
iPadOS - plg
https://www.apple.com/ipados/
======
0x38B
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-
mac...](https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-and-ipados-13-the-macstories-
review/)

~~~
crooked-v
> 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???

~~~
markstos
As an occasional iPad user, I find the interface somewhat bewildering, even as
a power user of other devices.

I want to search to see if an app is installed. I expect an Overview screen
that's easily accessible for this like Android, Gnome or Chrome OS, but on iOS
I have to swipe left a few times? Weird.

I want to switch wireless network I'm connected to. I correctly guess that I
can swipe down to make a wireless icon appear. I expect that from the icon I
can get into the settings, but that doesn't appear to be the case. It only
seems to toggle the wireless networking on or off.

Sometimes I have good luck telling Siri what to do, but other times the
comprehension of what I'm asking falls flat compared to Google's AI.

~~~
philo23
You should be able to pull down on any page of the home screen to bring up the
app search screen, rather than having to swipe all the way to the left.

You can now also long press the wifi icon (twice) from the control centre in
iOS 13 to quickly switch wifi networks without going into the settings app,
you can also do the same with the bluetooth icon.

A lot of this stuff is really hard to just discover though if you're not
already aware it exists to begin with.

~~~
grosswait
How do you search if you don't remember the name?

~~~
WillPostForFood
Search isn’t name match. E.g. search for “video” and YouTube will be returned.

------
dallen33
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
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.

~~~
simonh
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.

~~~
close04
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.

------
nostromo
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.

~~~
wlesieutre
A lot of discovery on desktop computers was by hovering over stuff for
tooltips or poking around in menus. Touch devices don't have that, so you get
the basic functionality exposed, but other stuff isn't as discoverable.

I don't think this is as much of a problem as people make it out to be.
They've managed to keep the iPad just as accessible to everyone, and they prod
you occasionally with notifications from the Tips app for people who are
willing to learn more.

As far as moving a URL from a Safari tab to Gmail, why not just copy and paste
it? Tap once on the URL bar, the keyboard pops up with all the text selected,
and there's a copy button right there. Or you can tap on the selected text to
bring up the cut/copy/paste buttons.

Pressing and holding the URL to initiate a drag and then dropping in a text
field also works for me, but I didn't test in Gmail. It's possible Google has
some custom behavior that breaks this.

~~~
newscracker
> As far as moving a URL from a Safari tab to Gmail, why not just copy and
> paste it? Tap once on the URL bar, the keyboard pops up with all the text
> selected, and there's a copy button right there. Or you can tap on the
> selected text to bring up the cut/copy/paste buttons.

Not the GP, but I can think of one reason not to copy paste, which is to avoid
overwriting whatever’s already in the clipboard. However bad the
discoverability may be, this function is just drag and drop, and need not
involve the clipboard unless the user wants to.

~~~
wlesieutre
RE: drag and drop, works on my machine

[https://imgur.com/NRNCrzq](https://imgur.com/NRNCrzq)

Taking it one step further, the screen recording was uploaded by drag and drop
from Photos to Imgur (the webpage in Safari, not an app).

You just need to get used to the fact that “press and hold” is an action now,
just like we’ve all come to accept tap, swipe, and pinch. Sure, it’s not as
much of a direct physical metaphor as those, but fundamentally there’s only so
much room for functionality with a finger on a piece glass. If people want
more advanced features than the copy/paste from iPhone OS 3, I think it’s fair
to expect them to learn one new thing.

------
ogre_codes
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?

~~~
ckastner
> When you compare it to Android where you're lucky to get 18 months support
> it comes out ahead

Google keeps their own hardware updated quite well, I liked the monthly
security updates.

With regards to the rest of the tablet market, basically only Samsung and
Lenovo are left, and Samsung lost me as a customer a long time ago.

I've been looking at the iPad Air 3 recently and while it looks nice, I just
fell in love with the Apple pencil. The fact that they update even their
ancient hardware is just a huge plus -- that's commitment to the customer.

~~~
markstos
Quite well? Google abandons their phones after three years and repair options
are limited compared to Apple. Apple has been supplying software updates for
their phones for five years lately. On the plus side for Google phones, they
are able to run third-party ROMs when Google quits supporting them.

~~~
keerthiko
? Google devices receive Android updates well into 5+ years. I had a Nexus 4
(2013) running Android 8.1 (2017-2018).

I also belive Android tends to have fewer breaking OS changes that render
modern apps incapable of running on both older and newer OS versions, compared
to iOS, so it's significantly worse for usability on iOS with a device that is
~4+ years old.

