
iOS 11 turns the iPad into a different machine - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/26/ios-11-preview
======
marcoperaza
It seems like so much core functionality is hidden behind gestures and
3D-touch. What a change for the company that shunned even the right click for
many years because it hid functionality.

~~~
notadoc
Even the smartest and most technically capable people I know are confused by
3D Touch, almost all of whom eventually turned it off. What is it for? Why is
it better than an alternative or a long press? How does it make anything
better or more intuitive? How is it predictable in any way?

iOS has been consistently confusing and less intuitive ever since iOS 7, and
iOS 10 and iOS 11 are only more so particularly the lock screens which are
outright bizarre. They feel very much like they were built for designers, not
for end users.

Come to think of it, a lot of what Apple does today feels like it was built
for their own designers and not for users. Removing critical ports, 3D Touch,
endless dongles, confusing UI and UX, the Touch Bar, awful low travel
keyboards, etc etc

Apple used to pride itself in everything being obvious and everything just
working as you would expect it to. Perhaps the biggest change in Apple post-
Jobs is how that is missing.

~~~
bennyg
3D touch on the keyboard to move the cursor around makes up for every
grievance I ever had about it to begin with.

~~~
notadoc
I like that too, but how many users know about that? 0.5%? Is it obvious and
intuitive?

~~~
madeofpalk
Might not be entirely obvious and intuitive, but it's not required as well. I
mean, iOS did without it for 10 years.

People complain about iOS not being for 'power users', but when they add
features in like a secondary click or more fine-grained control, people
complain about it not being obvious. How obvious is right clicking on a
computer to bring up special features?

~~~
notadoc
> How obvious is right clicking on a computer to bring up special features?

Well considering that most mice have 2 or 3 obvious physical buttons I would
say the right-click on a mouse is pretty obvious. It has also be deeply
ingrained in every Windows user since Windows 3.11 (maybe earlier?)

~~~
nkristoffersen
I would try spending time with an "average user". They do not use right click,
nor keyboard shortcuts (which have also been around for ages). The average
user is a basic user.

------
blowski
I tried iOS 11 on the latest version of the iPad Pro 9.7" and iPhone 6S. I've
actually downgraded back to iOS 10 because the beta was still too buggy for
day-to-day use.

The existing 'multi-tasking' on the iPad Pro is fiddly, and this was no
easier. Apps were locking themselves to the Dock and I couldn't work out how
to remove them. Switching between apps was far from "Cmd + Tab" of the
desktop. A lot of apps that I still use but haven't been updated in years
broke because they're not 64 bit. And it was very slow. Even native apps like
Settings and Notes were just hanging for seconds at a time.

The hardest bit is the sheer number of different ways of doing things. "You're
in landscape mode, so if you slide down from the top and then slide left in
the resulting screen you can see the last notification that popped up a second
ago."

I did like the new keyboard, where I could just swipe down to get a capital
letter or special character. And the control screen was good, as I could
enable "Battery Saver Mode" and the "Personal Hotpoint" more quickly.

But I'll need to see a lot more polish to the Dock before re-upgrading.

~~~
martin_bech
Must of the previous IOS beta have had similar poor performance. I dont know
if some debug mode i running in the background or whats going on, but final
version, is always much more performant.

~~~
blowski
I upgraded to the iOS 10 beta almost immediately as it came out (only on the
iPhone) and it felt very polished. There were a few performance issues, but I
was able to live with them - this time around it was unusable.

~~~
bennyg
I've updated every one since iOS 5 and it's always been like this in the early
releases before the iPhone event.

Though, as always, YMMV.

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bshimmin
I'm slightly terrified that this update is going to confuse the hell out of my
ageing parents, who find the simplicity, lack of meaningful support for
multitasking, and absence of the Dock, to be key selling points of their iPad.

~~~
danso
You posted exactly what I was thinking. I recently gave my parents my iPad Air
4th gen and orienting them to it was an eye-opening experience. They are
retired but they both worked as programmers (think COBOL-era). I've owned an
iPad since launch day and so many features that feel instinctive -- double-tap
home button to bring up apps, slide-down-from-top to see notifications -- are
decidedly not. And that's before you get to the confusion of what's the
difference between logging into email via the browser, versus a specialized
app.

