23 ms·

iPadOS

500 points by plg 7y ago

baby 7y ago
I’ve been using this for several months now, I am still confused about the hand gestures I need to do to make multi tasking work. Everything has been very confusing to me, and it’s been hard finding information online as it was a beta.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  They’re iPhone-style gestures for the most part, except some of the Slide Over/Split View stuff requires a bit more work. The beta broke some of these too so if you were using that I’d try to use those gestures again and see if they do what you want.
- iaml 7y ago
  It's very annoying. I haven't found a way to close the app in slideover apart from opening sidedrawer and closing all the apps there.
  - redler 7y ago
    Perhaps dragging the overlaid app, by its header, straight off the edge of the screen (i.e., horizontally)?
    - nvrspyx 7y ago
      I’m pretty sure that just hides the app as you can then swipe it back into view from the edge. The parent commenter seems to want to end the process.
      - guptaneil 7y ago
        There is no difference in closing vs hiding apps in iOS. When the app is hidden, the process is stopped. Yes, you can force kill the process by swiping up on the dock and then swiping away the frozen apps, but you should never do this unless the app is unresponsive. It gets you zero benefit, other than using extra battery next time you launch the app to run its initial setup again. In fact Apple originally got rid of this gesture too in iOS 12 but so many people still try to force quit apps out of habit from their desktop computers that Apple was forced to bring the gesture back in 12.1 More reading: https://daringfireball.net/2017/07/you_should_not_force_quit_apps https://daringfireball.net/2017/07/you_should_not_force_quit...
        nvrspyx 7y ago
        > you should never do this unless the app is unresponsive In theory, yes, but not in practice. For example, the chromecast icon sometimes disappears in Hulu, which requires killing the app and reopening to get it back. The stock Mail app used to get stuck in fetching mail and refused to refresh, again requiring you to kill the app. Facebook Messenger's text input sometimes disappears entirely, requiring you to kill the app. Some apps get badges stuck, requiring you to kill the app. The list of bugs in apps that are only remedied by killing the app goes on and on. The iOS 12 issue was just an example of Apple being overzealous and believing there's no reason to kill an app, when even their own apps had issues that were only remedied by force quitting the apps. The uproar was well deserved.
        whynaut 7y ago
        > In theory, yes, but not in practice. For example All of those are examples of unresponsiveness..
        layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
        Nah. Unresponsive = the app’s main event loop is not processing events. On macOS this is when the beach ball cursor is shown. In fact there’s a built-in watchdog in iOS that’ll kill your app after 10 seconds if the main thread is not processing events. On the other hand an app can break in a variety of ways which won’t involve blocking the main thread, e.g. by simply opening a popup that can’t be closed, or getting stuck inside the wall in a game, etc.
        whynaut 7y ago
        > Unresponsive = the app’s main event loop is not processing events > an app can break in a variety of ways which won’t involve blocking the main thread I’m not saying you’re incorrect, but for the vast majority of users, any input that doesn’t yield an immediate response = unresponsive.
        7y ago
    - iaml 7y ago
      Thanks! Didn't try that particular combination.
ben7799 7y ago
Wow.. you can finally plug in a USB drive/card reader/camera/whatever... That alone actually takes the iPad a long way towards actually being real/Pro/whatever. I sold my first Gen iPad Pro over this stuff. It was just to painful to do a lot of real world stuff that involved files. Maybe today the experience would be a heck of a lot better.
- prashnts 7y ago
  Adding to the whatever list, you can also use USB Optical drives with a powered hub (just tried yesterday). It appears in Files app. Seems like they’ve finally implemented proper usb stack.
  - radnor 7y ago
    You can connect quite a few things via the Camera Connection Kit (CCK) which has a USB port in it. MIDI controllers and USB soundcards are two things I've used recently.
    - prashnts 7y ago
      Not sure what’s the CCK. Is it one of the dongles they sell with HDMI, SD Reader, and USB? I first got excited that it can connect to USB webcams — I have some modded webcams I use as microscope — would be super useful if I could interface it with a camera app. But it didn’t work, last I tried. Are you aware of some way to do that? :)
      - radnor 7y ago
        I haven't heard of any webcams that work in iOS via the CCK - sorry! I'm not too familiar with how it all works, but I imagine it has a lot to do with the individual apps that are running to be able to read/write to the USB port.
        prashnts 7y ago
        Seems like it, thanks anyway! Maybe now that there’s USBKit (although not sure if it’s MacOS only), one might be able to work out a camera driver implementation. Yay, weekend project!
saagarjha 7y ago
(It came out today, for those wondering why it’s being posted here.)
- pdimitar 7y ago
  I’ve read a week ago that it will start rolling out from September the 30th, though. And still no software update available on my iPad Pro.
  - mcphage 7y ago
    They pushed it (and iOS 13.1) up to the 24th a few days ago.
    - pdimitar 7y ago
      You are correct. I literally checked about 3 hours ago and there were no updates but after your comment I successfully updated my iPhone and iPad Pro. Thanks for the heads up.
      - mcphage 7y ago
        No problem. It was an unusual thing for them to do, but here we are.
finkin1 7y ago
I wonder why they aren't advertising mouse support. This seems like one of the most useful features to me. They didn't mention it on the keynote and I can't find it on their website anywhere. Any thoughts on why Apple wouldn't be pushing this as a major advancement for iPad?
- mrpinc 7y ago
  The mouse support is supposed to be focused on accessibility for people with disabilities, it's not everyday user focused.
  - wffurr 7y ago
    If it's not good enough for everyday users then it's also not good enough for people with disabilities. Who, I note, also use the device every day and deserve a good experience too.
    - herpes 7y ago
      Apple has arguably the highest quality accessibility support in the industry. Have you tried the feature? Because I have and it's very usable. Just not pretty.
- ogre_codes 7y ago
  Because it's not very good mouse support. It's basically a simulated finger. If they started advertising this, people would rightly criticize it for being mediocre. For the moment anyhow, the iPad is a touch device with an optional virtual finger you can plug into it.
  - xienze 7y ago
    > Because it's not very good mouse support. It's basically a simulated finger. All I want for them to do is allow third party applications to support real mice in the way that you'd expect a real mouse to behave. The killer app would be remote desktop. I understand that there's literally one model of mouse that works with one specific remote desktop app, but I don't want that, I want to use my own mouse.
cfors 7y ago
Cool, but nothing about any focus on making the machine realistic for development. My current MacBook Pro is getting a little long in the tooth and after suffering through the 2016 and later versions at work, I will not be buying one of those until the keyboards are fixed. If iPadOS has first class terminal support I would consider making it my full time machine. Looks like the waiting game will continue.
- cl0ckt0wer 7y ago
  i hear the thinkpad keyboards are pretty good.
- robohoe 7y ago
  Blink shell on the App Store is a fantastic terminal that works wonderfully on iOS/iPadOS. Highly recommend it even with its steep price of $20. It supports mosh out of the box and has ability to store/import private/public keys. Multiple terminals can be opened as well. It even has a limited native shell which you can use to SCP files from your iPad to servers.
  - OrangeMango 7y ago
    > Highly recommend it even with its steep price of $20 It's GPL3 [1], so you are welcome to compile and install on your own personal devices even if you do not have a paid Apple development subscription, though I'm pretty sure that this would require periodic compile/install cycles (every couple of weeks?). [1] https://github.com/blinksh/blink https://github.com/blinksh/blink
    - nvrspyx 7y ago
      It’s every 7 days.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - _ph_ 7y ago
    I am using Blink as it seems to be the best terminal app I could find so far and would recommend it, but it does struggle a bit in some corner cases, as split-screen and switching between apps.
baby_wipe 7y ago
I really wish I could use macOS on the iPad. As a half measure, I'm gonna see if I can use sidecar with my macbook lid shut.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Why?
  - leesalminen 7y ago
    I’m guessing so the parent poster can do Development on the iPad without having to use the full MBP. I’d be interested in this as well.
    - balls187 7y ago
      I'm hoping with the ipadOS version of safari, I can use Cloud9 on my iPadPro2
    - baby_wipe 7y ago
      Yes basically this. Not sure if it has the power to do anything beyond light web dev, but would still be amazing.
dallen33 7y ago
The list of supported devices is impressive. The iPad Air 2 came out in 2014. 12.9-inch iPad Pro 11-inch iPad Pro 10.5-inch iPad Pro 9.7-inch iPad Pro iPad (7th generation) iPad (6th generation) iPad (5th generation) iPad mini (5th generation) iPad mini 4 iPad Air (3rd generation) iPad Air 2
- savoytruffle 7y ago
  It supports iPads with an A8 series chip, while iOS 13 does not support such iPhones (which would be a 5S). It's presumably because the iPads of the same CPU generation usually have more RAM, more CPU cores, more GPU cores.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    iPad Air 2 has an A8X, and iPhone 5s has an A7.
  - simonh 7y ago