~~~
bscphil
This got very rare, even for the Nexus devices. The Nexus 5X got only a little
over 2 years of feature support, and 3 years of security support, which is the
minimum they guarantee.

~~~
keerthiko
The Nexus 5X was a disaster of a phone so I don't blame them for sticking to
the minimum. I actually switched back from my Nexus 5X after 6 months to my
fully working Nexus 4 when I was pleased to find it was continuing to receive
all the OS updates. Probably could still finagle a Android 10 ROM onto it if
one tried hard enough.

I will grant shitty devices like the 5X is something that happens slightly
more often with Google devices than Apple (although the Macbook pro keyboards
kind of brought parity).

I still think for the layperson consumer, apps continuing to work even if they
are not being actively developed is a bigger deal than continuing to receive
constant security updates, from the perspective of device usability past 3
years at least.

------
ben7799
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
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.

~~~
wlesieutre
Interesting implementation tidbit from a Federighi interview:

 _> From a security architecture point of view, we did not want to have file
system drivers running in the kernel communicating with external media that
could have been tampered with. Getting all of our file systems to be isolated
from the kernel, it was real hardcore engineering efforts._

~~~
robin_reala
Link? I’d like to read that.

~~~
saagarjha
There's not much more, unfortunately:
[https://youtu.be/5ygYSdL42Zw?t=4778](https://youtu.be/5ygYSdL42Zw?t=4778)

------
Abishek_Muthian
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-d...](https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/08/a-very-deep-dive-
into-ios-exploit.html)

~~~
saagarjha
> 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
Can you explain why allowing apps to ship with a JIT compiler be a security
issue?

~~~
Someone
A common attack method is to overwrite the stack or some buffer and then
somehow make the CPU run the bytes written as code
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_overflow#Exploitation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_overflow#Exploitation),
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_overflow#Heap-
based_exp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_overflow#Heap-
based_exploitation))

A common mitigation to that is “write xor execute”
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%5EX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%5EX))

From that page: _”Without such protection, a program can write (as data) CPU
instructions in an area of memory intended for data and then arrange to run
(as executable) those instructions. This can be dangerous if the writer of the
memory is malicious.”_

JIT compilers are collateral damage to that mitigation; they have to write
bytes to memory and then make the CPU run those bytes as code, and W^X doesn’t
allow that.

~~~
saagarjha
FWIW, switching memory from RW- to R-X (which is still W^X) is also not
allowed unless you have certain, easier to get entitlements.

------
tolmasky
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...

~~~
fragmede
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
Yes, it wasn’t clear from my post, but once Chrome got this feature I
switched.

------
baby
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.

~~~
iaml
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
Perhaps dragging the overlaid app, by its header, straight off the edge of the
screen (i.e., horizontally)?

~~~
nvrspyx
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
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...](https://daringfireball.net/2017/07/you_should_not_force_quit_apps)

~~~
nvrspyx
> _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
> In theory, yes, but not in practice. For example

All of those are examples of unresponsiveness..

~~~
layoutIfNeeded
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
> 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.

~~~
nvrspyx
But that would mean that one thing is unresponsive, not the entire app. The
original comment even specified a frozen app.

------
cfors
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.

~~~
robohoe
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
> 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
It’s every 7 days.

------
Conlectus
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_
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
That does not shift focus reliably.

------
finkin1
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?

~~~
ogre_codes
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
> 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.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
I've always thought the idea of programming on an iPad with a keyboard + mouse
would be cool, but now it is very apparent that if that idea has any chance of
working, it would pretty much be centered around using the iPad solely as a
remote desktop tool.

I would also imagine the latency that comes with that would be annoying.

I wonder if Apple will ever do what Microsoft did with the surface and just
put full blown Mac OS on it. I'm going to guess no due to this iPadOS with
swipey gestures thing.

I'd buy it if they did... I think.

~~~
ogre_codes
That's basically what the Surface is, and the vast majority of people who own
them use them as laptops. At that point, why not just use a laptop?

I've done a fair amount of dev work on the iPad, if you have a good SFTP
friendly editor like Coda, you can do development work on a remote server, but
ultimately you are tied to that server for a build environment. It works
fairly well, but since remote shells tend to disconnect in the background it
can be frustrating to build stuff.

------
privateSFacct
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.

~~~
audunw
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.

~~~
buildzr
Great, so why wouldn't they accept another battery IC with a valid Apple
signature? Even swapping a brand new battery is enough to raise complaints.

~~~
privateSFacct
The ic is not part of battery chemistry- in case this comment isn’t a joke a
common workaround would be to grab ic from dead batteries and put them on
fakes.

~~~
buildzr
You're right, keeping keys in SRAM and other trivial anti-tamper measures are
way too expensive. Cutoffs are performed by the same IC. Should be trivial.

This was a business decision for sure. Apple doesn't want anyone but Apple to
work on their devices. Now maybe you can say that alone is good for resale,
but it's extremely shitty for customers, especially when their attitude is to
tell people they need a new board and all their data is gone when a repair,
often even a simple one is entirely possible.

