When I published my Beyond the Tablet story a few weeks ago, I was optimistic we'd get a handful of iPad-related features and optimizations at WWDC. I did not, however, foresee an entire OS designed specifically around iPad. And the more I think about it, the more I see iPadOS as a sign of Apple's willingness to break free from old assumptions and let the iPad be what it's best at: a portable computer inspired by the Mac, but based on iOS.
When I published my Beyond the Tablet story a few weeks ago, I was optimistic we'd get a handful of iPad-related features and optimizations at WWDC. I did not, however, foresee an entire OS designed specifically around iPad. And the more I think about it, the more I see iPadOS as a sign of Apple's willingness to break free from old assumptions and let the iPad be what it's best at: a portable computer inspired by the Mac, but based on iOS.
I'm back home after a fantastic week at WWDC1, and I'm now in the process of sifting through the surprising amount of new software features Apple unveiled in San Jose. It's going to take me a while to digest all that's new in iOS 13 and Shortcuts2; of course, you should expect my iOS/iPadOS 13 review in the fall, and we will share more hands-on articles and editorials on MacStories and Club MacStories throughout the summer. For now though, after using the iPadOS beta on my 12.9" iPad Pro for a few days, I'd like to share some initial considerations on iPadOS and what it means for the future of the platform.
Here's what I wrote in the conclusion of Beyond the Tablet:
As I hope to have demonstrated in this story, the iPad Pro is capable of filling roles you may not typically associate with the idea of a tablet. But as I've also argued, there are still several areas where the iPad is behind macOS in terms of file management, multitasking, app automation, and integration with external hardware. Let me be clear on one key concept though: for the iPad to evolve, I don't think Apple should directly copy features that have been done on the Mac before.
I think there is plenty iOS, and by extension the iPad, can learn from macOS and the long history of the Mac. What matters is the end goal: I want the iPad to empower me to achieve the same results I can produce on a Mac, even – and especially if – that power comes from old ideas that have been rethought, redesigned, and re-engineered for the new age of touch and hybrid computing.
File management, multitasking, automation, and external hardware integration are the biggest areas of improvement in iPadOS compared to iOS 12, which make Beyond the Tablet the first longform story I ever published that became outdated in less than a month (and that was the point all along – to document a moment in time of the iPad's evolution that could serve as future reference).
What truly matters, however, is that the message Apple is sending with iPadOS is the kind of trajectory I wanted to see for the future of iPad. There are functionalities such as multiwindow and file management that the Mac figured out decades ago; in bringing them to iPadOS, however, Apple isn't simply copying and pasting the same features from one platform to another: instead, they've taken those features' underlying concepts and fundamentally rethought them for the iPad's touch nature and iOS foundation.
Multitasking and Multiwindow
When rumors were swirling ahead of WWDC that Apple would bring improved multitasking capabilities to iPad with support for multiple app windows, some wondered whether the company might consider Mac-like free-form window resizing on iPad – a theory that never made sense given the device's constraints and touch interactions. On the opposite end of the speculation spectrum, others questioned whether it may even be possible for Apple to do anything more than a split-screen mode for the same app, à la Safari in iOS 10. The answer we got was something else entirely: not only does iPadOS enable split-screen for the same app, but it also supports an arbitrary number of app windows; in fact, just like on a Mac, you can create as many app windows as you want in iPadOS, and you can even preview them all with Exposé; however, the whole system has been designed around the iPad's touch interactions with long-tap gestures, drag and drop, Slide Over, and Split View.
The net result of this new multitasking approach is a drastic departure from iOS' longstanding assumption that an app can only live in one window at a time: it's going to take a while to get used to the idea that iPad apps can spawn multiple windows, and that the same document or app view can coexist with other app windows across the system in different spaces. At the same time, iPadOS' multitasking builds upon the Mac's multiwindow environment and iOS 11's drag and drop multitasking in a way that feels inevitable – like the best innovations always do.
At a high level, iPadOS multitasking is still largely enabled3 by drag and drop: while iOS 11 allowed you to add apps to Split View or Slide Over by dragging their icons into a space, iPadOS lets you add windows by dragging app views or content around. For instance, Notes lets you pick up an individual note and create a new window off of it by dragging it to the side of the screen; in Messages, conversations can become windows; in Mail, a specific feature of the app (the message composer) can be detached from the main UI and turned into a window.
Third-party developers can integrate with the same framework that Apple is using for window creation by adopting the "scene" technology; users always get to choose whether they want to create a window in Split View, Slide Over, or full-screen (for the latter, by dropping a view along the top edge of the iPad's screen).
