10 ms·

iPadOS 15

59 points by easton 5y ago

easton 5y ago
Interestingly, Swift Playgrounds can now be used to create full iOS apps and submit them to the App Store, and has some connectivity with XCode on the Mac. No mention of technical details (git? run apps on your iPhone?) but Apple is sticking a toe into using the iPad for writing code. (No Objective-C and SwiftUI only).
- monocularvision 5y ago
  I’m curious how much Xcode Cloud has to play a role in the process or if it can be done entirely on device.
smasher164 5y ago
Looking forward to trying out the new multitasking features. They seem to be an improvement of iPadOS 14, and require fewer gestures. The window management looks a little confusing, so I’ll have to give it a shot to see if it was just the presentation that made it seem that way.
- smasher164 5y ago
  Why was my comment downvoted? I said that I'm looking forward to trying a feature. It seems that if a comment doesn't fit under someone's narrative of "iPad is useless," it'll get egregiously downvoted nowadays. Goodness gracious people, please be more mindful.
1_player 5y ago
This is seriously underwhelming. I've been sitting on $2000 on an Apple gift card I wanted to spend on a top spec M1 iPad Pro to watch TV shows at home and take with me on travels if I need to debug issues in production or come up with a quick fix while sitting in an hotel room or a coffee shop. I was hoping iPadOS 15 would get the device closer to a Mac or make running Docker or VSCode easier without jumping through hoops with VPSs, but alas, seems like Tim Cook doesn't care that he's got a tablet that's incredibly fast, more so than most laptops, and that it's kept back by its amateurish operating system. Does "Pro" mean anything at Apple anymore? I have a powerful desktop I love, and no mobile computing device are worth my money these days. I don't need a laptop with full keyboard and trackpad when I have a $5000 desktop at home and work outside 2 days a month; tablets have crap hardware if it's not Apple, or have the least powerful OS if you want to stay in the walled Apple garden. I'll use the gift card to buy my mum and I an iPhone 12 and I'll get an Android tablet with a crap CPU that lets me run whatever I want. I hate having to compromise. EDIT: clarified why a laptop isn't a viable alternative for me
- robotmay 5y ago
  I've seen this opinion quite a lot recently, and I don't really understand - why do you want the iPad to be a Mac? For me the iPad Pro is a great creative device that is surprisingly capable in a variety of other ways. I use mine for programming with ease but my workflow of using Vim over mosh/tmux in blink.sh supports that. If I was looking for a portable programming machine I'd just buy a MBA I guess. I think the iPad Pro is great at what it does. It's an excellent portable creative device that can also be used casually. Not everything needs to be targeted towards every use-case.
  - salamandersauce 5y ago
    Why not? It has the power. It can use keyboards and mice now. Plus Android and Chrome tablets can do everything so at this point it's a little embarrassing IMO. I tried emacs over mosh for a while. It mostly worked, but there would be occasions when my Mac mini's network dropped and never recovered and then I can't do anything without heading home. Plus I would just have to live with things like shuffling that PDF I made in LaTeX over somehow because I couldn't actually see it. I prefer the iPad to Macs. I'd rather have the flexibility and portability of a tablet than a laptop. Apple's software holds back amazing hardware with arbitrary decisions. In the end I sold my iPad Pro and switched to Android.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  > $2000 on an Apple gift card I wanted to spend on a top spec M1 iPad Pro to watch TV shows at home and take with me on travels if I need to debug issues in production or come up with a quick fix You want to spend $2000 to watch TV at home not on a TV? How would both of these desires not be significantly better satisfied by an M1 Air? > A laptop is too much Too much what? The Air costs _less_ than the 13" iPad Pro.
  - 1_player 5y ago
    > A laptop is too much I don't mean price. I mean I don't need a keyboard. A tablet is the perfect form factor for consuming media 99% of the time, and a whole laptop I'd use for 1% of the time ain't worth the money. I need a mobile device I can attach to a keyboard and do "Pro" work 5 hours a month, is that much to ask?
paulpan 5y ago
This is getting stupid. Newest iPad Pros with M1 obviously have the capability to do so much more, yet the OS holds it back. Are Federighi and Temus still on speaking terms? Instead of proper multitasking, virtualization and external monitor support, we just gain new and iPad-only gestures to learn and memorize. The iPads, especially iPad Pros, have become an increasingly complicated method of computing. I thought their emphasis was on making computing more accessible/approachable to everyone.
- zepto 5y ago
  > Newest iPad Pros with M1 obviously have the capability to do so much more, yet the OS holds it back. Holds it back from what? > Instead of proper multitasking, virtualization and external monitor support, Why not use a laptop if you want these? > we just gain new and iPad-only gestures to learn and memorize. That’s the opposite of what they just announced. The new features can be accessed through visual UI elements which addresses people’s chief complaint about iOS multitasking. > The iPads, especially iPad Pros, have become an increasingly complicated method of computing. Less complicated than if they just added all the features of a desktop computer.