And then there's me. I got myself an iPad Pro, one of the 9.7 inch models that
Apple didn't see fit to put 3D-touch on. It took me a long time to realize
that the reason I couldn't delete items from the core TV app was because the
delete functionality, which used to work on a long touch, was deprecated for
3D-touch. The amount of no-shits given by Apple designers toward long-time
users with year-old devices still amazes me. Making iOS more like a computer
is appealing to me, but I feel bad for the non-professionals who are likely to
be super confused.

~~~
guu
None of the iPads have 3D touch so it is not about your tablet being old.

I looked it up and the discover-ability on this feature is pretty poor. You
click the "downloaded" button to get the option to delete.

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204343](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT204343)

------
0xCMP
I think I'm going to sell my existing 9.7" to get the new 10.5" to get a bit
more space to work with on this new version of iOS.

I can't wait until I can really use iOS the way I use my mac. Which at this
point really is based on either mobileOrg getting better or some app coming
out where I can easily manage a rich personal knowledge base/wiki on the iPad.

~~~
k2enemy
I'm in the process of switching from vimwiki to the built in Notes.app.

The big change is switching from links for organization to folders.

In vimwiki, I did a lot of scripting to manage/edit plaintext notes. Notes.app
on the desktop has pretty good applescript support, so scripting is still an
option although it is more cumbersome than operating on a directory of text
files.

However, it is very nice to have an iOS app designed to view/edit my notes.
I'm also really enjoying using the apple pencil to take notes and having them
integrated into my computer text notes. Notes has a lot of integrations
throughout iOS and macOS so that has been nice too.

~~~
0xCMP
Honestly, if I could just make links easily between notes I'd be pretty set
with Notes.app except for the fact that code is kind of hard to write in it.
i.e. snippets, etc.

I tried using it because you're right, it's one of the better experiences on
iOS/macOS since it's been designed to be well done from the ground up. I
should probably try the new iOS 11 one before completely writing it off
because I heard on Gruber's latest podcast that the app has gotten way better
now with the big iPad productivity push.

------
ry_ry
> If somebody tries to join your Wi-Fi network and has an iOS device, you get
> a prompt asking if you want to share your Wi-Fi password.

How does that work?

Will it happen on Corporate WiFi networks, and if multiple iDevices are
connected will they all recieve the same prompt?

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bkdbkd
read the article. not much there. very fluffy. as usual apple made old work
flows different. as usual, people will be confused at first. as usual, not
much to write home about.

"Before IOS 11 we arbitrarily limited the apps in your dock to 6. Today we
will allow up to 8!" <cheers from the crowd>. They've been dripping out
features, that they could have delivered in 2010 but for reasons like Courage
chose to hold back.

The article doesn't support the headline. Unless that also means 'Your ipad
will still be the same old iPad, but you will find it more awkward to use"

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sirmike_
Just an observation but at this pace which will happen quicker to market --
mouse integration on iOS or Windows 10 ARM?

And of those two which has a bigger impact?

~~~
simonh
Mouse integration on the iPad would be a disastrous blunder. It just wouldn't
fit with any aspect of the interaction model and would represent a dire loss
of the plot on Apple's part. So I think that would have the greater impact.

~~~
post_break
I don't know why it would be a blunder. On a jailbroken iPad it's a god send
to be able to have a tablet with a mouse and keyboard with a battery that
lasts forever. Touching the screen gets "gorilla arm" fast and also makes it
dirty. Could also lead to tablet cases with built in track pads. But I can see
the "this doesn't apply to me so it's dumb" narrative that seems to circle
around Apple opinions so much.

------
kartan
I'm planning to buy a Microsoft Surface Pro because Android and iOS tablets
have very limited Operating Systems. So I think that some of this changes go
in the right direction, for tablets at least.

On long trips, to Japan or the USA, I usually travel with an iPad and a
Macbook (1 or 2 phones, 2 digital cameras). It has worked well. Next time I'm
trying to get around with just one device that allows me to move around the
city with all the information I need, and that I can use to do some more
advanced stuff when I get to the hotel (Classify pictures and videos, edit and
process them, upload them to Google Pictures/Facebook/...). Let's see how that
goes.

I understand that Apple doesn't want to scare current customers offering
something that they don't need/want. But I need it now. :)

~~~
FussyZeus
Speaking as someone using 11 on an iPad Pro 12.5", I would take this (and will
be taking this) over my Surface Pro 3. The screen is amazing, the new
multitasking features are great, the battery life even on the beta destroys
the Surface, I could keep going on but really this is a very laptop replacing
device, for me. As usual YMMV, but seriously this can cover probably 90% of
what I use my laptop for in a mobile setting.