[https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/expert-disputes-apple-
on...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/expert-disputes-apple-on-data-
recovery-from-water-damaged-iphones-1.5080743)

~~~
privateSFacct
The issue w bogus undisclosed batteries was causing problems for apples brand
rep. Many of the bulging / exploding batteries were not in the end apple.

The lie you are spreading, that you can’t use non apple batteries is false.
The phone will work fine, but apple will let you know it can’t model the
batteries health.

Having the phone recognize if the battery key has changed is a simple and
effective way to manage this.

For MANY people, being able to rely on the apple battery health check is far
more important than allowing scammers to do a cheap battery swap, sell phone
with a “near new” battery, and then have customer in apple store complaining a
few weeks later only to be told they were ripped off

~~~
buildzr
> Many of the bulging / exploding batteries were not in the end apple.

This is incorrect. Apple issued a recall due to known issues _with their own
batteries_! These are not 3rd party replacements.

[https://support.apple.com/en-ca/15-inch-macbook-pro-
battery-...](https://support.apple.com/en-ca/15-inch-macbook-pro-battery-
recall)

As I pointed out there's fairly simple ways for them to resolve this without
these practices. No where did I suggest that the batteries don't work at all.
The extents people go to on this site to defend Apple's shitty anti-consumer
behavior is utter insanity.

~~~
privateSFacct
Go ahead and describe the fairly simple solution you've come up with
understanding there is a surprising amount of money out there to defeat it.

If by "brand new" battery you mean an unused battery there are actually issues
there, sellers do sell "unused" batteries as "brand new" but the mfg date
turns out to be really old. Technically true I guess - the battery has not
been used? Would I want a 3-4 year old battery? No - who knows what SOC it has
been maintained at.

What is interesting is apple's focus on "shitty anti-consumer" behavior which
is "utter insanity" has resulted in a lot of consumers buying their product.

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

------
dotdi
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.

------
peatmoss
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.

~~~
AgloeDreams
Tried the flow out, it's really slick and FAST as all get out. Just plug and
play, you can import files into the Photos app (the drive shows as an import
location like in MacOS Photos app) or in the files app as if it is Finder.
Really powerful, a modern iPad Pro might be faster than the old Windows
hardware for run and gun processing, large scale editing is better on an
actively cooled device. The screen on the iPad is likely more accurate.

~~~
s3r3nity
I wish I could upvote this more, as I've been blown away by the speed as well.

Also, the deep integration of Siri Shortcuts with iOS opens up so many
possibilities for automation for this - maybe OP can help their mother with
setting up one or the team at an Apple store could help (I've had some
experience with making an appointment with them to help me with a shortcut I
was building for Apple Health.)

But I also agree with some of the other commenters that just leveraging iCloud
/ Apple Photos out-of-the-box should suffice.

------
neilobremski
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.)

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

~~~
pdimitar
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
They pushed it (and iOS 13.1) up to the 24th a few days ago.

~~~
pdimitar
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
No problem. It was an unusual thing for them to do, but here we are.

------
baby_wipe
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
Why?

~~~
leesalminen
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.

~~~
baby_wipe
Yes basically this.

Not sure if it has the power to do anything beyond light web dev, but would
still be amazing.

------
pier25
Do you think the "Desktop-class browsing" will also apply to webview based
browsers? (Chrome, Firefox, etc)

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

------
babyslothzoo
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.

------
jdlyga
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
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.

~~~
saagarjha
That requires app opt-in: it's not automatically enabled (your apps will need
to update for this to work).

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

~~~
toxik
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.

~~~
dcchambers
I guess that's why they have a developer preview :)

Seems like the system is working as intended.

------
kevindong
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
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
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/id...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/youtube-watch-listen-
stream/id544007664)

------
puranjay
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
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.

------
inlined
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.

------
_ph_
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.

------
lelf
> _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
> …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)

------
vvilliam0
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
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/)

------
gdubs
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?

------
loosetypes
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?

~~~
s3r3nity
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.

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

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

------
smush
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".

------
myrandomcomment
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?

------
doctoboggan
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.

------
Pfhreak
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
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.

------
ineedasername
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.

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

------
kodablah
> 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.

~~~
filoleg
It already was added for phones in iOS 13 update last week.

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

~~~
ascagnel_
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.

~~~
yodon
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.

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

------
cpeterso
Still no calculator app??

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

------
amelius
As an OS, is it revolutionary or evolutionary?

~~~
Angostura
Evolutionary. But the improvements are very worthwhile.

------
easymovet
The mouse support is incredibly good.

------
pastaking
Can we split screen vertically now?

------
scotchio
Sidecar + MBP = Mobile Bliss

------
ChrisMarshallNY
tvOS 13.0, too. Just FYI.

Interesting. This is iPadOS 13.1 (not 13.0).

iPhoneOS is also 13.1 today.

------
UIZealot
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
Username checks out.

------
adam12
> Connect an external hard drive, SD card reader, and, yes, even a USB drive.

So innovative!

------
luizfelberti
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?

