much easier when we can choose one that won't get us laughed out of the room by commercial software vendors.
threeseed 7y ago
Weird. As a developer I haven't found Apple to be thumbing their nose at me. Many of their features are genuinely useful for my development e.g. TouchBar.
- eppsilon 7y ago
  Genuinely curious: how have you found TouchBar useful for development? I think you're the first dev I've seen say that.
  - threeseed 7y ago
    Because I can fully customise it using something like BetterTouchTool. And so in IntelliJ I have custom buttons for executing common commands. I never remembered what each function key does in each app so it's useful for me.

NN88 7y ago

SIDECAR!!

robohoe 7y ago
That looks like a fantastic feature, especially due to the fact that you can use Apple Pencil to control your Mac. I wonder if that will cannibalize Wacom sales. Having used both Apple Pencil + iPad Pro and a Wacom tablet (separately), I found it real hard to draw on the Wacom table without seeing what I'm drawing under the pencil.
- freehunter 7y ago
  Wacom is one thing, but I'm wondering how quickly Duet [1] will shut down. [1] https://www.duetdisplay.com/ https://www.duetdisplay.com/
- richardjs 7y ago
  Wacom also sells drawing tablets with integrated displays [1]. I've never used them or an Apple Pencil, so I don't know how they compare, but Wacom isn't totally caught out here. On the other hand, I can see a lot of people buying (or already owning) iPad Pros and using this feature who might not buy a dedicated device for it. [1] https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-displays
fumar 7y ago
This should be higher. When I am on the road, this will be a huge help. I like having my email, calendar, and slack on one screen.
diehunde 7y ago
Damn, it's going to get tough for the people from Duet Display

fghtr 7y ago

So Apple goes the opposite way compared with Purism: making different OS for every device. What's the point?

velcrovan 7y ago
Maybe we’ll be able to discuss this more concretely once Purism has actually shipped a mobile device.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
robenkleene 7y ago
An way to think about this is that iPadOS is now (presumably) a separate team at Apple. Each year a new version of iPadOS will come out and that team will need to have features for it. When it was just one platform, it felt like iPad features only got implemented when the iOS team had some had spare time away from developing the clearly higher priority iPhone features.
davemp 7y ago
Because we’ve learned time after time that one size fits all is a fool’s dream.

EB66 7y ago

As if compiling hybrid mobile apps across all platforms wasn't enough of a pain already ;) Anyone know what this might mean for Cordova users?

TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago

What's old is new again! Mac OS became Mac OS X became OS X became macOS. iPhone OS, whatever it was called on the iPod touch and iPad OS merged to be called iOS, and now there's a new iPadOS.

djrogers 7y ago
No, the OS on iPads and iPods Touch was always called iOS - the OS was only called iPhone OS for a very short period of time.
- wuliwong 7y ago
  Your comment contradicts itself. It wasn't always called iOS if it was called iPhone OS "for a very short period of time." And the period of time was not "very short" by my definition at least. According to [0]: > Apple announced iPhone OS 1 at the iPhone keynote on January 9, 2007, and it was released to the public alongside the original iPhone on June 29, 2007. > Apple announced iPhone OS 2 at the iPhone software roadmap keynote in March 2008, and it was released to the public on July 11, 2008 alongside the iPhone 3G. > Apple announced iPhone OS 3 in March 2009, and it was released to the public on June 17, 2009 alongside the iPhone 3GS. > Apple announced iOS 4 in March 2010 and it was released to the public on June 21, 2010 alongside the iPhone 4. It was called iPhone OS for roughly 3 years. About 25% of the time since the OS was released it was called iPhone OS. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history#iPhone_OS_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history#iPhone_OS_...
  - brandonfro 7y ago
    The iPod touch and iPad were not released when iOS was called iPhone OS.
    - george_perez 7y ago
      The iPod touch launched 2 months after the original iPhone launched, and they both ran iPhone OS. Why are you so stubborn over something that can be easily searched and debunked? iPhone OS existed until iPhone OS 3.2.2 when it was renamed to iOS in iOS 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history

ncr100 7y ago

Pencil latency drop to 9ms is best I've seen.