Addressing my itch of curiousness: Why carry 2 phones?

~~~
tylerpachal
Perhaps a work phone and a personal phone?

~~~
kartan
Yes. :)

------
clw8
Until I hear that Xcode for iPad Pro is in the works I'll be holding onto my
first gen Air. Otherwise there's no point spending a grand when my $200
touchscreen convertible Chromebook does all the tablety things I need and runs
Linux beautifully.

~~~
supercoder
I don't think Chromebook runs Xcode either

~~~
6Typos
What the parent is saying is that it is useless to buy a new iPad, because he
already has a Chromebook. If iOS 11 brought XCode, then he would buy a new
one, because it would have one more important feature (XCode).

------
ChuckMcM
This is what I expect 'iOS laptop edition' is. As ChromeOS is 'Android laptop
edition' and Win10 already is Windows laptop edition.

With the addition of WSL to Win10 it makes it more developer friendly for me.
Very much like MacOS always has been, drop into terminal and blam, there is
all of UNIX.

And all of it makes Canonical's "one Ubuntu across three platforms" pitch seem
pretty prophetic.

Very fun to watch excellent designers try these things out in the market.

------
tambourine_man
If Adobe releases its Creative Suite and Apple decides the iPad is big enough
to run Xcode, the Mac is in trouble.

And I think that's fine, even being a die hard Mac user with 30 years of usage
under my belt.

The hardware is simply amazing and the software is finally coming of age.

~~~
ggpsv
Honestly, I see very little appeal in working with iOS as a professional
software developer. Both from a form-factor to OS perspective, I'd feel very
limited and would not be as productive as I can be with a Mac or PC.

~~~
tambourine_man
Yes, but I imagine using a physical keyboard while coding on iOS. I think I'll
always prefer a mouse for a lot of things, but who knows.

~~~
ggpsv
Even so my concern is more about how one could possibly set up in iOS the
local environment needed for developing (terminals, local packages, browser
extensions, tools, finder, etc).

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Shivetya
the part of being able to measure items "AR" style is going to be amazing for
businesses, both in direct in the home work and allowing customers to do their
own measurements and such

~~~
fooker
Not very accurate though. You can see about half a cm difference in 40 cms
(compared to a tape measure beside it.)

~~~
0xCMP
Unless you're doing something either destructive or hard to reverse ARKit will
be plenty accurate for things like knowing if a piece of furniture will fit
through a door or something will hang on a wall.

It'll also help make the ("it's a 55.5inch TV" \+ "No, it's clearly just a 30
inch one") argument much easier to settle.

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grogenaut
lol the discussion at the bottom of the article is about why macos isn't on
ipad, reminds me of when people said it was impossible to put macos on x86. My
$.02 is that macos has a lot of bloated garbage hanging around and iOS is
likely more slim for the task. However I'm sure it's got it's own garbage
after 10 years.

~~~
twiceaday
a much better question (that has the same answer) is why dont macbooks have
touch screens. its definitely not because of hardware limitations.

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tlrobinson
There's a long ways to go, but I wonder if we're headed for an eventual
unification of iOS and macOS?

~~~
mi100hael
That writing has been on the wall since the iOS style application "launcher"
was added to OS X.

~~~
_ph_
They are certainly experimenting with which features might make sense on the
"other" OS. But until your post, I had almost forgotten that the launcher
still exists on macOS. Likewise, Dashboard still exists, but does not get much
attention any more. But even with the new iOS giving more "desktop" powers to
the iPad, Apple still seems to aim for a UI model quite different to macOS. So
this seems to be intended.

