Bloomberg: iPadOS 15 to Feature Improved Multitasking, Redesigned Notification Banner for iOS 15

[Falhófnir]

The way multitasking works on iPadOS grinds my gears and i find myself going grrrrr often. Just dragging apps around all the time when i just want it to open on the left or right. I do a lot of multitasking on the iPad and wow - hope the update is sorts it all out.

Agree, it’s still a very clunky, unintuitive and limited experience. Could do with being completely reimagined/ streamlined.

 

[sracer]

A new version of iPadOS wouldn't be complete without a complete redesign of multitasking. (if the rumor is to be believed)

I’m really hoping that the utter lack of any information means they’re keeping something big tightly under wraps. Just like how no one knew the M1 was doing into the new iPads.

I doubt macOS will run on iPads but maybe this will open the door for universal binaries that run on iPadOS or macOS on Apple Silicon.

I want feature complete apps on iPadOS that have the same features on the iPad that are present on macOS

There are limits to how much functionality can be included in an app designed for a touch interface. Creative design can only go so far.

Microsoft got slammed by Apple fans for their attempts to have desktop-strength apps in a tablet form-factor. Many of these fans are also looking for Apple to do the same thing... and it will be equally unsuccessful unless the definition of "success" is changed to fit what Apple ends up producing.

There are fundamental differences between iPadOS and MacOS (and no, the supposed shared code base between the two doesn't mean that they're the same).

Sandboxed storage in iPadOS is the biggest but not only difference.

Apple's hokey implementation of mouse support will require them to dramatically change direction in the future if they were to bring desktop-strength apps to the platform. Traditional mouse support was available via a jailbroken app back during the iPad 1 days. It operated just like mouse support on Android worked... when using touch, no mouse pointer was visible, but when mouse movement was detected, a traditional mouse pointer appeared and functioned just like a mouse on a desktop computer worked.

Chrome OS and Android (specifically with Samsung's DeX) are the closest to getting it "right" (but still have work to do). Microsoft is still trying to figure it out and making progress in that area. Apple is going to have to adopt some of the UX design considerations and underlying system functions from those alternatives to do something similar with iPadOS... but their "be contrary for the sake of being contrary" approach will take more time to get there...

...which is fine for them because the longer it takes, the more hardware they can sell in the meantime.

 

[jonnysods]

I hope one day they will bring out richer notifications for iOS. I had a Nexus 4 once, my only Android experience. They notifications were more varied and interactive - I hope we can get a cool upgrade to that in time.

 

[jlc1978]

Let iPads connect to external monitors and use those *as* external monitors, receiving touch from those monitors if the monitor is capable.

Having used touch screens, they are a real PITA to use.

I’d rather see the reported 5GB limit that apps can use removed, native M1 apps from the Mac ported over with UI designs that are more touch friendly and

That would likely just result in poor ports like they ones where a PC App was ported but the UI not redone to match the Mac interface.

better external monitor support that includes extending the screen so that you’re not stuck in 4:3 on the monitor.

Then developers would have to figure out how to use an extended screen effectively without messing up the 4:3 aspect ratio presentation; winding up with a bunch of different weird implementations as developers shoot for the lowest common denominator.
.

I want feature complete apps on iPadOS that have the same features on the iPad that are present on macOS

That, IMHO, is the key to making the iPad much more usable as a primary device. If I could run Office with the same features I could leave my MBP at home probably 60% of the time, at least.

Improvements to Multitasking needs to include work on multiple documents within one app. Like tabs on the Mac.

it’s nuts on a “pro” device we have to continually open and close files to do basic, common multi-file workflows.

Yes, That is a feature that would help make the iPad much more usable.

the other thing we need on iPadOS is some type of “menu system” It doesn’t have to copy the Mac and should be reimagined for tablets, but dumpimg everything in the ”share” menu is sloppy and lazy.

I find the Share menu convenient as you have everything i one place instead of multiple menus.

Does anyone really care about widgets? It was popularized on the Mac and it was a complete failure. Who cares about widgets?

I find them a good way to get specific information quickly without opening an app, such as the time in various time zones when setting up a call, calendar events, etc.

Combine macOS and iPadOS already. Allow Mac apps on iPad,

Oh please no. All that would result in is compromises that make the app painful to use in either environments. Either it gets optimized for the mac and thus is challenged on the iPad, or vice versa.

Quit being coy, Apple. Even though you say this would never happen, we all know this is the end result as iPads and Macs become more and more alike in software and hardware.

However, they focus on distinct user experiences and use cases; and thus have different approaches.

