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Totally agree. I have experienced several times that somehow I managed to get two apps onto the split screen but I have no idea how I did it and it was not obvi

Totally agree. I have experienced several times that somehow I managed to get two apps onto the split screen but I have no idea how I did it and it was not obvious how to get back to normal. Same with things like undo and other text input features . It seems there are a ton of features but there is just no way of finding them. I think around the time of Windows 95 and macOS back then they put a lot of emphasis on consistent user experience and discoverability. The current state of affairs feels like a big regression.

shantly 7y ago
I liked it better when it was a slab of glass that could become a bunch of different tools on-demand, with some light ability to pass info between the tools. And I think discoverability in iOS generally has been trending down fast since iOS7 came out. I don't know any of the new crap, I just accidentally do new stuff sometimes then have to figure out how to make it go away. iOS6+iPad: the most recent mainstream OS & device I'd feel sort-of OK about saddling my elderly computer-illiterate relatives with.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Especially with iPadOS I feel they are slowly back to building a full size desktop OS but they don’t want to admit that to themselves so they keep pretending to be as simple as the first iOS versions were.
  - josteink 7y ago
    We have gigabytes of RAM, multiple CPU cores and terabyte of storage. We’re also allowing concurrent multitasking. Even more: We’re going full USB-C, you can connect hard drives, mice, keyboards and monitors. But no, no, no! This is not a PC! Yeah, I don’t buy it either.
  - chooseaname 7y ago
    Maybe because a lot of people don't want a desktop OS that is that locked down, so Apple is slowly trying to get people used to it?
    - scarface74 7y ago
      The number of people that care about Apple’s “walled garden” and that they can’t ssh into the filesystem is much smaller than geeks thinks it is.
      - Teever 7y ago
        And that is currently the case for two reasons. The first is that people use their desktops/laptops for things theycant do in the walled garden and the second is that Apple has not finished building the wall as high as they want it to be. Rest assured if Apple made a full transition to a restrictive walled garden more people would take issue with it. They don't right now because Apple is slowly boiling the frog.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Seeing that the Mac App Store was introduced a decade ago, that’s a really slow boil....
- xnzakg 7y ago
  Well, one of the nice things about a split screen view is that you don't need two iPads if you want to open a pdf on one and write notes on another, which is a problem I have with my reMarkable tablet. There's definitely better ways of implementing that than the way iPadOS currently does it though.
  - bla3 7y ago
    Out of interest, what's a better way that you have in mind? I agree that the current state isn't great, but I can't think of better approaches. So I'd be curious to hear about your ideas :)
0x38B 7y ago
In Safari, if you press and drag a tab on the tab bar to rearrange it, it's easy to open split view instead, with your tab in a new Safari window. To get the tab back, you have to open the tab switcher and drag it back to its original window. But the new Safari window is still there... In my usage at work, I'm sticking to alt-tabbing and quick Slide Over use. Even though my 12.9" iPad Pro has the space, juggling split views (swapping apps in and out, encountering bugs) was slowing me down.
sixothree 7y ago
I've been able to do split screen a few times. But mostly I end up losing my original application. It seems some applications cannot exist in split screen (?) and don't bother to indicate that you will lose your existing layout? I learned about long pressing the space bar less than a month ago. Apparently that has existed for years. Ugh. This thing is awful. Just plain awful.
- ihuman 7y ago
  If an app doesn't support split screen, the screen won't split when you drag an app to the right (before your let go). It makes a different animation to show the new app will replace the running app.
  - sixothree 7y ago
    The problem is that it's just not responsive enough and the indication that my current app will go away is not clear enough.
- robocat 7y ago
  What's worse is that you can end up with multiple copies of the Safari app running. This is very confusing, and breaks the fundamental "tap Safari to open Safari" because it doesn't always open the correct one. Android avoids this. On Android another confusion is that swipe from edge no longer works because the split has no edge of the screen. I presume iPadOS has the same issue. The Android split screen functionality is also bloody hard to find (press ■, then tap app icon at top centre of each screen shot).
jsight 7y ago
The sad thing is that it seems like it has gotten worse. When I first started using the iPad a few years ago, I remember a pretty simple set of gestures (using multitouch) to do things like this. Now, I literally have no idea how to go to split screen on the same device.
pfranz 7y ago
I have felt similar to you. Gesture based interfaces aren't discoverable and there's no mental model or coherence everyone is building on. But playing devils advocate, I remember in the 90s and early 2000s an older generation taking computer classes to do basic things for work. All of the thought and consistency just didn't click with them. They spent 8 hours at work, but didn't spend their nights/weekends poking at and discovering the system. But the classes gave enough instruction for them to be productive. Last night I was watching my 3 year old son playing with a keyboard (piano). It's battery powered, there's an on/off switch, and a volume slider. It "turns off" after a few minutes to save battery and you have to switch it off/on for it to work. He gets very confused and thinks its broken--sometimes it times out, if he fixes that the volume may be down, at some point the batteries will die. I was thinking about the interface for a grand piano. It's always on and there's a physical lid that closes when it "turns off." That interface makes much more sense to him. Sure, that interface is better and more discoverable, but it costs much more, loses flexibility, and isn't as portable. I'm not actually saying one is better than the other. It was just something I was thinking about.