    It’s almost certainly memory. All the supported devices have at least 2GB RAM. The iPhone 6 had the A8 with 1GB RAM and is not supported by iOS 13. The iPad Air 2 has the A8X with 2GB RAM and is supported by iPadOS 13. In the past the break on unsupported older devices has been down to hardware. Usually memory, but also on the 64bit transition. I’m not aware of a single break in support that wasn’t determined by hardware requirements.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - close04 7y ago
      The A8X also has a substantially faster CPU than the A8 (3 vs. 2 cores and 1.5GHz vs. 1.1GHz) and a much faster GPU (2-3 times faster). This would make a visible difference in day to day usage even without the RAM limitation. This is probably also what made the difference when implementing the multitasking features.
  - 7y ago
loosetypes 7y ago
I enjoy my iPad for consuming content but often have an itch to create from it. In that regard, the only valid input for me has been the pencil. So the two most intriguing aspect are (1) mirroring with macOS Catalina and (2) the new text input UI. I’ve often wished for simple text editor on my iPad to follow along with books. Are there /any/ good touch inputs for text?
- Youden 7y ago
  It's not touch but I like Mazec [0] on the iPad with the Pencil. My favourite feature is that it's multi-lingual. [0]: http://www.product.metamoji.com/en/mazec/ http://www.product.metamoji.com/en/mazec/
- s3r3nity 7y ago
  One under-rated "creation tool" that the iPad (regular and pro especially) has is its front-facing camera. I have been playing with low-key streaming with the iPad Pro, and have been pleasantly surprised at how well I can prop up the iPad to stream, and use the extra real-estate to read or check-in on stream chat. I don't want / need the super high quality tools of a professional streamer, but I don't want grainy 2001 feature phone video - just something that can allow me to keep it as a fun side hobby without investing thousands of $ in a set-up. And there are a bunch of decent apps to do some light video editing, but iMovie tends to satisfy my needs.
jdlyga 7y ago
I've had the iPadOS beta for a while, and it's basically just iOS 13 with some iPad specific features. There's no significant divergence yet.
- savoytruffle 7y ago
  A major thing that iOS doesn't have and even iPadOS 12 didn't is the ability to do a side-by-side view of two windows of the same app (two Mail windows, two Safari, two Pages, etc). Sounds pretty basic, but previously the split-screen view had to be two different apps.
  - landcoctos 7y ago
    iOS 12 does side by side web pages.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    That requires app opt-in: it's not automatically enabled (your apps will need to update for this to work).
- dukoid 7y ago
  If folding devices become a trend, there will be less need for convergence then? :)
ogre_codes 7y ago
When you compare it to Android where you're lucky to get 18 months support it comes out ahead. When you compare it to MacOS and Windows 10 which run on 8-10 year old hardware, not as much. Of course how good Windows support is for that older hardware depends largely on OEMs and driver support and varies greatly. Linux can run on 20 year old hardware... or older?
- penagwin 7y ago
  Since apple markets their ipados for productivity as an alternative to a MacBook or a windows laptop - I'm not sure Linux can really be included. Simply put - Linux has never been focused on tablet UI UX or that kind of productivity, it's not a technical limitation sure but there's literally 0 polish on any kind of "streamlined tablet experience"
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    > Simply put - Linux has never been focused on tablet UI UX or that kind of productivity Used to be true but not any longer; recent versions of GNOME 3 are now quite usable on tablets (and touch-screen enabled laptops) as long as the bare hardware support is there. Sure, this is largely a side effect of Librem's work on smartphone UX support, but the effect is quite real nonetheless. And Linux on a tablet can achieve things that are quite hard or even impossible on other "mobile-ready" OS's.
  - ogre_codes 7y ago
    Smartphones, tablets, Windows, Macs, Linux... they are all similar products targeting marginally different markets. I use my iPad for the same things I used my Linux desktop for not long ago. There are some things one does better than the other, but ultimately there is much more overlap than differences. The bigger the difference in form factor, the bigger the difference in use cases. Also, less folks forget... Android is Linux.
    - gridlockd 7y ago
      > I use my iPad for the same things I used my Linux desktop for not long ago. There are some things one does better than the other, but ultimately there is much more overlap than differences. I really really don't get this. I like the iPad, but Apple wants to sell me this idea that the iPad is an actual* computer. It's not. It's a toy computer. It's fun. It's not serious. Stop pretending, Apple. *) An actual computer lets you mark pages as executable.
pier25 7y ago
Do you think the "Desktop-class browsing" will also apply to webview based browsers? (Chrome, Firefox, etc)
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Other applications can get this as well if they decide to take advantage of certain WebKit APIs.
cpeterso 7y ago
Still no calculator app??
- s3r3nity 7y ago
  You could use Spotlight or Siri - handles the function of "calculator" pretty easily.
amelius 7y ago
As an OS, is it revolutionary or evolutionary?
- Angostura 7y ago
  Evolutionary. But the improvements are very worthwhile.
peatmoss 7y ago
Anyone here familiar with photo management know what the likely implications of the new USB storage support are? My elderly mother has gotten into photography in the past few years and shoots with what I assume is a prosumer camera (high-ish resolution, swappable lenses). The Windows laptop she plugs into is a disaster waiting to happen, in that I’m pretty sure nothing is properly backed up. I think she also barely understands what’s happening on her computer at any given time. If an iPad, plus camera kit, plus external storage, plus maybe some iCloud backup is a reasonable way to manage photos, I'd consider getting her one. What might an iPadOS + camera workflow / setup look like? Is this likely to be a replacement for a camera + traditional computer photo management setup? Edit: I should add that, while I’m comfortable with Linux and coding and other nerdly pursuits, I know nothing about current norms and tech for photography.
- soperj 7y ago
  Windows comes with a number of back up tools. >https://www.howtogeek.com/220986/how-to-use-all-of-windows-10’s-backup-and-recovery-tools/ https://www.howtogeek.com/220986/how-to-use-all-of-windows-1... There's also a multitude of cloud solutions. Instead of forcing your mom into some weird ipad work flow, work with what she already does and is familiar with.
  - peatmoss 7y ago
    I think she went that route mainly because of cost rather than preference. She’ll obviously use what she wants to use, but she seems pretty unhappy / frustrated with status quo, so I don’t think helping her explore options is unreasonable.
- givinguflac 7y ago
  For an elderly person, just use iCloud for photos backup. It works incredibly well, and works through the native photos app, so it will totally eliminate the need to think about backing up unless it's offline all the time.
  - oflannabhra 7y ago
paultopia 7y ago
Has anyone tried the released version yet? Is it as buggy as (reportedly) iOS 13 is?
- berberous 7y ago
  13.1 releases today and is supposed to be much much less buggy. Not sure how buggy 13.1 is but you should really focus on that as 13.0 was extremely unusual and out for only 5 days. Essentially a beta that may have been rushed out for tarrif related reasons, as some have speculated.
- toxik 7y ago
  I swear to god, every single iOS release I see a comment lamenting how buggy the new version is in developer preview, and every time, by the time it's on my device, I never have issues.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    iOS/iPadOS 13 is significantly more buggy than iOS 12 was.
    - toxik 7y ago
      Well boy do I get to eat my hat. What happened to Safari? Major broken behaviors and—get this—rendering bugs on HN. Impressively bad. This is like browsing on IE6.
  - dcchambers 7y ago
    I guess that's why they have a developer preview :) Seems like the system is working as intended.
- taylorlapeyre 7y ago
  I've heard nearly nobody complain about bugs in iOS 13, in fact just the opposite.
- post_break 7y ago
puranjay 7y ago
I've been burned by two generations of Macbooks, and I honestly find the iPhones to be far inferior value to most mid-range Androids. But my 2016 iPad still remains one of the best devices I've ever owned. It's effortlessly useful and still as sharp as ever. Great to see Apple taking it more seriously.
- reilly3000 7y ago
  I appreciate how slowly they depreciate. I've been able to resell my used Apple products year after year, consistently getting a solid price that I'd never get with a PC or Android device.
nostromo 7y ago
I've tried to use these desktop-inspired features on iPad and they are befuddling. Using two apps at once is beyond confusing. A simple use case, like copying an address from a Safari tab into Gmail via split screen requires so many mysterious, undiscoverable gestures, I doubt almost anyone is doing that. I think Jobs was right that convergence between workstations and mobile devices requires too many sacrifices, at least in the near term. I think the obvious solution could be an old one discovered by PARC decades ago: applications in windows and a mouse.
- Angostura 7y ago
  But the nice thing about the mysterious gestures is that you really don't need them. If you are a power user you might learn them - otherwise you just keep using it like an old-style iPad - like my wife does. It's sort of the equivalent of righ-click on a Mac.
  - SomeOldThrow 7y ago
    Actually apple is pretty terrible about the discovery of right click functionality, I’d say that’s an obvious indication they prefer form over function. I wish Apple had gone Bauhaus in the 90s instead.
- dmazin 7y ago
  I think something mostly unmentioned, but implicit, in a lot of the power features of iPadOS is that they work great with a keyboard using shortcuts most people are already familiar with (e.g. command-c). The three-finger gestures, I agree, are pretty weird but you always have the keyboard (and the cut/copy/paste action menu).
- soup10 7y ago