How about an actual local storage file system? For example what if we need to work in remote areas with no networks, and we need to quickly share files between apps? Currently the iPad becomes extremely tedious to work with in these conditions, when iCloud is not accesible.

What about files? I would like to see all apps store their documents there by default to make easier interchange; teh ones tehre are pretty easy to move from app to app.

They talked about not merging Mac and iPad. They did not about allowing macOS on iPads. Big difference.

And the big difference is how each OS approaches the user interface; Mac OS on the iPad would be a human factors nightmare or simply the same WIMP system where the iPad is simply a screen.

They will have to go that way if they want to keep professional work in their ecosystem or change iPadOS to more than just changing its name.

Sure, iPADOS will evolve separately from MacOS.

They should better consult with HP. RPN for life!

I'll Enter a vote for that.

 

[sfwalter]

Placing widgets anywhere on iPad screen will be wonderful.

I sure hope this isn't the headline feature. As Al this is parity with iOS release from last year

 

[burgman]

For the first time on big Apple updates I’m going to sit this one out for a few weeks. Tired of having to do restores after updates last few cycles. Seeing were Apple employee’s attention is about coming to the office, now I understand the issues and missteps.

 

[bradman83]

People are clamoring for features and apps to support the power of the latest iPad Pros, but Apple has created something of a mess with the varying specifications across the iPad lineup. The best selling iPad remains the base model with its paltry 3 GB of RAM. The 2018 base model only came with 2GB of RAM; the 2019 Air only had 3GB. iPads haven't suffered from a lack of processing power in the past few years but RAM has always been a limiting factor for both more robust multitasking and more advanced features. If I'm a developer looking to build or port an iPad app, it only makes sense that I'd want to ensure the app can run (and run well) on as many iPad models as possible.

I'll give a real world example. Lightroom for iPad has near feature parity with Lightroom CC for desktop (the new version, not Classic). The two big features missing from the iPad version are HDR merge and panorama stitching, both extremely memory-intensive tasks when working with raw camera files. One of the Lightroom developers posted a refreshingly honest take on whether this feature will ever be included - they won't add it unless it will run (and run well) on all models that support Lightroom. The 2021 iPad Pros, and even the 6GB 2020 and 2018 Pros could run these tasks easily, but until the base model can do the same it's just not worth the developer's time to add a feature that only a small subset of the user base can use.

 

[jazz1]

Small screens tend to limit you what you can do. It's a interesting challenge to allow multitasking on a iPad with split screens representations looking like iPhone screens to be used in a similar fashion to say a MacBook Air. The original Macs had similar difficulties their small screens with MacOS before Mac OS X. Remember switcher?

Anyway I have been using IPadOS for awhile, I await how Apple has improved multitasking with iPadOS in version 15.

Yes, I worry about having such a small screen to work well with multiple MacOS like windows. Would using an external monitor might help with that? Or it just would scale more windows anyway? I'm having a hard time imagining that working well. But that is why I'm a consumer, and not working at Apple

 

[1rottenapple]

Does anyone really care about widgets? It was popularized on the Mac and it was a complete failure. Who cares about widgets? It is so inconsequential. What about file system, multitasking, terminal/command line, torrents app, multimedia codecs, multi-screen dynamism, and window management. Obviously this is outside of control.

Agreed! I seriously don’t even use them.it’s not enabled on Mac, iPad, or iPhone

 

[MacBH928]

Are you thinking of Gil Amelio with the airplane metaphor? He showed an airplane graphic with more and more things being glommed onto it. Steve spoke later in that event, shortly after he returned to Apple.

If he did I do not know, I saw the Steve Jobs part only

 

[MacBH928]

Does anyone really care about widgets? It was popularized on the Mac and it was a complete failure. Who cares about widgets? It is so inconsequential. What about file system, multitasking, terminal/command line, torrents app, multimedia codecs, multi-screen dynamism, and window management. Obviously this is outside of control.

What can I say? many people wanted widgets saying Android had them. I don't care about them.

On MacOS though I don't see them as failure. The Dashboard was great to have things for quick looks up like dictionary, weather, stock. They should bring that back.

 

[M87]

At MINIMUM Apple needs to announce that their Pro apps will be available for iPad Pro. Anything short of that will be completely underwhelming. I'd hope for a lot more, but that much at least seems in the realm of reality.

 

[cardfan]

They are going to continuously evolve iPadOS until it‘s pro enough for Pro devices. Makes no sense for them to nerf their App Store income by allowing users to dualboot into macOS.