It makes sense for window creation on iPad to revolve around drag and drop: it's the same system millions of users already rely upon for multitasking, and it's now grown to accommodate app views in addition to icons. Unlike the Mac, the iPad has no menu bar where the user might find the 'File ⇾ New Window' option, and external keyboards are optional; therefore, Apple decided to eliminate an old iPad limitation by taking a Mac concept (the same app can have multiple windows) and redesigning it around the common denominator of all iPad models: touch.
There are a couple other examples of this strategy at play in iPadOS. In addition to dragging content and views from apps, you can also long-tap notifications and drop them elsewhere on-screen as new windows. Doing so will create a window for the content shown in the notification – something that is already possible with iMessage notifications.4 This feature is another instance of rethinking multitasking to cater to the iPad's strengths: it seems completely obvious that you should be able to drag a notification to transform it into a window, and I can't wait to see how developers take advantage of it in their apps. It's also the kind of feature that would be hard to implement on iPhone and could perhaps be ported to macOS, but which shines on iPad thanks to the ability to pick up a notification banner and drag it across the screen.
My favorite surprise in iPadOS' new multitasking environment so far, however, is the ability to cycle through multiple apps/windows in Slide Over by swiping across their Home indicator at the bottom. Like in iOS 11, Slide Over continues to be a layer of the interface shared at a system-wide level – meaning that the same Slide Over set of apps will always be available regardless of the space you're in – but in iPadOS you can put multiple apps in Slide Over at the same time. You can then swipe through Slide Over apps like you'd flip through a stack of cards, and you can even swipe up and pause to access an app switcher specifically dedicated to Slide Over apps.
Effectively, Apple has brought the iPhone X's entire multitasking UI to Slide Over in iPadOS. In the few days I've been testing iPadOS, this has already come in handy a few times: when I was watching a YouTube live stream about E35, for example, I was able to keep YouTube in full-screen (so I'd have a large video player on the left side of the screen) and move between Twitter and Messages in Slide Over; similarly, when watching session videos from WWDC, I kept the WWDC app and Safari in Split View while flipping between different notes from the Notes app opened as windows in Slide Over. I was not expecting Slide Over to mature into its own app switcher for compact apps, but I can already see how this will become one of my most used iPadOS features.
It remains to be seen how the increased complexity of iPadOS' multitasking will be received and managed by users. Window management on iPad requires a fundamental change of mindset – we've been trained to think of apps as individual entities for almost a decade now – and seeing a collection of app windows in Exposé on iPad for the first time can be somewhat intimidating, even for more advanced iPad users.
More to follow
I'm back home after a fantastic week at WWDC1, and I'm now in the process of sifting through the surprising amount of new software features Apple unveiled in San Jose. It's going to take me a while to digest all that's new in iOS 13 and Shortcuts2; of course, you should expect my iOS/iPadOS 13 review in the fall, and we will share more hands-on articles and editorials on MacStories and Club MacStories throughout the summer. For now though, after using the iPadOS beta on my 12.9" iPad Pro for a few days, I'd like to share some initial considerations on iPadOS and what it means for the future of the platform.
Here's what I wrote in the conclusion of Beyond the Tablet:
As I hope to have demonstrated in this story, the iPad Pro is capable of filling roles you may not typically associate with the idea of a tablet. But as I've also argued, there are still several areas where the iPad is behind macOS in terms of file management, multitasking, app automation, and integration with external hardware. Let me be clear on one key concept though: for the iPad to evolve, I don't think Apple should directly copy features that have been done on the Mac before.
I think there is plenty iOS, and by extension the iPad, can learn from macOS and the long history of the Mac. What matters is the end goal: I want the iPad to empower me to achieve the same results I can produce on a Mac, even – and especially if – that power comes from old ideas that have been rethought, redesigned, and re-engineered for the new age of touch and hybrid computing.
File management, multitasking, automation, and external hardware integration are the biggest areas of improvement in iPadOS compared to iOS 12, which make Beyond the Tablet the first longform story I ever published that became outdated in less than a month (and that was the point all along – to document a moment in time of the iPad's evolution that could serve as future reference).
What truly matters, however, is that the message Apple is sending with iPadOS is the kind of trajectory I wanted to see for the future of iPad. There are functionalities such as multiwindow and file management that the Mac figured out decades ago; in bringing them to iPadOS, however, Apple isn't simply copying and pasting the same features from one platform to another: instead, they've taken those features' underlying concepts and fundamentally rethought them for the iPad's touch nature and iOS foundation.