  they are trying to hard to force gestures and touch controls, just support wireless mouses
  - ogre_codes 7y ago
    These are different things. You should first and foremost be able to do everything on the iPad (or any touch device) with touch and/ or gestures. As soon as you require a mouse (or stylus, trackpad/ whatever) on a tablet you've screwed up. The whole beauty of a tablet is in its portability. Having to rely on a mouse or trackpad screws that up. That said, mouse support for the iPad can and absolutely should be much better. Just never a requirement.
privateSFacct 7y ago
Everytime I read about greenpeace talking about how Apple's products are so terrible for the environment while saying nothing about android products I roll my eyes. Same thing with the fix it folks saying Apple's products are "unrepairable". There is a great market for both repair and reuse / re-sale in apple products. It's interesting comparing a 4 year old android tablet or phone (which was sometimes a year behind when shipping already) to apple's products.
- robin_reala 7y ago
  Huh? Greenpeace have had nothing but praise for Apple for at least the last three years.
  - privateSFacct 7y ago
    Last summer, for example, Greenpeace teamed up with iFixit to rate the repairability of Apple devices, accusing Apple of shortening device lifespan with difficult, proprietary repair processes and components, ultimately leading to more electronic waste. - 2018 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.macrumors.com/2018/04/19/greenpeace-apple-repairable-upgradeable-products/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.macrumors.com/2018/04/19/gr...
- audunw 7y ago
  While I personally wish Apple would be more supportive of 3rd party or at-home repairs, I think what they've been doing there actually helps with extending the life of their devices. Let's say you're thinking of buying a used iPhone. If you had reason to believe that used iPhones were mostly repaired by 3rd parties that didn't necessarily know what they're doing, or were using cheap or even dangerous (in the case of batteries) parts. Would you buy used, or would go just buy some cheap new phone? And if people weren't interested in buying, would you bother trying to sell your old phone or would you just throw it away? Making sure the quality of second-hand market is high is essential to encouraging re-use. I think a lot of those who are criticising Apple when it comes to repair should remember that. It's not that they're wrong in saying that Apple should support 3rd party repair, but their complaints are not gonna come to much unless what they propose is actually reasonable.. i.e. makes it easier for 3rd parties to repair iPhones while maintaining a healthy second-hand market for iPhones. And that's not easy.
pastaking 7y ago
Can we split screen vertically now?
Conlectus 7y ago
The biggest problem I've found with using my iPad pro as a full time device is that the iPad does not have a real concept of keyboard focus. This is a big deal in split-screen apps, where hard as I try I can't get my terminal emulator to accept keyboard input -- I just keep typing in Safari. Hopefully this is something that Apple addresses now that they consider iPad OS to be a real OS and not a scaled-up iOS.
- ascagnel_ 7y ago
  What happens when you Command-tab into your terminal emulator directly? I agree that split-screen input/output priority is wonky -- for example, if you have a video player app and Safari side-by-side and an external display connected, the video player app will only output to the display if it's the app on the left.
  - Conlectus 7y ago
    That does not shift focus reliably.
- crazygringo 7y ago
  That threw me off the first time I used it too -- to have a blinking cursor in both apps, side-by-side, at the same time. My brain was going, two text cursors -- that's not supposed to happen!
- IMcD23 7y ago
  https://twitter.com/viticci/status/1146121778256863233?s=20 https://twitter.com/viticci/status/1146121778256863233?s=20
yodon 7y ago
Was there some sort of connect your bluetooth mouse announcement, or was that speculation of something iPadOS would support that never happened?
- ascagnel_ 7y ago
  There was, but it's more of an accessibility feature -- the cursor is a relatively large circle, simulating a fingertip, rather than a pinpoint cursor.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - yodon 7y ago
    That sounds almost vindictive in its desire to make sure no one uses a mouse for anything important while still checking off some legal accessibility requirement.
Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
Track record for Apple when it comes to iOS/iPadOS updates has been impressive, but once they stop updating their device it becomes more vulnerable than their android counterpart for basic Internet browsing just because Apple doesn't update Safari via AppStore and doesn't allow any other browser engine. Case in point : Google Project Zero's latest iOS Exploit chains on webkit shows how easy it was(*is?) for an iOS user to fall victim to browser vulnerabilities by just visiting a website.[1] The exploits covered targeted only 64-bit, so technically devices < iPhone5S which were not part of the update cycle wasn't mentioned in the GPZ research. But many of the exploit chains did use public jailbreak exploits and Semi-unthethered jailbreaks exist for 32-bit iOS devices running up to iOS 10.3.3. I don't know whether complete exploit chain as detailed in the project zero wasn't possible for 32-bit devices or the attackers just didn't care about those devices. It is safe to assume, they are vulnerable. Where as a 7 year old android device can still download Firefox for Android with latest security updates. In any case, I don't think there can be any opposing arguments on the side of security for Apple not updating Safari via AppStore or now allowing proper 3rd party browsers. [1]: https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-very-deep-dive-into-ios-exploit.html https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-very-deep-d...
- lcfcjs2 7y ago
  I had a samsung that stopped receiving updates. So this post is completely misleading, all manufacturers stop supporting old products. It's a way to get you to upgrade.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  > In any case, I don't think there can be any opposing arguments on the side of security for Apple not updating Safari via AppStore or now allowing proper 3rd party browsers. Third party browsers entitled with dynamic codesigning poke a huge hole in Apple's security model for iOS devices.
  - Jyaif 7y ago
    Can you explain why allowing apps to ship with a JIT compiler be a security issue?
duxup 7y ago
I'm guessing this is a sort of ChromeOS where the tablet world and the traditional laptop continue to merge?
dotdi 7y ago
I'm by all means no Apple fanboy (almost all my devices are Android-based, work laptop is a MBP) but this sure is impressive. All of the presented features seem to be thought through and made to increase my productivity. Back in the day, I was one of the first people to own the original iPad in my country (small, central European country) and I regretted that decision almost immediately since it was just a bigger phone that I could use on the couch, albeit one that couldn't even do phone calls. I finally get the feeling that tablets get to be real devices.
adam12 7y ago
> Connect an external hard drive, SD card reader, and, yes, even a USB drive. So innovative!
scotchio 7y ago
Sidecar + MBP = Mobile Bliss
ineedasername 7y ago
I very much like that it's becoming more mature and close to a desktop-replacement OS, I just wish it wasn't so locked down. I wouldn't really feel comfortable using it as a daily driver if I can't dig into the nuts and bolts of things and control my environment.
Pfhreak 7y ago
Nice list of feature improvements. Still, it doesn't look like there's a way to support multiple accounts on a single device (e.g. parent and child with different configurations.) Maybe I'm wrong and missed something? There's a long list of improvements and I definitely skimmed it.
- jbigelow76 7y ago
  Not in there, that would have been a pretty big shift for Apple to concede that not every member of the family needs their own iPad and support multiple accounts. Only whatever the Apple educational software is called unlocks the ability for iPads to share accounts.
_ph_ 7y ago
One thing which has increadibly annoyed me on the iPad so far was, that even if you had music files in your iCloud drive, there is no way to add them to the Music app. The same applies to videos and the TV app. There doesn't seem to be an iPad based flow to add your content to those apps. Also, while I love the ability to play video as picture in picture, I cannot grasp, why the video size is limited to 1/4 of the screen size - if something interesting comes up, you cannot enlarge the video beyond that limit.
neilobremski 7y ago
I think it's great that Apple is attempting to design an OS for a specific form-factor and the use cases that go along with that. I worked on Windows 8 and the idea of putting the same UI on every device regardless of its size or inputs was really abhorrent to me. (If I've got a keyboard and a mouse connected to a big screen then I want something keen to that.)
kodablah 7y ago
> QuickPath typing - Type by swiping from one letter to the next. Are there plans for this to be added for phone keyboards too? As one that appreciates it on Android, I imagine it'd be welcomed by many.
- FPGAhacker 7y ago
  Yes, it’s on the phones too with iOS 13. I previously used the swype 3rd party keyboard, and I’m not really a fan. It’s ok I guess.
- jorenvo 7y ago
  It's in iOS 13 which was released last week.
- filoleg 7y ago
  It already was added for phones in iOS 13 update last week.
tolmasky 7y ago
Apparently as part of the "desktop class" browser experience in iPad OS, Safari lost its ability to double-tap to zoom. This is a feature I use on basically every single webpage, including when I am browsing on an actual desktop computer. Chrome's lack of this feature kept me on desktop Safari for ages. I can't believe they've taken it out. It significantly deteriorates my browsing experiencing. And for what? To add more text selection gestures or something? I already find it annoying that I randomly select text as I browse a website on iOS, I don't want important features being dumped in favor of more of that. Edit: Upon further inspection, it may just be horribly buggy? It seems to sometimes attempt to zoom out on double tap (despite being at 100%), which means somewhere the code is still trying to work...
