iPadOS 15 beta impressions: Tweaking a familiar experience
Operating Systems
Speaker 1: A whole new version of Apple's iPad. OS is here. Well sort of iPad, OS 15 is now in public beta and I've been using it for about a week. Now, if you were thinking about doing this hold off, because really, I don't see the need
Speaker 1: IPad OS comes out in an official form probably sometime in the fall, like it always does. And that's when all the things are ironed out and everything works more smoothly right [00:00:30] now, the public data is something you can opt into and test out some of the new features which I've been doing on a loaner, M one iPad pro. I wouldn't do this though. If I were a normal user, I don't think the benefits here right now really outweigh the experimentation. And that's the thing. So let me get into iPad OS and explain why I was let down so far. It's not that it's bad. Apple has tweaked a lot of things across the board on iPad OS, including features that are on iOS 15 [00:01:00] on the iPhone. And a lot of those things are really useful. Some of the ways that tabs and safari have been laid out, uh, there are more features for a Siri there's quick notes, which I'll get into in a moment.
Speaker 1: Some multitasking tweaks live text, which allows you to pull stuff from photos, which is a little more useful than you'd think, uh, app gallery living inside the dock, uh, widget it's, there's a bunch of things that are useful, but what, what it hasn't done is reinvent the concept of the iPad. You know, I don't think that was Apple's [00:01:30] intention. I think apple wanted to make the iPad feel more like what it is and just be easier to use. I've been looking forward to something a little more transformational. Now, the M one iPad pro, which I just reviewed it recently seemed like it was promising some whole new leap into a world that was approaching the Mac. And I was waiting for that final twist in the software to push it forward. That didn't happen with iPad OS 15. What it is instead is a bunch of improvements to the system that already [00:02:00] exists. There is nothing here that is specifically our optimized to the M one, other than the M one just running faster, which also means that if you're buying an iPad, it's a pretty safe bet. Now across the board that you could land anywhere at any price and it probably will work. Okay. Let me get into some of my favorite features so far.
Speaker 1: Now multitasking is not really one favorite features because I was hoping for a lot more apple only allows really two apps to be split screen [00:02:30] on the iPad within opportunity for a third to be floated over that in a feature called slide over. Now that hasn't changed here, but what apple has done is made it easier to access apps and swap in new one. There are three dots on the top of each app window that are compatible. When you tap that you now can pick between the split view or the slide overview, or you can pick a new app. And when you do that, it wipes out the screen and allows you to [00:03:00] pick an app from the background before you had to do this by sliding up from the dock and picking an app to drag over. That was limited. The number of apps that you had in the dock that you could pick from.
Speaker 1: So this is a lot easier, allows more access to apps, and it's pretty versatile, little bit easier. What it doesn't do is really change, change that equation. There is an ability to open up an app window in a floating center window that hovers between the two apps, but that's a fixed pain. It's a little weird. [00:03:30] It's not really what I was looking for. And as far as, uh, other multi pans within an app, there's, there are these pages that you can open up with instances within an app. That's fine. What I really want us to open even more apps or more views at once. That's where widgets might come in. Widgets was on iOS 15 on the iPhone. It's now available for the iPad. Finally, a year later now, widgets are these little informational things you can drop on top of the home screen and look like larger views of an app that [00:04:00] can show more information and you can choose a variety of different sizes of widgets and pepper them throughout.
Speaker 1: It's a fun idea. It's not as wide-ranging again, as I would've hoped. First of all, widgets are limited to the sizes that apple lays down and they're in a pretty rigid app layout. Plus only certain apps get widgets. So right now, without a lot of apps being updated to iPad OS 15, you won't see a ton of widgets on the iPad at the moment, but it shows promise. It's [00:04:30] just, you know, of an incremental step. One thing I really liked was the app library app library was a feature that came to iOS 15, and it was all the way at the end of your home screen apps and showed a summary of all of your apps that were installed, uh, allowing you to bypass the way your app grid laid it out on iPad OS that now lives in the dock as well. And so what it means is that you can pick in the dock, look at your entire app library and not have to go back to your home screen.
Speaker 1: So if you're inside an app, you just go to the [00:05:00] doc and pull up what, whatever app you want makes it a lot easier to access stuff feels more like a regular Mac, computer, or other type of computer, a full fledged computer. One multitasking feature that I thought was really cool and is the sort of thing that I hope comes to other type of apps on iPad. OS is quick note. Now you need an apple pencil for this, but if you swipe up from the corner of the screen, you can bring up a little mini version of notes and jot [00:05:30] a quick note, not anything groundbreaking or earth shaking here, but it allows you to bring up an app really instantly have it float, live alongside what I'm doing. Samsung's done stuff like this before, um, with their note, uh, features and Spen. But I think this is a great direction for the type of instant apps that I've want on an iPad and a way to multitask, but really that's limited right now to the notes app, to having a pencil.
Speaker 1: Finally, let's talk about the rest of the iPad picture. There are a [00:06:00] lot of other features that are really interesting. I think the revamp FaceTime with sharing is very intriguing, but that's the sort of stuff that I'm gonna want other people to participate with. Other people of iPad OS right now, that's not a lot of people, so I'm gonna have to wait until the fall. I think to really see what that impact is with ends in family. iPad OS does show that it's aiming for a more across the board, cross, iPad, experienced something consistent and something that continues what iPad was before. What it isn't is a [00:06:30] chance to redesign what the iPad is. We apple finally unleashed the iPad, iPad OS 15 doesn't don't look like it's that moment. Apple did introduce a lot of little interesting features, but collectively so far, they just feel like extra tweaks and flexibility to a system that already I'm quite familiar with. But one little note, if you have a keyboard, make sure you check out all the keyboard shortcuts. If you hold down the command key, um, you can find a whole list of [00:07:00] shortcuts that appear per app, an iPad OS 15 has a whole bunch more that are added. So it's worth holding them that command key anywhere you are just to see what your shortcuts might be. Thanks for watching. And I'm sure I'll have more impressions as I use iPad OS 15 more in the coming months.
