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Honestly, I have consistently found the changes in the last couple of versions of iOS on iPad to just make things worse and worse, for no reason. Moving the co

Honestly, I have consistently found the changes in the last couple of versions of iOS on iPad to just make things worse and worse, for no reason. Moving the control panel to the upper right despite this making no sense on the massive iPad screen as compared to the iPhone X this feature was developed for. Making the new floating dock ... and then making the gesture both to raise the dock and to open the app switcher the same gesture, with only fractional timing between them. And that's not all. There's an additional context menu on Dock items now if you hold them, but ... you also need to be able to hold on a Dock item if you want to drag it up and make a floating window. Once again, fractional timing differences: hold too long and you get the menu instead. Hold too little, and instead either the app switcher comes up, or worse, it tries to drag the whole dock up, even though the dock is not a movable element. So about half the time when I try to drag up to create a window, instead I wind up moving the actual dock a fraction of an inch, and then it bounces back and nothing else happens. There's also new "cleverness" about how windows are organized, and by cleverness, I mean "Why in the nine hells would I want this?" Previously, if you made a floating window, it was just that app, and you could swipe it in and it would always be the same app regardless of whatever full-screen app was currently open. For example, I commonly would make my IRC client the current floating window, so I could swipe over to it while watching Youtube or reading in Firefox to check chat. Except now, the current set of windows is app-specific. If I'm in Firefox and I make a floating Discord window, and then go switch to Youtube ... that window is gone. Swiping in will instead bring either nothing, or whatever window I happened to create the last time I was in Youtube. This constantly results in confusing surprises and manually having to reopen windows. Oh, and they redesigned the Reminders app, and in the process managed to screw up my notifications and delete or corrupt several important medication reminders, so thanks for fucking with my health, Apple. The rest of the changes are mostly useless or cosmetic. The only vaguely useful thing is something they should've done years ago, which is expanding the app grid dimensions to something more sane for this resolution. The rest just feels like overblown marketing hype, a push for a new "desktop-like" iPad feel ... without any features that actually make it feel like a desktop. Pointless.

Terretta 7y ago
As a test, I'd used the iPad Pro as a self-imposed "daily driver" instead of MacBook and Surface Pro for some time now. As a content creator, the changes in iPadOS unblock the sense of being constrained within a modal UI. It now feels multi-tasking, yet without being a distracting clutter of unrelated tasks. Once past the natural "something is different" discomfort, the removal of several constraints feels like a big step to a new kind of mobility: upgrading from tablet, making a laptop into an appliance. PS. On the couple of your notes that aren't just bugs: - There's a setting for the short or long press timing, try lengthening it. - Apps (and their windows) are now organized into the concept of workspaces. Idea is that for a given kind of work on a primary window you'd most likely typically have a given set of correlated windows. Different mental model from the prior series of app cards, and fixed set of overlay applets. While I appreciate the new capability, I struggle with this newness too, unclear when I'm shifting spaces vs. windows, for instance. Haven't yet found a well done summary or reference on interacting with the new model (Spaces + Expose) holistically.
- Terretta 7y ago
  ADDED: Related excerpt and synthesis of the Ars review on these points, here: https://macdailynews.com/2019/10/11/ars-technica-reviews-apples-ipados-its-now-viable-to-replace-your-macbook-with-an-ipad/ https://macdailynews.com/2019/10/11/ars-technica-reviews-app...
gherkinnn 7y ago
> you also need to be able to hold on a Dock item if you want to drag it up and make a floating window. Jesus yes. That one frequently enrages me. Also some apps that previously supported multitasking (like Mail) don’t seem to support it anymore. As for the rest, I throughly enjoy the new multitasking. It was the reason I ran the beta since the start.
jplayer01 7y ago
I don't understand why multitasking works the way it does. Why can't I drag something from the app drawer? Why can't I drag from the app drawer, open the multitask view, open an app there and drop it next to that? Why does it have to be from the dock? What's the expected process? Am I supposed to open the app, then open the next app, then drag the last app from the recent app part of the dock? How tedious. I feel like nobody at Apple actually uses the multitasking part of iPadOS, because if I wanted something intuitive and simple and easy to use, it wouldn't look anything like it does now.

Terretta 7y ago

As a test, I'd used the iPad Pro as a self-imposed "daily driver" instead of MacBook and Surface Pro for some time now. As a content creator, the changes in iPadOS unblock the sense of being constrained within a modal UI. It now feels multi-tasking, yet without being a distracting clutter of unrelated tasks. Once past the natural "something is different" discomfort, the removal of several constraints feels like a big step to a new kind of mobility: upgrading from tablet, making a laptop into an appliance. PS. On the couple of your notes that aren't just bugs: - There's a setting for the short or long press timing, try lengthening it. - Apps (and their windows) are now organized into the concept of workspaces. Idea is that for a given kind of work on a primary window you'd most likely typically have a given set of correlated windows. Different mental model from the prior series of app cards, and fixed set of overlay applets. While I appreciate the new capability, I struggle with this newness too, unclear when I'm shifting spaces vs. windows, for instance. Haven't yet found a well done summary or reference on interacting with the new model (Spaces + Expose) holistically.

Terretta 7y ago
ADDED: Related excerpt and synthesis of the Ars review on these points, here: https://macdailynews.com/2019/10/11/ars-technica-reviews-apples-ipados-its-now-viable-to-replace-your-macbook-with-an-ipad/ https://macdailynews.com/2019/10/11/ars-technica-reviews-app...

gherkinnn 7y ago

> you also need to be able to hold on a Dock item if you want to drag it up and make a floating window. Jesus yes. That one frequently enrages me. Also some apps that previously supported multitasking (like Mail) don’t seem to support it anymore. As for the rest, I throughly enjoy the new multitasking. It was the reason I ran the beta since the start.

jplayer01 7y ago

I don't understand why multitasking works the way it does. Why can't I drag something from the app drawer? Why can't I drag from the app drawer, open the multitask view, open an app there and drop it next to that? Why does it have to be from the dock? What's the expected process? Am I supposed to open the app, then open the next app, then drag the last app from the recent app part of the dock? How tedious. I feel like nobody at Apple actually uses the multitasking part of iPadOS, because if I wanted something intuitive and simple and easy to use, it wouldn't look anything like it does now.