fumar 7y ago
Is that for both gen 1 and gen 2 pencils?
- jgon 7y ago
  The small print on the page that mentions this stat says that the measurements were taken on a new 12.9 inch iPad Pro using the Gen 2 Apple Pencil. Not sure what latency reductions may make their way to the other iPads, but nothing is stated right now.
  - fumar 7y ago
    I have the 10.5 in Pro and Apple Pencil 1. I wonder if the 20 ms vs 9 ms is detectable by the human eye.
    - max76 7y ago
      It might be. On monitors the difference between a 120hz refresh rate and 144hz refresh rate is about 14ms between frames. Some people (claim) to tell the difference.
    - pcr910303 7y ago
      It can be very detectable, I'd say. Try watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4 It shows the difference between from >100ms to ~1ms. It's mind baffling.
      - ksec 7y ago
        I wonder how did they manage it. Even the Screen itself has a 1 - 4ms latency. That is excluding the Input latency and Software in between.

LesZedCB 7y ago

I remember when apple was lauded for unifying the forked os for ipad into iOS. i guess they changed their minds.

zapzupnz 7y ago
It's just marketing. It's still iOS.

bitL 7y ago

Will there be a multi-user mode? Perfect for separating work from home or multiple clients... It would make iPad so much more usable as a single device for both work and fun.

eugeniub 7y ago
Nothing like that was announced
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Weirdly they did announce this for tvOS, but not their increasingly productivity-focused OS...
  - HatchedLake721 7y ago
    Release on tvOS, test, perfect, release to iPadOS
    - petersteinberg 7y ago
      I doubt this is the case. With the tvOS, you need different profiles for different members of the family. Otherwise your five-year-old ends up seeing a lot of mature TV shows in their recommendations. And the adults see various recommendations meant for small children. If you have small children and Netflix or you don’t have multiple user accounts set up you know what I mean. This is the simple and easy solution for the tvOS because they can’t realistically expect you to purchase multiple Apple TVs for the multiple members of your family. On the other hand, they very much do hope you’ll purchase multiple iPads.
speleding 7y ago
I'm hoping for this. If you have little kids in your house you cannot safely use the iPad Mail client, for example
- JustSomeNobody 7y ago

uses 7y ago

As a web developer, what on earth does this mean? > desktop sites are now the default in Safari Surely it's not some kind of meddling with the device width to make responsive web design even more confusing. That would be very odd. My hope is that it's some kind of user agent manipulation that thwarts device sniffing so you don't see a mobile phone stylesheet or get redirected to a mobile site while using your iPad.

saidajigumi 7y ago
Yes, this. This bridges some gaps for sites that are built as either mobile-specific (but not truly responsive), or as desktop-only. I would have thought that the whole device detection, mobile-specific thing would have died many years ago, but it is stubbornly persistent. True responsive sites have worked fine for ages, and should continue to do so. On the desktop-only site side, it looks like Apple has also done some interaction refinements for problems touch-based users can hit on these sites, especially around distinct hover vs. click interactions, the need to "tap-twice" to essentially "focus then click", etc.
- billforsternz 7y ago
  What is your criteria for a "true responsive site" and can you point to a good resource describing implementation details? Asking for a friend :)
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    Renders to a 640x480 CRT and 4K display without looking like crap on either.
  - saidajigumi 7y ago
    Honestly, just using the basics of "responsive web design" (search phrase) is most of it. That is, implementing your site using CSS media queries to adapt your layout across multiple device sizes. Contrast that to using hacky device detection to deliver some entirely separate and "mobile-specific" site. One anti-pattern that often happens is the "mobile" detection is wrong, and delivers some phone-sized UI to a tablet. Instead just leverage CSS to make your site look good at the user's current display width, whatever that is, without having to know anything about the device. This is also great for desktop users, e.g. who might have your site in a browser side-by-side with something else, or similar. All of the "evergreen" browsers have a mobile design view built into their dev tools these days. You can enable that, switch between specific device screen profiles, and continuously drag the "screen size" handles to watch your site's behavior at different sizes. This is great for development, since your web inspector view stays at full size. Combining CSS media queries with CSS flexbox is a hugely powerful way customize the end-user experience for different devices. Flexbox not only makes basic layout adaptations straightforward (or free!), it lets you handle some otherwise tricky cases using tools like reordering support. It's probably also worth searching for "mobile first web design" for further resources.

