Apple Debuts App Windows, Full External Display Support, and More for M1 iPads

[JippaLippa]

So, i just bought an iPad and I already can't take advantage of the most important iOS 16 feature??
What the heck???

This leads me to believe you bought the 9th gen regular ipad.
While it's technically a great value, I'd have springed for an Air as, at least, you're guaranteed a long time support with the M1

 

[whatta]

Wait, under this implementation, are the hideous black sidebars finally removed?

if you have M1 chip, yes, otherwise no..

 

[kc9hzn]

This leads me to believe you bought the 9th gen regular ipad.
While it's technically a great value, I'd have springed for an Air as, at least, you're guaranteed a long time support with the M1

Right, it’s a little amusing if someone buys entry level hardware and expects every new feature to work on it (and to work well, for that matter). That’s always been the cost of “cheaping out” and getting entry level hardware, missing out on software features limited to higher end hardware.

 

[dgdosen]

I’ve got the latest iPad mini and already it’s being left out of key iOS updates. Oh well, I basically just use it for streaming anyway.

I would have been nice to try this out with a new mini. I'm sure it could handle it...

 

[VictorTango777]

Since Apple only wants to support touch input on iPadOS, will it work with external touch monitors such as these?

Computer Accessories and Peripherals

Shop Dell’s high-quality computer accessories like keyboards, mice, webcams, batteries and more. Enjoy great deals and build your ideal PC setup for home or business.

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Touch Screen Displays

Offering multi touch and whiteboard capabilities, and installation flexibility, these interactive displays boast long-range visibility in up to 4K resolution that promotes collaboration.

na.panasonic.com

Desktop Monitors & Touch Screen Monitors,

Slim, narrow border Planar desktop and touch screen monitors offer high performance and elite image quality with the fastest graphics and most vibrant colors.

www.planar.com

 

[wwinter86]

Probably not? Color reference is typically a video and image professional type thing. Unless you’re obsessed with having professional color reproduction in your movie streaming from Netflix, it likely doesn’t change your experience much. (Actually, as a matter of fact, I’d suspect color reference depends on media that carries accurate color info, and that Netflix streaming likely doesn’t have that level of info.)

If there is no disadvantage to having it on, I may leave it on as I just tried it and even YouTube videos notice as different at least flesh tones

 

[whatta]

I love all these people coming in here and acting like you shouldn't ever expect software updates for your device, as if we should be grateful for getting a single year's worth of iPadOS updates.

We're in the middle of economic uncertainty amidst record inflation and we're supposed to just spend nearly a thousand dollars to get these features when we already spent that same damn amount of money on a "pro" device just a few years ago? Every single iPad Pro has been massively overspecced, with reviewers saying they're excited to see what's to come with iPadOS. I guess what they should have said was don't buy these devices unless what you're looking for is a thousand-dollar big iPhone. After all, we're not supposed to buy products expecting any kind of future updates!

I know when Apple holds features back due to performance. It sucks, but it's a valid reason. Nobody is going to convince me that the A12X processor and 4 gigs of RAM in my iPad Pro can't handle floating windows, some form of true external display support (even if the number of running apps is cut down), and most of the other features introduced in this update.

I do completely agree, I do understand when a feature is left out for a good reason other than artificially pushing for an upgrade.
AND also, make a compromise please, like as you said, limit the number of apps. iPadOS 15 can handle 3 apps at once (two in split view and a third one over it), so just give us the same amount of apps AND a proper external screen support.
AND apple has been very very good in long term software support, like iPad 5 with 2GB of RAM is still getting iPadOS 16.. but this external monitor needs M1 is crazy, at least give the feature to ALL USB C iPads..

 

[bradman83]

Like, what type of workflows are you doing that the iPad isn’t suitable for? I’ve never really gotten a clear answer from anyone when I’ve asked that, the impression I’ve gotten is that it’s mostly “I’m used to working with a bunch of windows [very few of which are ever in active play at the same time], and I’m not interested in changing how I work”. It’s my experience that windows just multiply and add clutter and friction, it’s not an especially great way of working. Windows from 8 apps at a time is really quite a bit, I’d imagine most people don’t have workflows that need more than that (that can’t be separated into another window group). That’s legitimately a lot of windows to be juggling for any one task, surely such a workflow can be broken into smaller functional limits?

For me personally it comes down to the robustness of the apps available on iPad. I spend a lot of time in my day job in Excel, and the iPad version both lacks certain advanced features, but it is overall clunkier to manipulate. Excel in general I find works better with a mouse, not even a trackpad, for how I use it, and Microsoft’s mouse support for its iPad Office apps is half-baked at best.