They would sell more iPads. More App Store income. Very few buy iPads for pro reasons. It’s entertainment. But they’ll justify it if they can run macOS. But like running windows on a Mac very few will do it.

 

[subjonas]

Notification banners should NOT be press-able until at least 0.5 SECOND after it pops up.
I can’t count how many times I’m using an app and a notification banner pops up at the same time that I’m tapping the exact same spot so I press the notification without even knowing what it is, taking me out of what I was doing. Terrible UX.

 

[dwaite]

True, but we've come a long way and it's perhaps time for the OS provider to revisit that decision. I still like how iOS encourages developers to care about power & efficiency but there's a middle ground that has not yet been found.

The middle ground is that the OS and frameworks help and app and notify it 'save your stuff now'. Apple could always give us something incrementally better than cloudkit and coredata, but thats basically where we are.

Any more and you start to slip to orthogonally persistent operating systems, where virtual memory is the primary mode of persistence. Many of these have no first-class concepts of filesystems or running apps, even privately.

All of the internal storage winds up looking like a giant block of virtual memory to back every installed app, which are always available in "memory". Killing an app is akin to uninstalling it. The system does periodic snapshotting of virtual memory to deal with things like power loss.

Basically there is no app or filesystem (even privately), just <storage size> virtual memory. The OS does periodic snapshotting of all modified memory onto storage, so that in the event of a hardware failure the system has a recent snapshot.

This is the sort of behavior most modern user-facing operating systems attempt to emulate, but they don't go this far since it is very alien to developers. If UNIX's philosophy is that everything is a file, these systems might be built around the idea that everything is a capability-protected object. Persistent operating systems and capability-based operating systems often overlap.

You may also see these overlap with global address space virtual machines, where you are not allowed to write or run native code and the system is entirely one address space, where developer code is interpreted so that it can be checked against bad/unsafe behavior.

In other words, not a small step but a revolutionary one, and not really one where there are any big commercially proven efforts.

 

[dwaite]

Speaking of iMessage, how about the ability to back up messages separate from an iCloud backup?

iMessages aren't backed up via computer encrypted backups?

 

[dwaite]

I find the Share menu convenient as you have everything i one place instead of multiple menus.

A lot of people seem to know this, that is technically called the action button. Sharing are just the highlighted actions (user messaging apps, apps that can deal with a particular piece of data), but you also tend to get things like 'request desktop web site'.

There appear to be groups even within Apple who would like this changed to be clearer that it is representing general actions against an item (rather than just sharing) - see how mail overloaded the 'reply' button instead for most actions.

 

[Ubuntu]

The middle ground is that the OS and frameworks help and app and notify it 'save your stuff now'. Apple could always give us something incrementally better than cloudkit and coredata, but thats basically where we are.

Any more and you start to slip to orthogonally persistent operating systems, where virtual memory is the primary mode of persistence. Many of these have no first-class concepts of filesystems or running apps, even privately.

All of the internal storage winds up looking like a giant block of virtual memory to back every installed app, which are always available in "memory". Killing an app is akin to uninstalling it. The system does periodic snapshotting of virtual memory to deal with things like power loss.

Basically there is no app or filesystem (even privately), just <storage size> virtual memory. The OS does periodic snapshotting of all modified memory onto storage, so that in the event of a hardware failure the system has a recent snapshot.

This is the sort of behavior most modern user-facing operating systems attempt to emulate, but they don't go this far since it is very alien to developers. If UNIX's philosophy is that everything is a file, these systems might be built around the idea that everything is a capability-protected object. Persistent operating systems and capability-based operating systems often overlap.

You may also see these overlap with global address space virtual machines, where you are not allowed to write or run native code and the system is entirely one address space, where developer code is interpreted so that it can be checked against bad/unsafe behavior.

In other words, not a small step but a revolutionary one, and not really one where there are any big commercially proven efforts.

Thank you for the in depth explanation 😊

 

[Bubble99]

I hope one day they will bring out richer notifications for iOS. I had a Nexus 4 once, my only Android experience. They notifications were more varied and interactive - I hope we can get a cool upgrade to that in time.

Sorry I don’t know what so bad about iOS notifications.

I have not used android for long time. So unless some one here can post some screenshots to compare the two.

 

[Bubble99]

The way multitasking works on iPadOS grinds my gears and i find myself going grrrrr often. Just dragging apps around all the time when i just want it to open on the left or right. I do a lot of multitasking on the iPad and wow - hope the update is sorts it all out.

So you are looking for floating window? Where you can drag and drop windows and move it around? And have three or more apps than your typical split view of only two apps showing?

