With iPadOS, Apple Is Transforming The iPad And How We Use It

Dhir Acharya - Jul 01, 2019


With iPadOS, Apple Is Transforming The iPad And How We Use It

After being unveiled at WWDC 2019, the public beta of iPadOS has come alongside MacOS Catalina’s public betas and iOS 13.

For years, iPads have indicated Apple’s vision for computers in the future. However, it turned out the iPad evolved along with the Mac. Finally, the company is promising to make the iPad’s software work better for all users, or even replace the Mac. It recently claimed that the tablet will come with its own operating system, separate from the iPhone. Now, the public beta of iPadOS has come alongside MacOS Catalina’s public betas and iOS 13.

Essentially, iPadOS is iOS 13 but with many improvements specifically created for the iPad, which will come to several models including the Mini 4 and iPad Air 2. Now, don’t rush to install its public beta on the main device yet as it is incomplete and buggy. But thanks to CNET’s test, we can learn how iPadOS works.

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Apple unveiled iPadOS at WWDC 2019

A browser at ‘desktop class’

The iPad hasn’t run the web as well as PCs or Chromebooks. Fortunately, Safari of iPadOS now offers richer browsing, which is more like the Mac. While you won’t see an obvious difference in every aspect, you can open Google Docs, view tracked adjustments in your documents as well as edit it like using a MacBook.

However, sometimes there are odd compromises on the iPad’s touchscreen. And it’s still hard to make edits using fingers on the touchscreen, especially when you have to cut, paste sections or add links. In addition, the beta seems to lag a little, freezing up when you work on large pages, which could be irritating.

Anyway, Apple hasn’t finalized on this version yet, so there’re maybe more to expect. All in all, this is undeniably a big leap.

The home screen now shows widgets

The iPad and iPhone have always offered a list of widgets such as reminders, news headlines, and weather, but they were hidden and you had to swipe to the right from the home screen to see them. But now, iPad users can pin all those widgets to the home screen. Apple had to shift over the app grid and make the app icons smaller so that it can fix more apps to a smaller space, replacing the large app grid on the home screen as before.

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You can now pin the widgets to the Home Screen

The downside, however, is that the widgets are pinned on the home screen’s first page only, which means the other app pages doesn’t display these widgets. Hopefully, Apple will fix this in later versions of the operating system.

The Pencil is smoother and smarter

The improved Pencil is now seamless, especially for writing. iPadOS also comes with faster annotation tools that happen when you swipe up Pencil from the corners at the screen’s bottom. Then a screenshot will pop up to scribble on.

Also, you are able to toggle to annotate a document or web page, which is excellent. The tools haven’t worked on Apple’s Pages yet, but it does work on Safari.

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iPadOS comes with better annotation tools

Mouse support

You can now pair your iPad with a trackpad or a Bluetooth mouse, a change Apple has brought to those who cannot use the touchscreen controls easily. The company has designed the support for the mouse differently with the intention to replicate the touch-controls’ one-click. By clicking the second button, you can access Siri, or the Home Screen, etc.

If you edit documents or texts, you will see an onscreen keyboard pop up by default, but you can turn it off. It’s difficult to move the cursor around precisely for editing photo, and the way it highlights text is different from that on a Mac with a mouse.

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You can now use a Bluetooth mouse with the iPad

Multitasking with a lot of improvements

Apple supports split-screen mode with a lot of apps, and will soon expand to third-party apps this fall. To open a second window for another app, you drag the app icon to the current app’s side, it’s confusing but great to view documents alongside, compare photos or even two maps if you are researching two locations.

The Slideover feature of Apple has long been a mini-app popping up and hovering the rest. Now it’s able to store several apps in this mode and wipe between them. While the feature is not intuitive all the time, but once you’ve loaded key apps like Twitter, Music, or Mail, you can quickly access widgets when you do other things. This helps you stop having to use your iPhone as a secondary screen.

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Split-screen mode

Editing documents with multi gestures

There is now a three-finger pinch and expand gesture so that you can copy and paste text on your iPad, which Apple has added for editing. But this is not intuitive and it may not go through the beta.

USB storage

A dongle is required for this. But it’s great news that iPadOS will support memory card, hard drive, as well as reading files in USB flash drive. With a USB-C stick, you can open videos, documents, photos, and PDF files by going to the Files app, in which you will see the drive in the left-side column. Now you can copy or save files as you want.

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You can view files from the flash drive

More to come

While iPadOS also works with the additions in iOS 13, the operating system has already had more than enough stuff to enjoy. And although iPadOS hasn’t solved all the problem of if the iPad, it enhances everything iOS 12 could do.

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