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macspoofing
Come on Apple, give-in to mouse support.

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bkdbkd
meh. not much, handing back features they could have delivered in 2010. A
great bit of positive fluff imho

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notadoc
But it's still an iPad.

Touch screens are just slower, less accurate, and more cumbersome than a
cursor and a good hardware keyboard for the vast majority of professional
applications and use cases.

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
Point, but it may end up as an SLR vs. phone cam thing.

We know the numbers on that ...

~~~
notadoc
I get what you're saying, but a phone camera is much easier to use than an
SLR.

------
csours
I didn't read the whole thing. Does it do anything better than other operating
systems, or just bring desktop features to the iPad?

I'm not saying bringing desktop features to a tablet is a problem, just
curious.

~~~
simonh
The only really important question is whether it does anything better than
other tablet operating systems. For the iPad, that's what really matters -
becoming the best tablet OS it can be. Anything else would be a distraction.

~~~
hendersoon
Microsoft would disagree, and they have been astonishingly successful with the
Surface Pro line.

The iOS11 desktop features are a vindication of Microsoft's original Windows 8
vision. Microsoft didn't /execute/ on that vision particularly well in either
Win8 or Win10, but the convergence between handheld and desktop does offer
some tangible advantages. It isn't all marketing BS.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
I have a Windows 10 tablet (well, a "2-in-1" since it came with a keyboard
using a Surface-style connector), and it seems to behave reasonably as both a
tablet and laptop.

It's certainly more integrated than my experience has been with other OSs on
tablets: Android doesn't do well as a laptop, nor does iOS; Windows 10 is a
desktop operating system, and works reasonably as a tablet. (I don't like
Windows 10 for _other_ reasons that have nothing do with mode switching.)

I'm curious why you think Windows 10 didn't execute well on the idea.

~~~
hendersoon
My take is this. Win8 was actually an excellent tablet OS, but compromised,
deliberately compromised in many cases, its desktop experience to get there.

In sharp contrast Win10 took the opposite approach-- it is markedly less
pleasant to use exclusively with touch, but a great desktop with
mouse+keyboard. They didn't /try/ to compromise touch, but they didn't put
much effort into it either.

~~~
canuckintime
I wouldn't say the desktop experience was 'compromised'. 'Depreciated' (i.e.
made legacy) or 'encapsulated' would be the description I'd use.

Consider how the transition from command-line interfaces to GUI was made. Even
today you can open up the Command Prompt in Windows (or Terminal in OSX) and
run legacy MS Dos apps. Well Balmer saw Jobs heralding the iPad as the future
of computing, the launch lines, and the early spectacular growth and he
freaked out. So, following the old interface transition playbook, Win8 was
designed as a touch-first UI and then the desktop UI was squirreled away as an
app (and the command prompt inside that desktop app ― inception). Win8 was an
excellent tablet/touch _designed_ OS and also purists could configure Win8 to
bypass the touch stuff and skip straight to the desktop at launch... however
Balmer had made a bad bet.

In the broader picture, the future of computers hasn't turned out to be touch
tablets. The iPad peaked and the traditional laptop formfactor is still going
strong. So Balmer's bet on a touch first Windows wasn't worth it. Moreover the
execution was lacking. While Win8 was an excellently _designed_ touch/tablet
OS, it was not fully implemented so there were many leaky abstractions back to
the desktop interface. Most notably there were many settings that could not be
configured in the touch/tablet interface ― the system would randomly throw the
user into the desktop app ― and all the Microsoft Office apps (except One
Note) could only be used in the desktop interface. There was no way to
completely disable the desktop app and hand over a Win8 tablet that worked
exactly as an iPad.

Win10 went back to the drawing board and presents touch and desktop UI as
complementary options side-by-side instead of a touch-first UI. That
unfortunately meant removing some of the system wide Win8 touch designs that
didn't quite work well with mouse+keyboard.

~~~
int_19h
It absolutely was compromised. The start screen was a horrible UI on desktops.

~~~
hendersoon
Agree. "Deprecated" implies that they ignored it, didn't improve it, that it
remained essentially unchanged. That was not the case in Win8, which offered a
markedly inferior desktop UX when compared to Win7.