You not happy that it only shows two apps at time? You want it to show three or more apps at time?

Be like the windows floating window and lots of apps showing at once?

Some thing like Dex for android?

 

[Bubble99]

I think you are comparing apples with oranges, virtual memory works different across OS's. On top of that, the average Windows laptop user does not boast a fast SSD, and the latest SSDs used by Apple's latest Macs and iPads are averaging 3 GB/s, even in write speed. That means you can have your considerably not-so-optimized Photoshop be fired up in 2 sec even if it's getting bloated to 6 GB RAM usage, and even if your RAM is already full.

Imagine a process of doing a video. Consider using something like Premiere, cutting and creating some video. You find yourself at 10 GB RAM usage already within your project - try to add another 8 GB video and you're already at the end of what you could do (every iPad below the 16 GB RAM version already, even if the RAM allocation of 5 GB had been lifted, would purge itself and have the app crash).
Imagine that same process with 5 GB of RAM in your project, and you want to import a 3 GB video file to add to your project - you would hit your hardware maximum on any model below 16 GB RAM, and even on 8 GB RAM M1 iPads, you would purge your apps because OS and other apps need RAM too.

You don't need to be a "pro" user to encounter app purge, this happens all the time, but this also means that you will never be able to count on the OS to support your work integrity. Even if, say, Premiere would feature an autosave - saving a 15 GB file would, with a write speed of 3 GB/s, take 5 seconds which means you will need to have the OS pause all activity that requires to access the disk.

This is the reason why people can NOT use iPads for work that has no guarantee to be restored instantly. Also, you cannot leave it in the hands of developers to provide a failsafe the same way you don't leave it to developers to "enable" multitasking gestures and be allowed to leave their apps.

No one needs to wonder why there is no professional video, sound or general editing or programming software available on i"Pad"OS. It's simply because the missing pagefile prevents you from being productive in those areas.

Well SSD are getting faster all the time and one day may be as fast as RAM. But that is not only problem.

Having an iPad with 3GB of RAM and 128GB of SSD with only 30GB free SSD space is also a problem if you are always going over your RAM and it starts to use the SSD.

As 30GB free SSD would easy be used up if you have Firefox running with 12 tabs open, videos you looking at, office app and other things running. And you don't close and save things.

So unless there is a swamp limit all your SSD would be used up. If it just start crazy using all your SSD free space.

Not to say a lot of people have only 32GB SSD for the iPad.

If 90% of desktop computers and laptops today running windows only have 2GB of RAM and 32GB of SSD the internet would be very different today and most apps for windows and other OSs.

More RAM and SSD is not aways the answer. As programmers would just code for it and it be more bloated.

The problem is desktop computers and laptop computers have more free space and RAM before the smartphones or tablet computing that lack the amount of free space and RAM.

Computers in the 90s did not have purging problems and you could run many things in the background but the internet and apps for program for it in 90s was very small amount of RAM it used.

You want iPadOS coded where most people have 2GB of RAM and 32GB of SSD or 64 SSD if you lucky to run full desktop apps and many things in the background like windows with out purging it, where most people using windows have more RAM and free space.

And I’m not sure Apple can change this with out everyone taking their iPad and putting it in trash and buying new iPad pro with more RAM and SSD.

 

[George Dawes]

Files could do with a bit of streamlining and a deposit area for multiple copy and paste items would be useful

 

[cdrider]

iMessage - don't care. They very rarely update it so any new features announced will be copied by other messaging apps quickly. iMessage will be outdated by the time iOS 15 is released. How often are stickers or screen effects updated? It's OK to introduce new things but they have to be iterated, too.

iOS 15 - so this is the year they'll crack iPad multitasking is it? Yawn. Wake me up if they ever do get it right. Wonder if RAM management will improve to take advantage of this new multi tasking. There's nothing better than a web page or app refreshing because you flipped away from it for 0.8 seconds.

Audio - can people record podcasts yet or will audio still be crippled?

iPads have been vastly over powered since at least 2017 and the software never catches up. I very much doubt this will be the year it does.

 

[Karma*Police]

Does anyone really care about widgets? It was popularized on the Mac and it was a complete failure. Who cares about widgets? It is so inconsequential. What about file system, multitasking, terminal/command line, torrents app, multimedia codecs, multi-screen dynamism, and window management. Obviously this is outside of control.

Agreed. Never understood this obsession with widgets. There are more important things Apple should be focused on.

 

[Apple_Robert]

iMessages aren't backed up via computer encrypted backups?

I was talking about separately from the usual iPhone backup.