  - mmebane 5y ago
    > Holds it back from what? Being a full-fledged computer. > Why not use a laptop if you want these? What if I want a tablet I can dock and turn into a laptop or workstation? The M1 iPad Pro would be a perfect competitor to the likes of the Surface Pro, if the OS weren't holding it back.
    - noja 5y ago
      I don't get it: Apple are not selling the iPad as that.
    - rmah 5y ago
      The iPad will NEVER be a full-fledged computer. Never ever. By design. The same way Apple will never make a phone or watch that is a full-fledged computer. In their view it is not what padds are. Full stop. Personally, I like it this way. I can understand why some others would not. For them, there are other vendors making pads that fulfill their needs.
jordache 5y ago
iPad OS's multi-tasking patterns suck. I can never figure out how to have a juxtaposed safari instance.. Heck I think even now, I have two safari tabs shelved, from when I somehow triggered multi-task gestures on them.. just give me the normal desktop paradigms for multi-tasking. Don't need some contrived "tablet oriented" pattern developed by some UX person at Apple. I don't want to learn you sht. I just want it to work. Learn it from the team that developed the swipe up for home pattern.. they got it figured out!
- handrous 5y ago
  I trigger multitasking by accident sometimes. It's a pain. I guess I should learn the gestures just so I know how to make it go away, rather than swiping all over the place fruitlessly. I'm the opposite of the "make it like a desktop!" crowd. I miss iOS 6 and IMO everything since then's been a mixed bag of "OK, that's better" and "no no no you're making it worse". I just want a smart slab of glass that becomes different things. Not another normal computer.
  - mikestew 5y ago
    I trigger multitasking by accident sometimes. I got fed up with it enough to just turn it off (Home Screen & Dock/Multitasking/Allow Multiple Apps). The modest advantages didn't even come close to offsetting the annoyance of accidentally triggering it then having to stop the workflow to unfcuk Apple's poor UI.
- wilsonnb3 5y ago
  Hold tab -> drag to one side of the screen. I don’t know how much closer to “just works” it can get. Or, open app drawer, long press safari, use menu that pops up to launch a new window. Multitasking on iPadOS is not very complicated and the features they announced today are going to make it even easier.
  - jordache 5y ago
    then sometimes I'll get a floating safari window. I hate how I can't define the precise dimension I want for those panes. If I drag and flick it too fast, it flies off the screen. A few hours later, I'll find those windows that flew away shelved in some magical space.
wilsonnb3 5y ago
I don’t think that most of the people who complain about multitasking on the iPad actually use it regularly. It works very well in my experience and the stuff they’ve added in iPadOS 15 are great quality of life improvements. Very happy with the developer beta so far, although it has only been a few hours.
- jordache 5y ago
  As the most valuable company in the world, the bar is very high for apple. When they replaced the home screen with swipe up, they succeeded that change tremendously. The multi-task gestures - Not much success at all. It shouldn't require a manual and practice to use this.
- jclardy 5y ago
  After playing around with it for a bit I agree. The main improvement is actually using the homescreen as the app selector. Using spotlight was fine when you have a keyboard, but multitasking without a keyboard was pretty terrible on iOS 14. The only thing I am still trying to grasp is the “shelf” - I see it keeps things like mail compose windows open…but I have been unable to figure out how you are supposed to get back to them later, other than leaving the app and coming back…
  - htp 5y ago
    In general: try tapping the dots at the top of the app, or tapping the app's icon in the dock. For Mail specifically: there's an icon in the lower-right of the sidebar that looks like two squares, one on top of the other- try giving tapping that.
- mikestew 5y ago
  I don’t think that most of the people who complain about multitasking on the iPad actually use it regularly. Of course not, why would I when the UI sucks so much? "Use it regularly" can also be translated to mean "use it until you memorize the UI gestures that Apple half-assed". I had an easier time memorizing block syntax in Objective-C. It's like vim, only for multitasking on tablets.
FabHK 5y ago
Privacy/transparency features I'm most looking forward to: 1) list of when apps last accessed location, contacts, photos, etc. 2) list of what 3rd party domains apps contact. That'll be informative. Can't wait to see what Facebook et al. will say about that.
Yabood 5y ago
No multi-user support? Meh.
- lucasyvas 5y ago
  It's almost like they continue to add nothing of value on purpose because it's admission they screwed up - they should have a tablet with macOS by now, including this feature.
  - threeseed 5y ago
    iPad is a multi-billion dollar business which is still growing. Must be hard for them to screw up this badly.
    - lucasyvas 5y ago
      Money is not the only metric for a product's success, and it's current growth is severely limited compared to where it could be. iPad and iPad OS are designed entirely to siphon money from an existing core user base, while offering the user no freedom or power. It may be an unbelievably slick consumption product, but it fails miserably at championing what a mobile computing device can be.
      - threeseed 5y ago