- swinglock 7y ago
  Indeed. I reported this but it wasn't fixed. Very disappointed as I use this all the time. If you pinch zoom slightly and then double touch, it works on some pages, including this page, but it's off center. On others not at all. On others it works as it should.
- Conlectus 7y ago
  As I understand, tap-to-zoom adds a minimum latency to every click on a page since the browser needs to wait to see if its a double tap. This makes some buttons etc. feel laggy.
- fragmede 7y ago
  Fwiw Chrome on OS X supports the zoom mode you are talking about. (I'm not talking about ctrl-+ text resizing zoom.) On a mighty/apple mouse, it's a triple tap gesture iirc.
  - tolmasky 7y ago
    Yes, it wasn’t clear from my post, but once Chrome got this feature I switched.
UIZealot 7y ago
iOS has been dead to me since iOS 7. I stopped buying iPhone/iPads and stopped developing for it. Now that Jony "no taste" Ive is gone, can we go back to the classic look already?
- fastbeef 7y ago
  Username checks out.
babyslothzoo 7y ago
The multitasking functions are very confusing, as are the new multi-finger gestures for performing undo/copy/paste etc. Nothing is obviously discoverable either, it all feels accidental at best, though that's been the case since they removed depth from the UI. Wasn't the promise of iPad that it was much easier than a Mac or PC? I don't find that to be the case. Anyway, I use mine as a couch browser. I still can't find a heavier use case for it.
gdubs 7y ago
The painting improvements to Notes look nice, but I gotta say: not having an official Apple Paint program seems like a huge missed opportunity. Even just the nostalgia pull – whether it was Mac Paint or Windows Paint, how many people's love affairs with computers began with a system-bundled paint program?
rcarmo 7y ago
One thing I’d love to see happen as a result of this is HN supporting Reader View (if not outright dark mode...)
lelf 7y ago
> Apple will never track or profile you when you sign in with Apple. The most information you’ll have to share with an app or website is your name and email address. …like that’s not too much.
- DavideNL 7y ago
  > …like that’s not too much it's not, because you can enter whichever (anonymous) name you want :) ...and the e-mail address can be anonymised too: https://youtu.be/rJi_Mo-SdW0?t=82 https://youtu.be/rJi_Mo-SdW0?t=82
ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
tvOS 13.0, too. Just FYI. Interesting. This is iPadOS 13.1 (not 13.0). iPhoneOS is also 13.1 today.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
luizfelberti 7y ago
Just trying it out right now and it already feels like they shot themselves in the foot by forking away from iOS. iOS13 had for the past two weeks fixed one of the biggest annoyances in Apple's horrible keyboard UX: For people like me who type in multiple languages, the keyboard switching button cycles between "English", "Portuguese", and "Emojis". iOS13 FINALLY put a dedicated emoji button in there and after 2 weeks living with it on the iPhone, iPadOS apparently completely forgot to port this over and the feature has been taken away from me. This is just one example out of probably a crap-ton of things that they forgot to bring along from iOS. This crap happens all the time with Database vendors too, when they try to keep a separate closed-source Enterprise version. I get that feature flags are annoying, but thinking you can manually keep two different OS codebases synced and consistent is delusional. _On a side note, the rest of the keyboard is still a mess._ No number row (not even as an option in Settings), no hold for punctuation, but worst of all (especially if you're coming out of Gboard to try their keyboard again), Slide-to-Type is just horrible. The accuracy is SO bad, I tried typing "hello world", and not only it just couldn't understand that I was trying to type "world", it wouldn't even suggest it as an alternative, the best I got was it suggested "world's" once, and if you tap it and try to delete the "'s" it just deletes the entire word. Not to mention that since I use two languages, it even tried portuguese words before it tried "world", even though I had the english keyboard selected (and there is no way to disable multilingual typing like there is on Gboard, even IF it worked decently). Also not being able to turn off Memojis on the Emoji keyboard... why?
vvilliam0 7y ago
Sidecar as a pen tablet could be a game-changer. My fiancee has been looking for a mobile drawing computer. The only thing I could recommend until now was the Surface Book since Apple doesn't make anything mobile that could run the full Adobe suite. If you can sketch with the iPad Photoshop and there is sidecar support for Illustrator and the other apps, it might be a good deal.
- cultofmetatron 7y ago
  I'm currently using my ipad pro as a secondary monitor with full wacom tablet-like functionality using the duet app. it works pretty well and has full support for the apple pencil. I have paperlike as a screen protector which gives a paperlike "resistence" when I'm drawing on it too.. https://www.duetdisplay.com/ https://www.duetdisplay.com/ https://paperlike.com/ https://paperlike.com/
myrandomcomment 7y ago
One interesting thing is the number of apps that use stuff you did not think about. For example SlingTV ask to use bluetooth!?! Why? One other thing, the icons have become smaller on my iPad Pro 10.5. Looking at it in landscape mode right now there is room for 5 rows of icons where I believe there used to be 4?
kevindong 7y ago
As a bedside YouTube machine, my iPad Air 1 is absolutely fantastic at it. Web browsing stutters like no other, but the YouTube app is still very smooth despite the device's hardware being ~6 years old now. I'm happy with my purchase despite Apple cutting off iOS/iPad OS updates for my device. As a productivity device, the device is basically useless since app switching is annoyingly slow.
- spiderfarmer 7y ago
  Once the OS updates stop, App updates follow shortly after. And once developers stop updating their apps, they become unusable over time, especially when they cannot communicate with server side API. My first iPad lasted about a year after the OS updates stopped.
  - kevindong 7y ago
    Officially, per the App Store metadata, the YouTube app supports all devices on at least iOS 10 [0]. I personally intend on holding out on upgrading until YouTube is no longer supported. [0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-watch-listen-stream/id544007664 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-watch-listen-stream/id...
0x38B 7y ago
I highly recommend reading the MacStories review of iOS and iPadOS 13 [1]. Thirty (!) pages. It's like the manual that Apple forgot. Case in point: you can swipe from the bottom-right corner of the screen with the Apple Pencil and it'll take a screenshot of the webpage and open it for marking up. Extensive coverage of multitasking features, as well. There's definitely a learning curve with all these possibilities - split view, side view, copying and pasting, etc - so it makes sense to get comfortable with them now. 1: https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-and-ipados-13-the-macstories-review/ https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-and-ipados-13-the-mac...
- crooked-v 7y ago
  > you can swipe from the bottom-right corner of the screen with the Apple Pencil and it'll take a screenshot of the webpage and open it for marking up I... but... how in the world is anyone ever supposed to know that exists???
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    Is it under the Tips app? If it is, that’s probably where they expect people to find it.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    Since re-joining the iOS world last year, I've been amazed at how many (often nifty!) features are the exact opposite of intuitive. I was still discovering new features either on accident or via articles, multiple months into ownership of my iPhone. Once I learned about the features many of them were great, but it's very surprising given Apple's focus on intuitiveness.
    - celeritascelery 7y ago
      I feel like apple focuses on intuitiveness for a basic non-power user. But they are okay with adding more complexity that power users will know but are hidden from discovery.
    - koyote 7y ago
doctoboggan 7y ago
Has anyone been able to successfully get Sidecar to work? I just upgraded to the Catalina beta and have not be able to connect to my iPadOS 13 iPad Pro. I tried physically connecting the two machines with a thunderbolt cable, and connecting them with bluetooth but nothing so far has worked.
easymovet 7y ago
The mouse support is incredibly good.
artellectual 7y ago
I just got the iPad Pro and have been using the iPadOS beta for the past few months. I don’t know how I was doing without it before. I now have a place where I can sketch my architecture diagrams, wireframes, live sketching for my team when I work. Everything is in one place and does not get lost. I can plug it into a projector and write notes on things to explain things to my team. Doing presentations is easy. I now pretty much only use my MacBook Pro for coding. Almost every other task is done on my iPad Pro. My 2 most used apps at this point are Concepts and Flow by moleskine. It’s become a boon to my workflow.
- reilly3000 7y ago
  Have you looked into something like this? https://medium.com/@ow/its-finally-possible-to-code-web-apps-on-an-ipad-pro-90ad9c1fb59a https://medium.com/@ow/its-finally-possible-to-code-web-apps... I would love to get to the workflow you've described.
inlined 7y ago
Am I the only one still disappointed that with a dedicated pseudo-desktop experience we still don’t have Xcode? The iPad Pro will truly be a pro portable device when it can make its own apps.
EricRiese 7y ago
Wow, Apple brought back DOS. I guess the hipsters like their hoppy craft beers, hence the name IPA-DOS.
namelosw 7y ago
I really hope they can expose the underlying BSD interface to users/developers.
smush 7y ago
I wonder if this is partly so Apple doesn't have to keep licensing the term "iOS" from Cisco. Now that they have a premium market, it could be cheaper for them to migrate to iPhoneOS/iPadOS and no longer have to pay Cisco for the license to use the term "iOS".