Rhedox 7y ago

Would've loved to see XCode for i(Pad)OS. Or any kind of developer support.

pathartl 7y ago

Apple in 2009: Web browsing on a desktop is cumbersome and painful Apple in 2019: We've brought the desktop browsing experience to the iPad I mean I get it, they're maturing the platform. But window snapping and home screen widgets seem very "Windows Vista". That combined with the new swipe keyboard and finally adding storage support... it really just seems like playing catch up for things that have existed for over a decade now. I would personally never use a device for professional work unless I had full control over the software on that device. Being locked in by the app store is still a non-starter for me.

zapzupnz 7y ago
> it really just seems like playing catch up At the surface level, it does. However, at the implementation level, I think Apple is slowly reimagining all of these things for a new paradigm — and the new paradigm has needed time to evolve slowly, for Apple to see what directions its users and developers wanted to go in, and to take the time to decide how to do things. For example: the sidebar on Vista was next to useless because (A) its widgets didn't tap into any data people wanted, (B) the widgets weren't the right size to show any useful information, and (C) didn't fare any better on Windows 7 because they were buried under windows. iOS widgets, on the other hand, directly tap into applications, can come in variable sizes, have a somewhat uniform presentation style, and one visits the Home screen many more times than one clicks the Show Desktop button on Windows. Windows Vista gadgets and OS X Dashboard widgets seemed to be little toys, the styling to look like a little desktop accessory being more important than their actual utility. The way that iPadOS integrates Today Widgets with the home screen is more like putting useful information directly at users' disposal. Pair this with widgets like Shortcuts, Launch Center Pro, or Pythonista, and you also have a means for quickly starting workflows. iPad's multiple windows isn't really window snapping in the same sense as on Windows. That's just an implementation detail. The actual concept, at least as of iPadOS (as opposed to iOS 11 and 12), is more like macOS' Spaces or Mission Control. All in all, to appreciate something, you have to appreciate all the little details. To me, Today Widgets on the Home screen have the potential to offer productivity improvements similar to Alfred. I'm sure there'll be apps with widgets specifically crafted to take advantage of this.

mmargerum 7y ago

Was kinda hoping for trackpad / mouse support and maybe a laptop form factor.

scarface74 7y ago
They didn’t announce it. But they added mouse and trackpad support under Accessibility. https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1135653636145590273?s=21 https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/11356536361455902...

exabrial 7y ago

For awhile apple was trying to "bring iOS features to the desktop", thankfully now they've realized each device form requires a special user interface.

djrogers 7y ago

Looks like they ran out of time for all the features, but MOUSE SUPPORT!!! https://twitter.com/reneritchie/status/1135643633690992640 https://twitter.com/reneritchie/status/1135643633690992640

clairity 7y ago
yes, finally! voice control (an accessibility feature for now) lays the groundwork for more pervasive computing for all, but mouse support fills a hole until that happens. i don't think voice control will replace physical controls, but do think it will grow in usage over time to become an important augment to physical controls. now i'm just waiting for pervasive handwriting input with realtime OCR and indexing (for instant search), which can replace all sorts of note-taking and annotation workflows (and the requisite printing to paper that now often entails).

ChuckMcM 7y ago

Yay! I am sick and tired of crappy iPhone ports to the iPad where it wants to turn my iPad pro into a ginormous phone screen. At least now I hope that crap goes away. It has been fascinating to watch the evolution of the iPad version of iOS and the desktop version of Windows 10 to better support a screen/pen/detachable keyboard sort of world.

dperfect 7y ago
I don't think this will do anything to help with the "crappy iPhone [app] ports to the iPad", at least not for a while. Those apps will still be there, and they'll likely still be approved in the future. From my understanding, "iPadOS" is essentially just a marketing signal that the iPad-version of the OS will have more features unique to iPad. For developers, Xcode will still have the option to compile the same codebase for iOS and iPadOS. It's up to the developer to take advantage of more screen real estate when available, though SwiftUI will probably make that easier on the developer (i.e., more likely to show up in the apps you use).
- ramraj07 7y ago
  The biggest plus here is going to be that we can use desktop-grade web apps on the iPad. That has single handedly been the biggest hurdle!

socialist_coder 7y ago

I'm having a hard time finding any info about how this affects iOS / iPadOS app development. Do you still just build & submit once and it targets both platforms?