        In this case, revenue = device sales = popularity. So you may think that you know more about product management and how to sell devices than Apple but given their experience it's a pretty tall claim. Because freedom and power comes with tradeoffs. And many of those tradeoffs which come from multiple app stores, code execution etc are pretty unpalatable to most people.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  Multi-user support is _never_ going to be implemented in iOS devices. There is a slim chance for iPadOS. The amount of people who actually need a multi-user phone/tablet is a fraction of a fraction of the 600M userbase of Apple devices.
SkyMarshal 5y ago
Full list of updates is here: https://www.apple.com/ipados/ipados-preview/features/ https://www.apple.com/ipados/ipados-preview/features/
throwawaysea 5y ago
This feels a lot like the incremental changes we've seen in the previous years - promises of multitasking and juggling windows and other minor tweaks, but not delivering what I actually want, which is something closer to a regular laptop. In practice, I've found their paradigms simply don't work well - these custom interactions Apple has designed for the tablet are unnecessarily different. So rather than intuitively navigating between apps and staying productive, I am fighting the unnatural mode of multitasking forced on me. The rest of the feature list on this page are just enhancements to existing "app" capabilities like Facetime or iMessage, and that's not really what I was expecting or hoping for in an iPad update, especially given where the M1's performance is. What I really want is an unlocked iPad Pro with a desktop-class OS.
asciimov 5y ago
Will this be the release where they fix memory management/multitasking that forces me to restart my iPad at least once a week due to apps and safari crashing? My money is on no, as this has been the new normal since the release of iOS 13.
IOT_Apprentice 5y ago
I'd LOVE to have vscode (and/or JetBrains) native on M1 iPad Pro. But Apple won't allow it, or XCode on their iPad Pro.
- Longhanks 5y ago
  I for one am very glad I don’t have to endure any Java Swing or Electron UI, thank Apple. The good thing for you is, there’s always a Microsoft Surface if you’re unhappy with Apple’s products. I think it runs both JetBrains IDEs as well as VS Code.
  - lostmsu 5y ago
    If only Apple would sell their M1s to Microsoft so they could install it into their tablets.
minimaxir 5y ago
I recently purchased an M1 iPad Pro 11" + Magic Keyboard, aware of the OS limitations. After using that combo for a few weeks, I can say it replicates 80% of what I can do on my iMac desktop at similar efficiency (sometimes faster), with most of the missing 20% being coding-related tasks that can be worked-around in the meantime (e.g. GitHub Codespaces). Although this iPadOS update did not shift the bar much on that missing 20% and overall was in line with my expectations, Apple definitely has heard the complaints by now and might try to push some updates into a 15.X release sooner than iPadOS 16. I'm still pretty happy with my purchase. At the least, the M1 iPad Pro is extremely future-proof for whatever Apple tries to do.
- 1_player 5y ago
  > Although this iPadOS update did not shift the bar much on that missing 20% and overall was in line with my expectations, Apple definitely has heard the complaints by now and might try to push some updates into a 15.X release sooner than iPadOS 16. Sorry, but your comment reads like the textbook definition of sunk cost fallacy. There is no proof whatsoever Apple has heard any complaint and will make your iPad closer to the iMac in a 15.x release, nor ever at all. I'd expect one to be extremely disappointed if their device did 80% of what it could theoretically do, and Apple didn't show any single improvement on that in their yearly conference.
  - minimaxir 5y ago
    It's more that the weaknesses in iPadOS have received unanimous disdain by influencers who help sell the hardware, which is one of the factors that Apple does listen to (e.g. resulting in the iMac Pro and Mac Pro), and the pandemic/WFH likely affected the dev cycle a bit as it has with almost every other tech company. That's why I think the time table will get pushed up for more pro iPad features.
walterbell 5y ago
Now that macOS 12 beta on M1 can virtualize both Linux and macOS 12 guests, why not enable virtualization on iPad Pro M1 hardware with 16GB RAM? Are VMware & Parallels not interested in the iPad Pro market? They can charge premium app prices, desperate developers will pay. Even a non-GUI shell for running local services in a VM would be a huge step forward. VMs help developers build iPad apps, they pose no threat to the iPad native app store. VMs enable experiments, the best of which can be incorporated by Apple into iPad OS. https://twitter.com/zhuowei/status/1402004538194808833 https://twitter.com/zhuowei/status/1402004538194808833
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nayuki 5y ago
On Firefox and Chrome on Windows 10, I see a horizontal scrollbar. I suspect the designers have scrollbar blindness ( https://svenkadak.com/blog/scrollbar-blindness https://svenkadak.com/blog/scrollbar-blindness ).
DavideNL 5y ago
It’s the weirdest feeling when you’ve been working on an iPad all day with the Magic Keyboard and apps like Blink (ssh), Working Copy (git) and Textastic, and finally return to a Macbook: FREEDOM at last! Like you’ve spent working in a crippled environment all day jumping through all kinds of hoops to do the simplest things. So annoying, with such a powerful machine…