500 points by plg 7y ago

baby 7y ago

I’ve been using this for several months now, I am still confused about the hand gestures I need to do to make multi tasking work. Everything has been very confusing to me, and it’s been hard finding information online as it was a beta.

saagarjha 7y ago
They’re iPhone-style gestures for the most part, except some of the Slide Over/Split View stuff requires a bit more work. The beta broke some of these too so if you were using that I’d try to use those gestures again and see if they do what you want.
iaml 7y ago
It's very annoying. I haven't found a way to close the app in slideover apart from opening sidedrawer and closing all the apps there.
- redler 7y ago
  Perhaps dragging the overlaid app, by its header, straight off the edge of the screen (i.e., horizontally)?
  - nvrspyx 7y ago
    I’m pretty sure that just hides the app as you can then swipe it back into view from the edge. The parent commenter seems to want to end the process.
    - guptaneil 7y ago
      There is no difference in closing vs hiding apps in iOS. When the app is hidden, the process is stopped. Yes, you can force kill the process by swiping up on the dock and then swiping away the frozen apps, but you should never do this unless the app is unresponsive. It gets you zero benefit, other than using extra battery next time you launch the app to run its initial setup again. In fact Apple originally got rid of this gesture too in iOS 12 but so many people still try to force quit apps out of habit from their desktop computers that Apple was forced to bring the gesture back in 12.1 More reading: https://daringfireball.net/2017/07/you_should_not_force_quit_apps https://daringfireball.net/2017/07/you_should_not_force_quit...
      - nvrspyx 7y ago
        > you should never do this unless the app is unresponsive In theory, yes, but not in practice. For example, the chromecast icon sometimes disappears in Hulu, which requires killing the app and reopening to get it back. The stock Mail app used to get stuck in fetching mail and refused to refresh, again requiring you to kill the app. Facebook Messenger's text input sometimes disappears entirely, requiring you to kill the app. Some apps get badges stuck, requiring you to kill the app. The list of bugs in apps that are only remedied by killing the app goes on and on. The iOS 12 issue was just an example of Apple being overzealous and believing there's no reason to kill an app, when even their own apps had issues that were only remedied by force quitting the apps. The uproar was well deserved.
        whynaut 7y ago
        > In theory, yes, but not in practice. For example All of those are examples of unresponsiveness..
        layoutIfNeeded 7y ago
        Nah. Unresponsive = the app’s main event loop is not processing events. On macOS this is when the beach ball cursor is shown. In fact there’s a built-in watchdog in iOS that’ll kill your app after 10 seconds if the main thread is not processing events. On the other hand an app can break in a variety of ways which won’t involve blocking the main thread, e.g. by simply opening a popup that can’t be closed, or getting stuck inside the wall in a game, etc.
        whynaut 7y ago
        > Unresponsive = the app’s main event loop is not processing events > an app can break in a variety of ways which won’t involve blocking the main thread I’m not saying you’re incorrect, but for the vast majority of users, any input that doesn’t yield an immediate response = unresponsive.
        7y ago
  - iaml 7y ago
    Thanks! Didn't try that particular combination.

ben7799 7y ago

Wow.. you can finally plug in a USB drive/card reader/camera/whatever... That alone actually takes the iPad a long way towards actually being real/Pro/whatever. I sold my first Gen iPad Pro over this stuff. It was just to painful to do a lot of real world stuff that involved files. Maybe today the experience would be a heck of a lot better.

prashnts 7y ago
Adding to the whatever list, you can also use USB Optical drives with a powered hub (just tried yesterday). It appears in Files app. Seems like they’ve finally implemented proper usb stack.
- radnor 7y ago
  You can connect quite a few things via the Camera Connection Kit (CCK) which has a USB port in it. MIDI controllers and USB soundcards are two things I've used recently.
  - prashnts 7y ago
    Not sure what’s the CCK. Is it one of the dongles they sell with HDMI, SD Reader, and USB? I first got excited that it can connect to USB webcams — I have some modded webcams I use as microscope — would be super useful if I could interface it with a camera app. But it didn’t work, last I tried. Are you aware of some way to do that? :)
    - radnor 7y ago
      I haven't heard of any webcams that work in iOS via the CCK - sorry! I'm not too familiar with how it all works, but I imagine it has a lot to do with the individual apps that are running to be able to read/write to the USB port.
      - prashnts 7y ago
        Seems like it, thanks anyway! Maybe now that there’s USBKit (although not sure if it’s MacOS only), one might be able to work out a camera driver implementation. Yay, weekend project!

saagarjha 7y ago

(It came out today, for those wondering why it’s being posted here.)

pdimitar 7y ago
I’ve read a week ago that it will start rolling out from September the 30th, though. And still no software update available on my iPad Pro.
- mcphage 7y ago
  They pushed it (and iOS 13.1) up to the 24th a few days ago.
  - pdimitar 7y ago
    You are correct. I literally checked about 3 hours ago and there were no updates but after your comment I successfully updated my iPhone and iPad Pro. Thanks for the heads up.
    - mcphage 7y ago
      No problem. It was an unusual thing for them to do, but here we are.

finkin1 7y ago

I wonder why they aren't advertising mouse support. This seems like one of the most useful features to me. They didn't mention it on the keynote and I can't find it on their website anywhere. Any thoughts on why Apple wouldn't be pushing this as a major advancement for iPad?

mrpinc 7y ago
The mouse support is supposed to be focused on accessibility for people with disabilities, it's not everyday user focused.
- wffurr 7y ago
  If it's not good enough for everyday users then it's also not good enough for people with disabilities. Who, I note, also use the device every day and deserve a good experience too.
  - herpes 7y ago
    Apple has arguably the highest quality accessibility support in the industry. Have you tried the feature? Because I have and it's very usable. Just not pretty.
ogre_codes 7y ago
Because it's not very good mouse support. It's basically a simulated finger. If they started advertising this, people would rightly criticize it for being mediocre. For the moment anyhow, the iPad is a touch device with an optional virtual finger you can plug into it.
- xienze 7y ago
  > Because it's not very good mouse support. It's basically a simulated finger. All I want for them to do is allow third party applications to support real mice in the way that you'd expect a real mouse to behave. The killer app would be remote desktop. I understand that there's literally one model of mouse that works with one specific remote desktop app, but I don't want that, I want to use my own mouse.

cfors 7y ago

Cool, but nothing about any focus on making the machine realistic for development. My current MacBook Pro is getting a little long in the tooth and after suffering through the 2016 and later versions at work, I will not be buying one of those until the keyboards are fixed. If iPadOS has first class terminal support I would consider making it my full time machine. Looks like the waiting game will continue.

cl0ckt0wer 7y ago
i hear the thinkpad keyboards are pretty good.
robohoe 7y ago
Blink shell on the App Store is a fantastic terminal that works wonderfully on iOS/iPadOS. Highly recommend it even with its steep price of $20. It supports mosh out of the box and has ability to store/import private/public keys. Multiple terminals can be opened as well. It even has a limited native shell which you can use to SCP files from your iPad to servers.
- OrangeMango 7y ago
  > Highly recommend it even with its steep price of $20 It's GPL3 [1], so you are welcome to compile and install on your own personal devices even if you do not have a paid Apple development subscription, though I'm pretty sure that this would require periodic compile/install cycles (every couple of weeks?). [1] https://github.com/blinksh/blink https://github.com/blinksh/blink
  - nvrspyx 7y ago
    It’s every 7 days.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- _ph_ 7y ago
  I am using Blink as it seems to be the best terminal app I could find so far and would recommend it, but it does struggle a bit in some corner cases, as split-screen and switching between apps.

baby_wipe 7y ago

I really wish I could use macOS on the iPad. As a half measure, I'm gonna see if I can use sidecar with my macbook lid shut.

saagarjha 7y ago
Why?
- leesalminen 7y ago
  I’m guessing so the parent poster can do Development on the iPad without having to use the full MBP. I’d be interested in this as well.
  - balls187 7y ago
    I'm hoping with the ipadOS version of safari, I can use Cloud9 on my iPadPro2
  - baby_wipe 7y ago
    Yes basically this. Not sure if it has the power to do anything beyond light web dev, but would still be amazing.

dallen33 7y ago

The list of supported devices is impressive. The iPad Air 2 came out in 2014. 12.9-inch iPad Pro 11-inch iPad Pro 10.5-inch iPad Pro 9.7-inch iPad Pro iPad (7th generation) iPad (6th generation) iPad (5th generation) iPad mini (5th generation) iPad mini 4 iPad Air (3rd generation) iPad Air 2

savoytruffle 7y ago
It supports iPads with an A8 series chip, while iOS 13 does not support such iPhones (which would be a 5S). It's presumably because the iPads of the same CPU generation usually have more RAM, more CPU cores, more GPU cores.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  iPad Air 2 has an A8X, and iPhone 5s has an A7.
- simonh 7y ago
  It’s almost certainly memory. All the supported devices have at least 2GB RAM. The iPhone 6 had the A8 with 1GB RAM and is not supported by iOS 13. The iPad Air 2 has the A8X with 2GB RAM and is supported by iPadOS 13. In the past the break on unsupported older devices has been down to hardware. Usually memory, but also on the 64bit transition. I’m not aware of a single break in support that wasn’t determined by hardware requirements.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - close04 7y ago
    The A8X also has a substantially faster CPU than the A8 (3 vs. 2 cores and 1.5GHz vs. 1.1GHz) and a much faster GPU (2-3 times faster). This would make a visible difference in day to day usage even without the RAM limitation. This is probably also what made the difference when implementing the multitasking features.
- 7y ago

loosetypes 7y ago

I enjoy my iPad for consuming content but often have an itch to create from it. In that regard, the only valid input for me has been the pencil. So the two most intriguing aspect are (1) mirroring with macOS Catalina and (2) the new text input UI. I’ve often wished for simple text editor on my iPad to follow along with books. Are there /any/ good touch inputs for text?