darzu 7y ago

Honestly these new changes (esp. the second monitor for MacOS support, if it works well) will probably finally get me to buy an iPad. This all looks very good to me. Real file system browser; much better multi-tasking; closer integration with macbook.

youeseh 7y ago
I might switch to writing code on an iPad. Even after all these years of writing code using a keyboard, I still think better with a pen.. I realize that I'll be pushing text slower with a pen, but I'm that hoping the quality will improve!
- darzu 7y ago
  This sounds.. crazy to me but hey if it works for you that's great and maybe you should post something! I'd be curious to see a workflow that uses handwritten code.
freetime2 7y ago
I think we've crossed the point where, for most people, an iPad (or surface) makes more sense for personal use than a laptop. I have one of the recent iPad Air models and find it more enjoyable to use for everyday tasks like web browsing, light photo editing and sharing, goofing off on youtube, etc. Had I known I was going to like it so much, I probably would have sprung for the more expensive iPad Pro model with face ID, the new pencil, etc. My personal laptop mostly sits unused these days. Admittedly there are some tasks, like booking travel for example, where I still prefer to use a laptop - but those seem to be less and less of an issue over time. For development work, I don't see my MacBook Pro going away any time soon. But I do see the iPad becoming more incorporated into my professional workflow. It sits on my desk while I'm working and I use it to run things like iTunes, email, slack, and personal reminders - where they feel like less of a distraction than when I run those things on my desktop. Integration between my macbook and ipad is already pretty great when it comes to handoff, airdrop, messages, notes, etc - and Apple seems committed to continued improvement as I think they realize that seamless integration is one of the things that makes people stick within their ecosystem.

universenz 7y ago

The most exciting aspect of this is the resizable text / view port zoom in Safari. Productivity is going to go through the roof!

lukejduncan 7y ago

Finger cross this includes a first class calculator...

kondro 7y ago
Just buy PCalc and support an awesome indie developer.
- ianai 7y ago
  Are there any other options? Pcalc actually has many people complaining about lack of features.
  - WillPostForFood 7y ago
    It's an untraditional calculator, but I love Soulver from Acqualia. It is always one of the first things I install on a new iPhone or Mac. https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/iphone/ https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/iphone/
    - valtism 7y ago
      Soulver is amazing, and totally changes the way you use a calculator.
    - RBerenguel 7y ago
      Alternatively, I use a lot for a long while Tydlig. Sadly it has been stagnant for a while (I'd like to be able to save "sheets", for instance). But its interaction mode (akin to a spreadsheet, in a sense) is very refreshing. http://tydligapp.com http://tydligapp.com
      - tsar_nikolai 7y ago
        +1 for tydlig, among the first apps I install on every new iPhone
george_perez 7y ago

jrochkind1 7y ago

On the road to phasing out MacOS?

davemp 7y ago

> Apple Pencil latency is dropping from 20ms to 9ms, This is why I respect Apple. Most tech forums would have been flooded people whinging about how mere humans can’t perceive such low latencies and how improving them is a waste. Meanwhile Apple knows not to leave anything on the table for UX.

headsoup 7y ago
Actually I think it highlights how well Apple manage their message and keep people focused on them: most people probably don't notice or actually care about the difference in latency, and 9ms is not the best in the market, yet it becomes a 'good news story' validating Apple
- azinman2 7y ago
  Who is faster?
  - michelb 7y ago
    Curious about this as well..Surface Pro has 21 ms in best conditions I think, depending on the app.
- HugoDaniel 7y ago
  Latencies bellow 16ms require a refresh rate higher than 60Hz. For 9ms you need at least 90Hz. Don't know many who do that. Specially if you take in consideration the battery hit that the faster update rate requires.
  - anbop 7y ago
    iPad Pro refresh rate is 120hz.
    - oceanplexian 7y ago
      Yeah I was going to say. The iPad Pro display has a 120hz refresh rate and it's highly noticeable, and IMHO far superior to any other mobile device display.

getcrunk 7y ago

What about mouse support?

m0zg 7y ago

I wish they'd introduce multiple accounts on the iPad. That, and let me directly and securely access files (and in particular my humongous photo library) on my Mac over WiFi, without all the iCloud bullshit. I know it's not going to happen, and Apple will continue to pretend this is not something users want, but one can have dreams, am I right?

kmlx 7y ago

now that both the mouse and the local storage work, can we finally code on this thing with a real local codebase and server?