59 points by easton 5y ago

Interestingly, Swift Playgrounds can now be used to create full iOS apps and submit them to the App Store, and has some connectivity with XCode on the Mac. No mention of technical details (git? run apps on your iPhone?) but Apple is sticking a toe into using the iPad for writing code. (No Objective-C and SwiftUI only).

monocularvision 5y ago
I’m curious how much Xcode Cloud has to play a role in the process or if it can be done entirely on device.

smasher164 5y ago

Looking forward to trying out the new multitasking features. They seem to be an improvement of iPadOS 14, and require fewer gestures. The window management looks a little confusing, so I’ll have to give it a shot to see if it was just the presentation that made it seem that way.

smasher164 5y ago
Why was my comment downvoted? I said that I'm looking forward to trying a feature. It seems that if a comment doesn't fit under someone's narrative of "iPad is useless," it'll get egregiously downvoted nowadays. Goodness gracious people, please be more mindful.

1_player 5y ago

This is seriously underwhelming. I've been sitting on $2000 on an Apple gift card I wanted to spend on a top spec M1 iPad Pro to watch TV shows at home and take with me on travels if I need to debug issues in production or come up with a quick fix while sitting in an hotel room or a coffee shop. I was hoping iPadOS 15 would get the device closer to a Mac or make running Docker or VSCode easier without jumping through hoops with VPSs, but alas, seems like Tim Cook doesn't care that he's got a tablet that's incredibly fast, more so than most laptops, and that it's kept back by its amateurish operating system. Does "Pro" mean anything at Apple anymore? I have a powerful desktop I love, and no mobile computing device are worth my money these days. I don't need a laptop with full keyboard and trackpad when I have a $5000 desktop at home and work outside 2 days a month; tablets have crap hardware if it's not Apple, or have the least powerful OS if you want to stay in the walled Apple garden. I'll use the gift card to buy my mum and I an iPhone 12 and I'll get an Android tablet with a crap CPU that lets me run whatever I want. I hate having to compromise. EDIT: clarified why a laptop isn't a viable alternative for me