For most other deficiencies I find that it’s due to third party developers not embracing the latest technologies, or even ones that are a few years old. Still not all apps have proper mouse support. Many apps barely support the Files interface. Most of what I could do on a desktop can be done on an iPad but it requires extra clicks or other workarounds. I was encouraged by the fact that Apple mentioned desktop-class apps for iPad during their presentation, not only cleaning up and refreshing their own stock apps but also adding APIs and other resources to allow developers to do the same. The onus is on developers to actually use them.

 

[BallsMcGee]

The 2018 A12X model only had 4GB RAM, that may call it close, but the 2020 A12Z model had 6GB RAM and the A12Z was used in the DTK. It should be able to run no issues on those models and how can you literally cut off new features for a one gen earlier product and only support the latest models with a new feature...

For what it's worth, A12X and A12Z have identical CPU performance, A12Z just has an extra GPU core. The A12X in 1TB config also has 6GB ram. So these suckers could run Stage Manager, Apple is just being Apple again. If anything, they could have limited active windows to 6 instead of 8 etc.

 

[xxray]

So external display support is only for the M1 iPad Pro’s?

That's unknown at this point.

Stage Manager has the #5 M1 disclaimer, but Display Support, despite saying Stage Manager, does not have the M1 disclaimer. Stage Manager may require Thunderbolt, while display support only requires USB-C.

Everyone needs to relax about features until the first beta is out.
View attachment 2014579
View attachment 2014580

External display support is limited to M1 iPad Pro. Non-M1 iPads are a no go. Unsure about iPad Air. Source: https://www.apple.com/ipados/ipados-16-preview/features/

 

[flapflapflap]

if you have M1 chip, yes, otherwise no..

Fantastic.

I guess I will bend the knee this fall/winter for the M2 iPad Pro.

 

[Shanghaichica]

External display support is limited to M1 iPad Pro. Non-M1 iPads are a no go. Unsure about iPad Air. Source: https://www.apple.com/ipados/ipados-16-preview/features/

So basically all the non M1 iPad’s are getting is the weather app. What a waste of time. They should have made iPadOS16 M1 iPad only and cut everything else out. Amazing that the smashed up galaxy note 8, via Dex that I have at home can do more than my iPad pro.

 

[BallsMcGee]

Since Apple only wants to support touch input on iPadOS, will it work with external touch monitors such as these?

Computer Accessories and Peripherals

Shop Dell’s high-quality computer accessories like keyboards, mice, webcams, batteries and more. Enjoy great deals and build your ideal PC setup for home or business.

www.dell.com

Touch Screen Displays

Offering multi touch and whiteboard capabilities, and installation flexibility, these interactive displays boast long-range visibility in up to 4K resolution that promotes collaboration.

na.panasonic.com

Desktop Monitors & Touch Screen Monitors,

Slim, narrow border Planar desktop and touch screen monitors offer high performance and elite image quality with the fastest graphics and most vibrant colors.

www.planar.com

You can use keyboard/mouse input. I doubt Apple will allow touch input on third party monitors but I'm hoping I'm wrong.

 

[WannaGoMac]

if you have M1 chip, yes, otherwise no..

If a M1 is needed just to FINALLY display full screen on an external display, than iPadOS is pretty horribly designed.

 

[roncron]

Thank you, baby Jesus!!!

 

[whatta]

Someone has to explain how the A12Z iPad Pro version doesn't support this when the ARM Dev Kit Mac mini was based on the A12Z, meaning the A12Z is fully capable of the same stuff M1 is. Hopefully Apple will backtrack like last year (they brought some stuff announced only for M1 to intel in later betas). All iPad Pro's should have this feature, it's called the 'Pro'. Don't make me spend another $1000 or more on a new model when you promised the 'Pro' model when first launched in 2015 would bring. desktop experience to the iPad for Pro users and never delivered until now.

I do completely agree and I do hope the customers can/will push Apple to (change their mind and) give external monitor support to all iPads with USB C at least. I don't care about that silly app switcher and one window above another, just give me full screen safari on external monitor.

 

[kc9hzn]

For me personally it comes down to the robustness of the apps available on iPad. I spend a lot of time in my day job in Excel, and the iPad version both lacks certain advanced features, but it is overall clunkier to manipulate. Excel in general I find works better with a mouse, not even a trackpad, for how I use it, and Microsoft’s mouse support for its iPad Office apps is half-baked at best.

For most other deficiencies I find that it’s due to third party developers not embracing the latest technologies, or even ones that are a few years old. Still not all apps have proper mouse support. Many apps barely support the Files interface. Most of what I could do on a desktop can be done on an iPad but it requires extra clicks or other workarounds. I was encouraged by the fact that Apple mentioned desktop-class apps for iPad during their presentation, not only cleaning up and refreshing their own stock apps but also adding APIs and other resources to allow developers to do the same. The onus is on developers to actually use them.