shantly 7y ago

I liked it better when it was a slab of glass that could become a bunch of different tools on-demand, with some light ability to pass info between the tools. And I think discoverability in iOS generally has been trending down fast since iOS7 came out. I don't know any of the new crap, I just accidentally do new stuff sometimes then have to figure out how to make it go away. iOS6+iPad: the most recent mainstream OS & device I'd feel sort-of OK about saddling my elderly computer-illiterate relatives with.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
Especially with iPadOS I feel they are slowly back to building a full size desktop OS but they don’t want to admit that to themselves so they keep pretending to be as simple as the first iOS versions were.
- josteink 7y ago
  We have gigabytes of RAM, multiple CPU cores and terabyte of storage. We’re also allowing concurrent multitasking. Even more: We’re going full USB-C, you can connect hard drives, mice, keyboards and monitors. But no, no, no! This is not a PC! Yeah, I don’t buy it either.
- chooseaname 7y ago
  Maybe because a lot of people don't want a desktop OS that is that locked down, so Apple is slowly trying to get people used to it?
  - scarface74 7y ago
    The number of people that care about Apple’s “walled garden” and that they can’t ssh into the filesystem is much smaller than geeks thinks it is.
    - Teever 7y ago
      And that is currently the case for two reasons. The first is that people use their desktops/laptops for things theycant do in the walled garden and the second is that Apple has not finished building the wall as high as they want it to be. Rest assured if Apple made a full transition to a restrictive walled garden more people would take issue with it. They don't right now because Apple is slowly boiling the frog.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Seeing that the Mac App Store was introduced a decade ago, that’s a really slow boil....
xnzakg 7y ago
Well, one of the nice things about a split screen view is that you don't need two iPads if you want to open a pdf on one and write notes on another, which is a problem I have with my reMarkable tablet. There's definitely better ways of implementing that than the way iPadOS currently does it though.
- bla3 7y ago
  Out of interest, what's a better way that you have in mind? I agree that the current state isn't great, but I can't think of better approaches. So I'd be curious to hear about your ideas :)

0x38B 7y ago

In Safari, if you press and drag a tab on the tab bar to rearrange it, it's easy to open split view instead, with your tab in a new Safari window. To get the tab back, you have to open the tab switcher and drag it back to its original window. But the new Safari window is still there... In my usage at work, I'm sticking to alt-tabbing and quick Slide Over use. Even though my 12.9" iPad Pro has the space, juggling split views (swapping apps in and out, encountering bugs) was slowing me down.

sixothree 7y ago

I've been able to do split screen a few times. But mostly I end up losing my original application. It seems some applications cannot exist in split screen (?) and don't bother to indicate that you will lose your existing layout? I learned about long pressing the space bar less than a month ago. Apparently that has existed for years. Ugh. This thing is awful. Just plain awful.

ihuman 7y ago
If an app doesn't support split screen, the screen won't split when you drag an app to the right (before your let go). It makes a different animation to show the new app will replace the running app.
- sixothree 7y ago
  The problem is that it's just not responsive enough and the indication that my current app will go away is not clear enough.
robocat 7y ago
What's worse is that you can end up with multiple copies of the Safari app running. This is very confusing, and breaks the fundamental "tap Safari to open Safari" because it doesn't always open the correct one. Android avoids this. On Android another confusion is that swipe from edge no longer works because the split has no edge of the screen. I presume iPadOS has the same issue. The Android split screen functionality is also bloody hard to find (press ■, then tap app icon at top centre of each screen shot).

jsight 7y ago

The sad thing is that it seems like it has gotten worse. When I first started using the iPad a few years ago, I remember a pretty simple set of gestures (using multitouch) to do things like this. Now, I literally have no idea how to go to split screen on the same device.

pfranz 7y ago

I have felt similar to you. Gesture based interfaces aren't discoverable and there's no mental model or coherence everyone is building on. But playing devils advocate, I remember in the 90s and early 2000s an older generation taking computer classes to do basic things for work. All of the thought and consistency just didn't click with them. They spent 8 hours at work, but didn't spend their nights/weekends poking at and discovering the system. But the classes gave enough instruction for them to be productive. Last night I was watching my 3 year old son playing with a keyboard (piano). It's battery powered, there's an on/off switch, and a volume slider. It "turns off" after a few minutes to save battery and you have to switch it off/on for it to work. He gets very confused and thinks its broken--sometimes it times out, if he fixes that the volume may be down, at some point the batteries will die. I was thinking about the interface for a grand piano. It's always on and there's a physical lid that closes when it "turns off." That interface makes much more sense to him. Sure, that interface is better and more discoverable, but it costs much more, loses flexibility, and isn't as portable. I'm not actually saying one is better than the other. It was just something I was thinking about.