robotmay 5y ago
I've seen this opinion quite a lot recently, and I don't really understand - why do you want the iPad to be a Mac? For me the iPad Pro is a great creative device that is surprisingly capable in a variety of other ways. I use mine for programming with ease but my workflow of using Vim over mosh/tmux in blink.sh supports that. If I was looking for a portable programming machine I'd just buy a MBA I guess. I think the iPad Pro is great at what it does. It's an excellent portable creative device that can also be used casually. Not everything needs to be targeted towards every use-case.
- salamandersauce 5y ago
  Why not? It has the power. It can use keyboards and mice now. Plus Android and Chrome tablets can do everything so at this point it's a little embarrassing IMO. I tried emacs over mosh for a while. It mostly worked, but there would be occasions when my Mac mini's network dropped and never recovered and then I can't do anything without heading home. Plus I would just have to live with things like shuffling that PDF I made in LaTeX over somehow because I couldn't actually see it. I prefer the iPad to Macs. I'd rather have the flexibility and portability of a tablet than a laptop. Apple's software holds back amazing hardware with arbitrary decisions. In the end I sold my iPad Pro and switched to Android.
BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
> $2000 on an Apple gift card I wanted to spend on a top spec M1 iPad Pro to watch TV shows at home and take with me on travels if I need to debug issues in production or come up with a quick fix You want to spend $2000 to watch TV at home not on a TV? How would both of these desires not be significantly better satisfied by an M1 Air? > A laptop is too much Too much what? The Air costs _less_ than the 13" iPad Pro.
- 1_player 5y ago
  > A laptop is too much I don't mean price. I mean I don't need a keyboard. A tablet is the perfect form factor for consuming media 99% of the time, and a whole laptop I'd use for 1% of the time ain't worth the money. I need a mobile device I can attach to a keyboard and do "Pro" work 5 hours a month, is that much to ask?

paulpan 5y ago

This is getting stupid. Newest iPad Pros with M1 obviously have the capability to do so much more, yet the OS holds it back. Are Federighi and Temus still on speaking terms? Instead of proper multitasking, virtualization and external monitor support, we just gain new and iPad-only gestures to learn and memorize. The iPads, especially iPad Pros, have become an increasingly complicated method of computing. I thought their emphasis was on making computing more accessible/approachable to everyone.

zepto 5y ago
> Newest iPad Pros with M1 obviously have the capability to do so much more, yet the OS holds it back. Holds it back from what? > Instead of proper multitasking, virtualization and external monitor support, Why not use a laptop if you want these? > we just gain new and iPad-only gestures to learn and memorize. That’s the opposite of what they just announced. The new features can be accessed through visual UI elements which addresses people’s chief complaint about iOS multitasking. > The iPads, especially iPad Pros, have become an increasingly complicated method of computing. Less complicated than if they just added all the features of a desktop computer.
- mmebane 5y ago
  > Holds it back from what? Being a full-fledged computer. > Why not use a laptop if you want these? What if I want a tablet I can dock and turn into a laptop or workstation? The M1 iPad Pro would be a perfect competitor to the likes of the Surface Pro, if the OS weren't holding it back.
  - noja 5y ago
    I don't get it: Apple are not selling the iPad as that.
  - rmah 5y ago
    The iPad will NEVER be a full-fledged computer. Never ever. By design. The same way Apple will never make a phone or watch that is a full-fledged computer. In their view it is not what padds are. Full stop. Personally, I like it this way. I can understand why some others would not. For them, there are other vendors making pads that fulfill their needs.

jordache 5y ago

iPad OS's multi-tasking patterns suck. I can never figure out how to have a juxtaposed safari instance.. Heck I think even now, I have two safari tabs shelved, from when I somehow triggered multi-task gestures on them.. just give me the normal desktop paradigms for multi-tasking. Don't need some contrived "tablet oriented" pattern developed by some UX person at Apple. I don't want to learn you sht. I just want it to work. Learn it from the team that developed the swipe up for home pattern.. they got it figured out!