Youden 7y ago
It's not touch but I like Mazec [0] on the iPad with the Pencil. My favourite feature is that it's multi-lingual. [0]: http://www.product.metamoji.com/en/mazec/ http://www.product.metamoji.com/en/mazec/
s3r3nity 7y ago
One under-rated "creation tool" that the iPad (regular and pro especially) has is its front-facing camera. I have been playing with low-key streaming with the iPad Pro, and have been pleasantly surprised at how well I can prop up the iPad to stream, and use the extra real-estate to read or check-in on stream chat. I don't want / need the super high quality tools of a professional streamer, but I don't want grainy 2001 feature phone video - just something that can allow me to keep it as a fun side hobby without investing thousands of $ in a set-up. And there are a bunch of decent apps to do some light video editing, but iMovie tends to satisfy my needs.

jdlyga 7y ago

I've had the iPadOS beta for a while, and it's basically just iOS 13 with some iPad specific features. There's no significant divergence yet.

savoytruffle 7y ago
A major thing that iOS doesn't have and even iPadOS 12 didn't is the ability to do a side-by-side view of two windows of the same app (two Mail windows, two Safari, two Pages, etc). Sounds pretty basic, but previously the split-screen view had to be two different apps.
- landcoctos 7y ago
  iOS 12 does side by side web pages.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  That requires app opt-in: it's not automatically enabled (your apps will need to update for this to work).
dukoid 7y ago
If folding devices become a trend, there will be less need for convergence then? :)

ogre_codes 7y ago

When you compare it to Android where you're lucky to get 18 months support it comes out ahead. When you compare it to MacOS and Windows 10 which run on 8-10 year old hardware, not as much. Of course how good Windows support is for that older hardware depends largely on OEMs and driver support and varies greatly. Linux can run on 20 year old hardware... or older?

penagwin 7y ago
Since apple markets their ipados for productivity as an alternative to a MacBook or a windows laptop - I'm not sure Linux can really be included. Simply put - Linux has never been focused on tablet UI UX or that kind of productivity, it's not a technical limitation sure but there's literally 0 polish on any kind of "streamlined tablet experience"
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > Simply put - Linux has never been focused on tablet UI UX or that kind of productivity Used to be true but not any longer; recent versions of GNOME 3 are now quite usable on tablets (and touch-screen enabled laptops) as long as the bare hardware support is there. Sure, this is largely a side effect of Librem's work on smartphone UX support, but the effect is quite real nonetheless. And Linux on a tablet can achieve things that are quite hard or even impossible on other "mobile-ready" OS's.
- ogre_codes 7y ago
  Smartphones, tablets, Windows, Macs, Linux... they are all similar products targeting marginally different markets. I use my iPad for the same things I used my Linux desktop for not long ago. There are some things one does better than the other, but ultimately there is much more overlap than differences. The bigger the difference in form factor, the bigger the difference in use cases. Also, less folks forget... Android is Linux.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    > I use my iPad for the same things I used my Linux desktop for not long ago. There are some things one does better than the other, but ultimately there is much more overlap than differences. I really really don't get this. I like the iPad, but Apple wants to sell me this idea that the iPad is an actual* computer. It's not. It's a toy computer. It's fun. It's not serious. Stop pretending, Apple. *) An actual computer lets you mark pages as executable.

pier25 7y ago

Do you think the "Desktop-class browsing" will also apply to webview based browsers? (Chrome, Firefox, etc)

saagarjha 7y ago
Other applications can get this as well if they decide to take advantage of certain WebKit APIs.

cpeterso 7y ago

Still no calculator app??

s3r3nity 7y ago
You could use Spotlight or Siri - handles the function of "calculator" pretty easily.

amelius 7y ago

As an OS, is it revolutionary or evolutionary?

Angostura 7y ago
Evolutionary. But the improvements are very worthwhile.

peatmoss 7y ago

Anyone here familiar with photo management know what the likely implications of the new USB storage support are? My elderly mother has gotten into photography in the past few years and shoots with what I assume is a prosumer camera (high-ish resolution, swappable lenses). The Windows laptop she plugs into is a disaster waiting to happen, in that I’m pretty sure nothing is properly backed up. I think she also barely understands what’s happening on her computer at any given time. If an iPad, plus camera kit, plus external storage, plus maybe some iCloud backup is a reasonable way to manage photos, I'd consider getting her one. What might an iPadOS + camera workflow / setup look like? Is this likely to be a replacement for a camera + traditional computer photo management setup? Edit: I should add that, while I’m comfortable with Linux and coding and other nerdly pursuits, I know nothing about current norms and tech for photography.

soperj 7y ago
Windows comes with a number of back up tools. >https://www.howtogeek.com/220986/how-to-use-all-of-windows-10’s-backup-and-recovery-tools/ https://www.howtogeek.com/220986/how-to-use-all-of-windows-1... There's also a multitude of cloud solutions. Instead of forcing your mom into some weird ipad work flow, work with what she already does and is familiar with.
- peatmoss 7y ago
  I think she went that route mainly because of cost rather than preference. She’ll obviously use what she wants to use, but she seems pretty unhappy / frustrated with status quo, so I don’t think helping her explore options is unreasonable.
givinguflac 7y ago
For an elderly person, just use iCloud for photos backup. It works incredibly well, and works through the native photos app, so it will totally eliminate the need to think about backing up unless it's offline all the time.
- oflannabhra 7y ago

paultopia 7y ago

Has anyone tried the released version yet? Is it as buggy as (reportedly) iOS 13 is?

berberous 7y ago
13.1 releases today and is supposed to be much much less buggy. Not sure how buggy 13.1 is but you should really focus on that as 13.0 was extremely unusual and out for only 5 days. Essentially a beta that may have been rushed out for tarrif related reasons, as some have speculated.
toxik 7y ago
I swear to god, every single iOS release I see a comment lamenting how buggy the new version is in developer preview, and every time, by the time it's on my device, I never have issues.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  iOS/iPadOS 13 is significantly more buggy than iOS 12 was.
  - toxik 7y ago
    Well boy do I get to eat my hat. What happened to Safari? Major broken behaviors and—get this—rendering bugs on HN. Impressively bad. This is like browsing on IE6.
- dcchambers 7y ago
  I guess that's why they have a developer preview :) Seems like the system is working as intended.
taylorlapeyre 7y ago
I've heard nearly nobody complain about bugs in iOS 13, in fact just the opposite.
post_break 7y ago

puranjay 7y ago

I've been burned by two generations of Macbooks, and I honestly find the iPhones to be far inferior value to most mid-range Androids. But my 2016 iPad still remains one of the best devices I've ever owned. It's effortlessly useful and still as sharp as ever. Great to see Apple taking it more seriously.

reilly3000 7y ago
I appreciate how slowly they depreciate. I've been able to resell my used Apple products year after year, consistently getting a solid price that I'd never get with a PC or Android device.

nostromo 7y ago

I've tried to use these desktop-inspired features on iPad and they are befuddling. Using two apps at once is beyond confusing. A simple use case, like copying an address from a Safari tab into Gmail via split screen requires so many mysterious, undiscoverable gestures, I doubt almost anyone is doing that. I think Jobs was right that convergence between workstations and mobile devices requires too many sacrifices, at least in the near term. I think the obvious solution could be an old one discovered by PARC decades ago: applications in windows and a mouse.