And that’s a legitimate complaint. For whatever reason, most developers don’t put out full featured versions of their apps on iPadOS. It doesn’t really seem to be a failing of the iPad itself or iPadOS but more a failing of third party devs. (Doesn’t help that companies like Google drag their heels for literal years in adopting new iOS features [look at any Google app update news story here and see how Google is perpetually 18 to 24 months late in adopting new iOS features].) Of course, Microsoft and Adobe, some of the other big professional software companies, are unfortunately actively incentivized to push out crappy iPad apps. (For instance, Microsoft doesn’t want an Office suite on the iPad that’s fully functioning, as it would defeat the Surface Pro’s principle competitive advantage over the iPad.)

 

[klasma]

I just don’t understand why they don’t let you flip over to running macOS if you have a keyboard and mouse/trackpad connected. What’s the problem?

Too much work to support for a small fraction of users, and/or it would cannibalize MacBook sales.

 

[bradman83]

And that’s a legitimate complaint. For whatever reason, most developers don’t put out full featured versions of their apps on iPadOS. It doesn’t really seem to be a failing of the iPad itself or iPadOS but more a failing of third party devs. (Doesn’t help that companies like Google drag their heels for literal years in adopting new iOS features [look at any Google app update news story here and see how Google is perpetually 18 to 24 months late in adopting new iOS features].) Of course, Microsoft and Adobe, some of the other big professional software companies, are unfortunately actively incentivized to push out crappy iPad apps. (For instance, Microsoft doesn’t want an Office suite on the iPad that’s fully functioning, as it would defeat the Surface Pro’s principle competitive advantage over the iPad.)

In all fairness Adobe has been great about putting out pro-level iPad apps. Lightroom for iPad is roughly feature parity with Lightroom CC for desktop (new Lightroom, not Classic, though CC and Classic are also almost feature parity). The only missing features are RAM sucking functions like panorama stitching and HDR merge. Otherwise Lightroom is a fantastic program and I can easily edit photos on that as well as I can on my MBP.

I don’t think Microsoft is concerned about cannibalizing Surface hardware - as long as they sell Microsoft 365 subscriptions they’re happy. The problem is they, and every developer, don’t want to have to choose between the larger user pool of base model iPads who use touch-only and iPad Air/Pro users with their magic keyboards and pencils. Adobe even said they have no plans to bring those missing features to Lightroom for iPad unless all versions of Lightroom mobile can support it, which isn’t happening anytime soon unless Apple dramatically bumps the memory of the base iPad.

 

[VictorTango777]

You can use keyboard/mouse input. I doubt Apple will allow touch input on third party monitors but I'm hoping I'm wrong.

Everyone keeps arguing that only iPadOS should support touch. If there is a standard USB HID Class for multitouch like there is for keyboard and mouse, why shouldn't iPadOS support it? Do people expect Apple to make a 30-50 inch iPad?

 

[kc9hzn]

In all fairness Adobe has been great about putting out pro-level iPad apps. Lightroom for iPad is roughly feature parity with Lightroom CC for desktop (new Lightroom, not Classic, though CC and Classic are also almost feature parity). The only missing features are RAM sucking functions like panorama stitching and HDR merge. Otherwise Lightroom is a fantastic program and I can easily edit photos on that as well as I can on my MBP.

I don’t think Microsoft is concerned about cannibalizing Surface hardware - as long as they sell Microsoft 365 subscriptions they’re happy. The problem is they, and every developer, don’t want to have to choose between the larger user pool of base model iPads who use touch-only and iPad Air/Pro users with their magic keyboards and pencils. Adobe even said they have no plans to bring those missing features to Lightroom for iPad unless all versions of Lightroom mobile can support it, which isn’t happening anytime soon unless Apple dramatically bumps the memory of the base iPad.

Which is really quite unfortunate, as image processing workflows are one of the pro workflows the iPad Pro seems intentionally geared towards (see Apple Pencil and color reference).

 

[jdawgnoonan]

Someone may have already answered this, but with Stage Manager do the thumbnails on the left ever hide and let you work with the apps without all of the wasted space?

 

[klasma]

No Stage does not mean no external display support. They are separate features.

It’s quite likely that the external display support requires new hardware (USB-C display controller bandwidth or whatever). And in my opinion the Stage Manager is primarily useful with an external display — on the iPad display you lose too much screen real estate for the actual content of the application window.

 

[dgdosen]

It’s quite likely that the external display support requires new hardware. And in my opinion the Stage Manager is primarily useful with an external display. On the iPad display you lose too much screen real estate for the actual application content.

I can drive a 4K monitor with my mini. It's just a mirror. Of very little use (IMO).

 

[ProfessionalFan]

Seems like one step closer to the iPad being basically a Mac when docked and connected to an external monitor.