handrous 5y ago
I trigger multitasking by accident sometimes. It's a pain. I guess I should learn the gestures just so I know how to make it go away, rather than swiping all over the place fruitlessly. I'm the opposite of the "make it like a desktop!" crowd. I miss iOS 6 and IMO everything since then's been a mixed bag of "OK, that's better" and "no no no you're making it worse". I just want a smart slab of glass that becomes different things. Not another normal computer.
- mikestew 5y ago
  I trigger multitasking by accident sometimes. I got fed up with it enough to just turn it off (Home Screen & Dock/Multitasking/Allow Multiple Apps). The modest advantages didn't even come close to offsetting the annoyance of accidentally triggering it then having to stop the workflow to unfcuk Apple's poor UI.
wilsonnb3 5y ago
Hold tab -> drag to one side of the screen. I don’t know how much closer to “just works” it can get. Or, open app drawer, long press safari, use menu that pops up to launch a new window. Multitasking on iPadOS is not very complicated and the features they announced today are going to make it even easier.
- jordache 5y ago
  then sometimes I'll get a floating safari window. I hate how I can't define the precise dimension I want for those panes. If I drag and flick it too fast, it flies off the screen. A few hours later, I'll find those windows that flew away shelved in some magical space.

wilsonnb3 5y ago

I don’t think that most of the people who complain about multitasking on the iPad actually use it regularly. It works very well in my experience and the stuff they’ve added in iPadOS 15 are great quality of life improvements. Very happy with the developer beta so far, although it has only been a few hours.

jordache 5y ago
As the most valuable company in the world, the bar is very high for apple. When they replaced the home screen with swipe up, they succeeded that change tremendously. The multi-task gestures - Not much success at all. It shouldn't require a manual and practice to use this.
jclardy 5y ago
After playing around with it for a bit I agree. The main improvement is actually using the homescreen as the app selector. Using spotlight was fine when you have a keyboard, but multitasking without a keyboard was pretty terrible on iOS 14. The only thing I am still trying to grasp is the “shelf” - I see it keeps things like mail compose windows open…but I have been unable to figure out how you are supposed to get back to them later, other than leaving the app and coming back…
- htp 5y ago
  In general: try tapping the dots at the top of the app, or tapping the app's icon in the dock. For Mail specifically: there's an icon in the lower-right of the sidebar that looks like two squares, one on top of the other- try giving tapping that.
mikestew 5y ago
I don’t think that most of the people who complain about multitasking on the iPad actually use it regularly. Of course not, why would I when the UI sucks so much? "Use it regularly" can also be translated to mean "use it until you memorize the UI gestures that Apple half-assed". I had an easier time memorizing block syntax in Objective-C. It's like vim, only for multitasking on tablets.

FabHK 5y ago

Privacy/transparency features I'm most looking forward to: 1) list of when apps last accessed location, contacts, photos, etc. 2) list of what 3rd party domains apps contact. That'll be informative. Can't wait to see what Facebook et al. will say about that.

Yabood 5y ago

No multi-user support? Meh.

lucasyvas 5y ago
It's almost like they continue to add nothing of value on purpose because it's admission they screwed up - they should have a tablet with macOS by now, including this feature.
- threeseed 5y ago
  iPad is a multi-billion dollar business which is still growing. Must be hard for them to screw up this badly.
  - lucasyvas 5y ago
    Money is not the only metric for a product's success, and it's current growth is severely limited compared to where it could be. iPad and iPad OS are designed entirely to siphon money from an existing core user base, while offering the user no freedom or power. It may be an unbelievably slick consumption product, but it fails miserably at championing what a mobile computing device can be.
    - threeseed 5y ago
      In this case, revenue = device sales = popularity. So you may think that you know more about product management and how to sell devices than Apple but given their experience it's a pretty tall claim. Because freedom and power comes with tradeoffs. And many of those tradeoffs which come from multiple app stores, code execution etc are pretty unpalatable to most people.
theshrike79 5y ago
Multi-user support is _never_ going to be implemented in iOS devices. There is a slim chance for iPadOS. The amount of people who actually need a multi-user phone/tablet is a fraction of a fraction of the 600M userbase of Apple devices.