Angostura 7y ago
But the nice thing about the mysterious gestures is that you really don't need them. If you are a power user you might learn them - otherwise you just keep using it like an old-style iPad - like my wife does. It's sort of the equivalent of righ-click on a Mac.
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  Actually apple is pretty terrible about the discovery of right click functionality, I’d say that’s an obvious indication they prefer form over function. I wish Apple had gone Bauhaus in the 90s instead.
dmazin 7y ago
I think something mostly unmentioned, but implicit, in a lot of the power features of iPadOS is that they work great with a keyboard using shortcuts most people are already familiar with (e.g. command-c). The three-finger gestures, I agree, are pretty weird but you always have the keyboard (and the cut/copy/paste action menu).
soup10 7y ago
they are trying to hard to force gestures and touch controls, just support wireless mouses
- ogre_codes 7y ago
  These are different things. You should first and foremost be able to do everything on the iPad (or any touch device) with touch and/ or gestures. As soon as you require a mouse (or stylus, trackpad/ whatever) on a tablet you've screwed up. The whole beauty of a tablet is in its portability. Having to rely on a mouse or trackpad screws that up. That said, mouse support for the iPad can and absolutely should be much better. Just never a requirement.

privateSFacct 7y ago

Everytime I read about greenpeace talking about how Apple's products are so terrible for the environment while saying nothing about android products I roll my eyes. Same thing with the fix it folks saying Apple's products are "unrepairable". There is a great market for both repair and reuse / re-sale in apple products. It's interesting comparing a 4 year old android tablet or phone (which was sometimes a year behind when shipping already) to apple's products.

robin_reala 7y ago
Huh? Greenpeace have had nothing but praise for Apple for at least the last three years.
- privateSFacct 7y ago
  Last summer, for example, Greenpeace teamed up with iFixit to rate the repairability of Apple devices, accusing Apple of shortening device lifespan with difficult, proprietary repair processes and components, ultimately leading to more electronic waste. - 2018 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.macrumors.com/2018/04/19/greenpeace-apple-repairable-upgradeable-products/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.macrumors.com/2018/04/19/gr...
audunw 7y ago
While I personally wish Apple would be more supportive of 3rd party or at-home repairs, I think what they've been doing there actually helps with extending the life of their devices. Let's say you're thinking of buying a used iPhone. If you had reason to believe that used iPhones were mostly repaired by 3rd parties that didn't necessarily know what they're doing, or were using cheap or even dangerous (in the case of batteries) parts. Would you buy used, or would go just buy some cheap new phone? And if people weren't interested in buying, would you bother trying to sell your old phone or would you just throw it away? Making sure the quality of second-hand market is high is essential to encouraging re-use. I think a lot of those who are criticising Apple when it comes to repair should remember that. It's not that they're wrong in saying that Apple should support 3rd party repair, but their complaints are not gonna come to much unless what they propose is actually reasonable.. i.e. makes it easier for 3rd parties to repair iPhones while maintaining a healthy second-hand market for iPhones. And that's not easy.

pastaking 7y ago

Can we split screen vertically now?

Conlectus 7y ago

The biggest problem I've found with using my iPad pro as a full time device is that the iPad does not have a real concept of keyboard focus. This is a big deal in split-screen apps, where hard as I try I can't get my terminal emulator to accept keyboard input -- I just keep typing in Safari. Hopefully this is something that Apple addresses now that they consider iPad OS to be a real OS and not a scaled-up iOS.

ascagnel_ 7y ago
What happens when you Command-tab into your terminal emulator directly? I agree that split-screen input/output priority is wonky -- for example, if you have a video player app and Safari side-by-side and an external display connected, the video player app will only output to the display if it's the app on the left.
- Conlectus 7y ago
  That does not shift focus reliably.
crazygringo 7y ago
That threw me off the first time I used it too -- to have a blinking cursor in both apps, side-by-side, at the same time. My brain was going, two text cursors -- that's not supposed to happen!
IMcD23 7y ago
https://twitter.com/viticci/status/1146121778256863233?s=20 https://twitter.com/viticci/status/1146121778256863233?s=20

yodon 7y ago

Was there some sort of connect your bluetooth mouse announcement, or was that speculation of something iPadOS would support that never happened?

ascagnel_ 7y ago
There was, but it's more of an accessibility feature -- the cursor is a relatively large circle, simulating a fingertip, rather than a pinpoint cursor.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- yodon 7y ago
  That sounds almost vindictive in its desire to make sure no one uses a mouse for anything important while still checking off some legal accessibility requirement.

Abishek_Muthian 7y ago

Track record for Apple when it comes to iOS/iPadOS updates has been impressive, but once they stop updating their device it becomes more vulnerable than their android counterpart for basic Internet browsing just because Apple doesn't update Safari via AppStore and doesn't allow any other browser engine. Case in point : Google Project Zero's latest iOS Exploit chains on webkit shows how easy it was(*is?) for an iOS user to fall victim to browser vulnerabilities by just visiting a website.[1] The exploits covered targeted only 64-bit, so technically devices < iPhone5S which were not part of the update cycle wasn't mentioned in the GPZ research. But many of the exploit chains did use public jailbreak exploits and Semi-unthethered jailbreaks exist for 32-bit iOS devices running up to iOS 10.3.3. I don't know whether complete exploit chain as detailed in the project zero wasn't possible for 32-bit devices or the attackers just didn't care about those devices. It is safe to assume, they are vulnerable. Where as a 7 year old android device can still download Firefox for Android with latest security updates. In any case, I don't think there can be any opposing arguments on the side of security for Apple not updating Safari via AppStore or now allowing proper 3rd party browsers. [1]: https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-very-deep-dive-into-ios-exploit.html https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-very-deep-d...

lcfcjs2 7y ago
I had a samsung that stopped receiving updates. So this post is completely misleading, all manufacturers stop supporting old products. It's a way to get you to upgrade.
saagarjha 7y ago
> In any case, I don't think there can be any opposing arguments on the side of security for Apple not updating Safari via AppStore or now allowing proper 3rd party browsers. Third party browsers entitled with dynamic codesigning poke a huge hole in Apple's security model for iOS devices.
- Jyaif 7y ago
  Can you explain why allowing apps to ship with a JIT compiler be a security issue?

duxup 7y ago

I'm guessing this is a sort of ChromeOS where the tablet world and the traditional laptop continue to merge?

dotdi 7y ago

I'm by all means no Apple fanboy (almost all my devices are Android-based, work laptop is a MBP) but this sure is impressive. All of the presented features seem to be thought through and made to increase my productivity. Back in the day, I was one of the first people to own the original iPad in my country (small, central European country) and I regretted that decision almost immediately since it was just a bigger phone that I could use on the couch, albeit one that couldn't even do phone calls. I finally get the feeling that tablets get to be real devices.

adam12 7y ago

> Connect an external hard drive, SD card reader, and, yes, even a USB drive. So innovative!

scotchio 7y ago

Sidecar + MBP = Mobile Bliss

ineedasername 7y ago

I very much like that it's becoming more mature and close to a desktop-replacement OS, I just wish it wasn't so locked down. I wouldn't really feel comfortable using it as a daily driver if I can't dig into the nuts and bolts of things and control my environment.

Pfhreak 7y ago

Nice list of feature improvements. Still, it doesn't look like there's a way to support multiple accounts on a single device (e.g. parent and child with different configurations.) Maybe I'm wrong and missed something? There's a long list of improvements and I definitely skimmed it.

jbigelow76 7y ago
Not in there, that would have been a pretty big shift for Apple to concede that not every member of the family needs their own iPad and support multiple accounts. Only whatever the Apple educational software is called unlocks the ability for iPads to share accounts.

_ph_ 7y ago

One thing which has increadibly annoyed me on the iPad so far was, that even if you had music files in your iCloud drive, there is no way to add them to the Music app. The same applies to videos and the TV app. There doesn't seem to be an iPad based flow to add your content to those apps. Also, while I love the ability to play video as picture in picture, I cannot grasp, why the video size is limited to 1/4 of the screen size - if something interesting comes up, you cannot enlarge the video beyond that limit.

neilobremski 7y ago

I think it's great that Apple is attempting to design an OS for a specific form-factor and the use cases that go along with that. I worked on Windows 8 and the idea of putting the same UI on every device regardless of its size or inputs was really abhorrent to me. (If I've got a keyboard and a mouse connected to a big screen then I want something keen to that.)

kodablah 7y ago

> QuickPath typing - Type by swiping from one letter to the next. Are there plans for this to be added for phone keyboards too? As one that appreciates it on Android, I imagine it'd be welcomed by many.

FPGAhacker 7y ago
Yes, it’s on the phones too with iOS 13. I previously used the swype 3rd party keyboard, and I’m not really a fan. It’s ok I guess.
jorenvo 7y ago
It's in iOS 13 which was released last week.
filoleg 7y ago
It already was added for phones in iOS 13 update last week.

tolmasky 7y ago

Apparently as part of the "desktop class" browser experience in iPad OS, Safari lost its ability to double-tap to zoom. This is a feature I use on basically every single webpage, including when I am browsing on an actual desktop computer. Chrome's lack of this feature kept me on desktop Safari for ages. I can't believe they've taken it out. It significantly deteriorates my browsing experiencing. And for what? To add more text selection gestures or something? I already find it annoying that I randomly select text as I browse a website on iOS, I don't want important features being dumped in favor of more of that. Edit: Upon further inspection, it may just be horribly buggy? It seems to sometimes attempt to zoom out on double tap (despite being at 100%), which means somewhere the code is still trying to work...

swinglock 7y ago
Indeed. I reported this but it wasn't fixed. Very disappointed as I use this all the time. If you pinch zoom slightly and then double touch, it works on some pages, including this page, but it's off center. On others not at all. On others it works as it should.
Conlectus 7y ago
As I understand, tap-to-zoom adds a minimum latency to every click on a page since the browser needs to wait to see if its a double tap. This makes some buttons etc. feel laggy.
fragmede 7y ago
Fwiw Chrome on OS X supports the zoom mode you are talking about. (I'm not talking about ctrl-+ text resizing zoom.) On a mighty/apple mouse, it's a triple tap gesture iirc.
- tolmasky 7y ago
  Yes, it wasn’t clear from my post, but once Chrome got this feature I switched.