Multitasking and Multiwindow
When rumors were swirling ahead of WWDC that Apple would bring improved multitasking capabilities to iPad with support for multiple app windows, some wondered whether the company might consider Mac-like free-form window resizing on iPad – a theory that never made sense given the device's constraints and touch interactions. On the opposite end of the speculation spectrum, others questioned whether it may even be possible for Apple to do anything more than a split-screen mode for the same app, à la Safari in iOS 10. The answer we got was something else entirely: not only does iPadOS enable split-screen for the same app, but it also supports an arbitrary number of app windows; in fact, just like on a Mac, you can create as many app windows as you want in iPadOS, and you can even preview them all with Exposé; however, the whole system has been designed around the iPad's touch interactions with long-tap gestures, drag and drop, Slide Over, and Split View.
The net result of this new multitasking approach is a drastic departure from iOS' longstanding assumption that an app can only live in one window at a time: it's going to take a while to get used to the idea that iPad apps can spawn multiple windows, and that the same document or app view can coexist with other app windows across the system in different spaces. At the same time, iPadOS' multitasking builds upon the Mac's multiwindow environment and iOS 11's drag and drop multitasking in a way that feels inevitable – like the best innovations always do.
At a high level, iPadOS multitasking is still largely enabled3 by drag and drop: while iOS 11 allowed you to add apps to Split View or Slide Over by dragging their icons into a space, iPadOS lets you add windows by dragging app views or content around. For instance, Notes lets you pick up an individual note and create a new window off of it by dragging it to the side of the screen; in Messages, conversations can become windows; in Mail, a specific feature of the app (the message composer) can be detached from the main UI and turned into a window.
Third-party developers can integrate with the same framework that Apple is using for window creation by adopting the "scene" technology; users always get to choose whether they want to create a window in Split View, Slide Over, or full-screen (for the latter, by dropping a view along the top edge of the iPad's screen).
It makes sense for window creation on iPad to revolve around drag and drop: it's the same system millions of users already rely upon for multitasking, and it's now grown to accommodate app views in addition to icons. Unlike the Mac, the iPad has no menu bar where the user might find the 'File ⇾ New Window' option, and external keyboards are optional; therefore, Apple decided to eliminate an old iPad limitation by taking a Mac concept (the same app can have multiple windows) and redesigning it around the common denominator of all iPad models: touch.
There are a couple other examples of this strategy at play in iPadOS. In addition to dragging content and views from apps, you can also long-tap notifications and drop them elsewhere on-screen as new windows. Doing so will create a window for the content shown in the notification – something that is already possible with iMessage notifications.4 This feature is another instance of rethinking multitasking to cater to the iPad's strengths: it seems completely obvious that you should be able to drag a notification to transform it into a window, and I can't wait to see how developers take advantage of it in their apps. It's also the kind of feature that would be hard to implement on iPhone and could perhaps be ported to macOS, but which shines on iPad thanks to the ability to pick up a notification banner and drag it across the screen.
My favorite surprise in iPadOS' new multitasking environment so far, however, is the ability to cycle through multiple apps/windows in Slide Over by swiping across their Home indicator at the bottom. Like in iOS 11, Slide Over continues to be a layer of the interface shared at a system-wide level – meaning that the same Slide Over set of apps will always be available regardless of the space you're in – but in iPadOS you can put multiple apps in Slide Over at the same time. You can then swipe through Slide Over apps like you'd flip through a stack of cards, and you can even swipe up and pause to access an app switcher specifically dedicated to Slide Over apps.
Effectively, Apple has brought the iPhone X's entire multitasking UI to Slide Over in iPadOS. In the few days I've been testing iPadOS, this has already come in handy a few times: when I was watching a YouTube live stream about E35, for example, I was able to keep YouTube in full-screen (so I'd have a large video player on the left side of the screen) and move between Twitter and Messages in Slide Over; similarly, when watching session videos from WWDC, I kept the WWDC app and Safari in Split View while flipping between different notes from the Notes app opened as windows in Slide Over. I was not expecting Slide Over to mature into its own app switcher for compact apps, but I can already see how this will become one of my most used iPadOS features.
It remains to be seen how the increased complexity of iPadOS' multitasking will be received and managed by users. Window management on iPad requires a fundamental change of mindset – we've been trained to think of apps as individual entities for almost a decade now – and seeing a collection of app windows in Exposé on iPad for the first time can be somewhat intimidating, even for more advanced iPad users.
More to follow