SkyMarshal 5y ago

Full list of updates is here: https://www.apple.com/ipados/ipados-preview/features/ https://www.apple.com/ipados/ipados-preview/features/

throwawaysea 5y ago

This feels a lot like the incremental changes we've seen in the previous years - promises of multitasking and juggling windows and other minor tweaks, but not delivering what I actually want, which is something closer to a regular laptop. In practice, I've found their paradigms simply don't work well - these custom interactions Apple has designed for the tablet are unnecessarily different. So rather than intuitively navigating between apps and staying productive, I am fighting the unnatural mode of multitasking forced on me. The rest of the feature list on this page are just enhancements to existing "app" capabilities like Facetime or iMessage, and that's not really what I was expecting or hoping for in an iPad update, especially given where the M1's performance is. What I really want is an unlocked iPad Pro with a desktop-class OS.

asciimov 5y ago

Will this be the release where they fix memory management/multitasking that forces me to restart my iPad at least once a week due to apps and safari crashing? My money is on no, as this has been the new normal since the release of iOS 13.

IOT_Apprentice 5y ago

I'd LOVE to have vscode (and/or JetBrains) native on M1 iPad Pro. But Apple won't allow it, or XCode on their iPad Pro.

Longhanks 5y ago
I for one am very glad I don’t have to endure any Java Swing or Electron UI, thank Apple. The good thing for you is, there’s always a Microsoft Surface if you’re unhappy with Apple’s products. I think it runs both JetBrains IDEs as well as VS Code.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  If only Apple would sell their M1s to Microsoft so they could install it into their tablets.

minimaxir 5y ago

I recently purchased an M1 iPad Pro 11" + Magic Keyboard, aware of the OS limitations. After using that combo for a few weeks, I can say it replicates 80% of what I can do on my iMac desktop at similar efficiency (sometimes faster), with most of the missing 20% being coding-related tasks that can be worked-around in the meantime (e.g. GitHub Codespaces). Although this iPadOS update did not shift the bar much on that missing 20% and overall was in line with my expectations, Apple definitely has heard the complaints by now and might try to push some updates into a 15.X release sooner than iPadOS 16. I'm still pretty happy with my purchase. At the least, the M1 iPad Pro is extremely future-proof for whatever Apple tries to do.

1_player 5y ago
> Although this iPadOS update did not shift the bar much on that missing 20% and overall was in line with my expectations, Apple definitely has heard the complaints by now and might try to push some updates into a 15.X release sooner than iPadOS 16. Sorry, but your comment reads like the textbook definition of sunk cost fallacy. There is no proof whatsoever Apple has heard any complaint and will make your iPad closer to the iMac in a 15.x release, nor ever at all. I'd expect one to be extremely disappointed if their device did 80% of what it could theoretically do, and Apple didn't show any single improvement on that in their yearly conference.
- minimaxir 5y ago
  It's more that the weaknesses in iPadOS have received unanimous disdain by influencers who help sell the hardware, which is one of the factors that Apple does listen to (e.g. resulting in the iMac Pro and Mac Pro), and the pandemic/WFH likely affected the dev cycle a bit as it has with almost every other tech company. That's why I think the time table will get pushed up for more pro iPad features.

walterbell 5y ago

Now that macOS 12 beta on M1 can virtualize both Linux and macOS 12 guests, why not enable virtualization on iPad Pro M1 hardware with 16GB RAM? Are VMware & Parallels not interested in the iPad Pro market? They can charge premium app prices, desperate developers will pay. Even a non-GUI shell for running local services in a VM would be a huge step forward. VMs help developers build iPad apps, they pose no threat to the iPad native app store. VMs enable experiments, the best of which can be incorporated by Apple into iPad OS. https://twitter.com/zhuowei/status/1402004538194808833 https://twitter.com/zhuowei/status/1402004538194808833

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nayuki 5y ago

On Firefox and Chrome on Windows 10, I see a horizontal scrollbar. I suspect the designers have scrollbar blindness ( https://svenkadak.com/blog/scrollbar-blindness https://svenkadak.com/blog/scrollbar-blindness ).

DavideNL 5y ago

It’s the weirdest feeling when you’ve been working on an iPad all day with the Magic Keyboard and apps like Blink (ssh), Working Copy (git) and Textastic, and finally return to a Macbook: FREEDOM at last! Like you’ve spent working in a crippled environment all day jumping through all kinds of hoops to do the simplest things. So annoying, with such a powerful machine…