UIZealot 7y ago

iOS has been dead to me since iOS 7. I stopped buying iPhone/iPads and stopped developing for it. Now that Jony "no taste" Ive is gone, can we go back to the classic look already?

fastbeef 7y ago
Username checks out.

babyslothzoo 7y ago

The multitasking functions are very confusing, as are the new multi-finger gestures for performing undo/copy/paste etc. Nothing is obviously discoverable either, it all feels accidental at best, though that's been the case since they removed depth from the UI. Wasn't the promise of iPad that it was much easier than a Mac or PC? I don't find that to be the case. Anyway, I use mine as a couch browser. I still can't find a heavier use case for it.

gdubs 7y ago

The painting improvements to Notes look nice, but I gotta say: not having an official Apple Paint program seems like a huge missed opportunity. Even just the nostalgia pull – whether it was Mac Paint or Windows Paint, how many people's love affairs with computers began with a system-bundled paint program?

rcarmo 7y ago

One thing I’d love to see happen as a result of this is HN supporting Reader View (if not outright dark mode...)

lelf 7y ago

> Apple will never track or profile you when you sign in with Apple. The most information you’ll have to share with an app or website is your name and email address. …like that’s not too much.

DavideNL 7y ago
> …like that’s not too much it's not, because you can enter whichever (anonymous) name you want :) ...and the e-mail address can be anonymised too: https://youtu.be/rJi_Mo-SdW0?t=82 https://youtu.be/rJi_Mo-SdW0?t=82

ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago

tvOS 13.0, too. Just FYI. Interesting. This is iPadOS 13.1 (not 13.0). iPhoneOS is also 13.1 today.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

luizfelberti 7y ago

Just trying it out right now and it already feels like they shot themselves in the foot by forking away from iOS. iOS13 had for the past two weeks fixed one of the biggest annoyances in Apple's horrible keyboard UX: For people like me who type in multiple languages, the keyboard switching button cycles between "English", "Portuguese", and "Emojis". iOS13 FINALLY put a dedicated emoji button in there and after 2 weeks living with it on the iPhone, iPadOS apparently completely forgot to port this over and the feature has been taken away from me. This is just one example out of probably a crap-ton of things that they forgot to bring along from iOS. This crap happens all the time with Database vendors too, when they try to keep a separate closed-source Enterprise version. I get that feature flags are annoying, but thinking you can manually keep two different OS codebases synced and consistent is delusional. _On a side note, the rest of the keyboard is still a mess._ No number row (not even as an option in Settings), no hold for punctuation, but worst of all (especially if you're coming out of Gboard to try their keyboard again), Slide-to-Type is just horrible. The accuracy is SO bad, I tried typing "hello world", and not only it just couldn't understand that I was trying to type "world", it wouldn't even suggest it as an alternative, the best I got was it suggested "world's" once, and if you tap it and try to delete the "'s" it just deletes the entire word. Not to mention that since I use two languages, it even tried portuguese words before it tried "world", even though I had the english keyboard selected (and there is no way to disable multilingual typing like there is on Gboard, even IF it worked decently). Also not being able to turn off Memojis on the Emoji keyboard... why?

vvilliam0 7y ago

Sidecar as a pen tablet could be a game-changer. My fiancee has been looking for a mobile drawing computer. The only thing I could recommend until now was the Surface Book since Apple doesn't make anything mobile that could run the full Adobe suite. If you can sketch with the iPad Photoshop and there is sidecar support for Illustrator and the other apps, it might be a good deal.

cultofmetatron 7y ago
I'm currently using my ipad pro as a secondary monitor with full wacom tablet-like functionality using the duet app. it works pretty well and has full support for the apple pencil. I have paperlike as a screen protector which gives a paperlike "resistence" when I'm drawing on it too.. https://www.duetdisplay.com/ https://www.duetdisplay.com/ https://paperlike.com/ https://paperlike.com/

myrandomcomment 7y ago

One interesting thing is the number of apps that use stuff you did not think about. For example SlingTV ask to use bluetooth!?! Why? One other thing, the icons have become smaller on my iPad Pro 10.5. Looking at it in landscape mode right now there is room for 5 rows of icons where I believe there used to be 4?

kevindong 7y ago

As a bedside YouTube machine, my iPad Air 1 is absolutely fantastic at it. Web browsing stutters like no other, but the YouTube app is still very smooth despite the device's hardware being ~6 years old now. I'm happy with my purchase despite Apple cutting off iOS/iPad OS updates for my device. As a productivity device, the device is basically useless since app switching is annoyingly slow.

spiderfarmer 7y ago
Once the OS updates stop, App updates follow shortly after. And once developers stop updating their apps, they become unusable over time, especially when they cannot communicate with server side API. My first iPad lasted about a year after the OS updates stopped.
- kevindong 7y ago
  Officially, per the App Store metadata, the YouTube app supports all devices on at least iOS 10 [0]. I personally intend on holding out on upgrading until YouTube is no longer supported. [0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-watch-listen-stream/id544007664 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-watch-listen-stream/id...

0x38B 7y ago

I highly recommend reading the MacStories review of iOS and iPadOS 13 [1]. Thirty (!) pages. It's like the manual that Apple forgot. Case in point: you can swipe from the bottom-right corner of the screen with the Apple Pencil and it'll take a screenshot of the webpage and open it for marking up. Extensive coverage of multitasking features, as well. There's definitely a learning curve with all these possibilities - split view, side view, copying and pasting, etc - so it makes sense to get comfortable with them now. 1: https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-and-ipados-13-the-macstories-review/ https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-and-ipados-13-the-mac...

crooked-v 7y ago
> you can swipe from the bottom-right corner of the screen with the Apple Pencil and it'll take a screenshot of the webpage and open it for marking up I... but... how in the world is anyone ever supposed to know that exists???
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  Is it under the Tips app? If it is, that’s probably where they expect people to find it.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  Since re-joining the iOS world last year, I've been amazed at how many (often nifty!) features are the exact opposite of intuitive. I was still discovering new features either on accident or via articles, multiple months into ownership of my iPhone. Once I learned about the features many of them were great, but it's very surprising given Apple's focus on intuitiveness.
  - celeritascelery 7y ago
    I feel like apple focuses on intuitiveness for a basic non-power user. But they are okay with adding more complexity that power users will know but are hidden from discovery.
  - koyote 7y ago

doctoboggan 7y ago

Has anyone been able to successfully get Sidecar to work? I just upgraded to the Catalina beta and have not be able to connect to my iPadOS 13 iPad Pro. I tried physically connecting the two machines with a thunderbolt cable, and connecting them with bluetooth but nothing so far has worked.

easymovet 7y ago

The mouse support is incredibly good.

artellectual 7y ago

I just got the iPad Pro and have been using the iPadOS beta for the past few months. I don’t know how I was doing without it before. I now have a place where I can sketch my architecture diagrams, wireframes, live sketching for my team when I work. Everything is in one place and does not get lost. I can plug it into a projector and write notes on things to explain things to my team. Doing presentations is easy. I now pretty much only use my MacBook Pro for coding. Almost every other task is done on my iPad Pro. My 2 most used apps at this point are Concepts and Flow by moleskine. It’s become a boon to my workflow.

reilly3000 7y ago
Have you looked into something like this? https://medium.com/@ow/its-finally-possible-to-code-web-apps-on-an-ipad-pro-90ad9c1fb59a https://medium.com/@ow/its-finally-possible-to-code-web-apps... I would love to get to the workflow you've described.

inlined 7y ago

Am I the only one still disappointed that with a dedicated pseudo-desktop experience we still don’t have Xcode? The iPad Pro will truly be a pro portable device when it can make its own apps.

EricRiese 7y ago

Wow, Apple brought back DOS. I guess the hipsters like their hoppy craft beers, hence the name IPA-DOS.

namelosw 7y ago

I really hope they can expose the underlying BSD interface to users/developers.

smush 7y ago

I wonder if this is partly so Apple doesn't have to keep licensing the term "iOS" from Cisco. Now that they have a premium market, it could be cheaper for them to migrate to iPhoneOS/iPadOS and no longer have to pay Cisco for the license to use the term "iOS".