Top Five New Features in iPadOS 17

[jlc1978]

It's a 3 trillion dollar company. They have no excuse.

They've said there are enough calc apps available they see no reason to add their own. Once I can use PCCalc from the Lock Screen I'll have a better calc app than any Apple makes.

 

[Kal Madda]

Thanks for your elaborate reply!
I know my issues cannot all be solved on OS level. In particular in my case, it is often the apps which don't permit doing what I want to do, any because iOS is still so awfully limited in terms of file management, it often is not possible at all or really complicated.
In fact, one of my "favorite" app in this regard is GMail where I can only attach documents from Google drive (but not the iPad file system or the Files app), but photos only from Apple Photos (but not Google Photos). And of course I can attach files only from My Files in the standard account, but not from from any synced computer or let alone a different account.
Regarding PDFs, typically I want to save a web page as PDF. That works the way described, but I am just stunned how that is so completely hidden from sight. - What is your renaming mathod? If I try to rename a random file within the Files app, I can't change the file type suffix, and if I just change the name, the file type of course remains the same.

Here are some screenshots for the Files app renaming process. One thing to note is that after I changed the extension for these files from .pages and .docx respectively to .pdf, it seems to make the document blank. I’m 99% sure that I used this method several times a while back to change several documents over to PDF. But I am running a beta version of iPadOS 17, so that may be a bug or something. I know it works for several other file types as well, but I know some conversions don’t work like obviously trying to convert a document over to an mp3 or something like that doesn’t work. So explanation of the pictures: 1. Navigate to the files you want to convert. 2. Right-Click/Hold-Press file and select “Rename”. 3. De-highlight the file name, and move the text cursor to the end of the file extension and backspace it. Replace it with the file extension you want. 4. A pop-up window appears asking if you want to change the files extension. Select the extension you want to use. 5. It changes the file extension to the one you chose, and generally converts it to the file type you changed the extension to (as long as they are appropriate file types the original file type can be converted to as mentioned earlier) Hopefully this works for you, as I said, this feature was introduced in iPadOS 16, so if you’re on an earlier version of iPadOS, then it won’t work.

As for your point regarding apps not doing what you want them to do, I completely sympathize! 👍🏻. For me, probably the biggest offender is Microsoft Word. The “insert image” tool only allows me to insert images from the Photos app, not even OneDrive (which is super bizarre since Microsoft wants to convince you to used OneDrive). And after you do insert an image, you have no positioning options, so you can’t precisely center images or other visual elements of a document on a page, which is extremely weird and limiting. That’s why I’ve moved my workflow over to Pages, because it has far more desktop-level functionality, and it’s a really nice software. I hope some of these app developers get their acts together and improve their apps to make better sense with the system. 👍🏻

But I really hope this helps you out with your workflow! 👍🏻

 

[Philotech]

Here are some screenshots for the Files app renaming process. One thing to note is that after I changed the extension for these files from .pages and .docx respectively to .pdf, it seems to make the document blank. I’m 99% sure that I used this method several times a while back to change several documents over to PDF. But I am running a beta version of iPadOS 17, so that may be a bug or something. I know it works for several other file types as well, but I know some conversions don’t work like obviously trying to convert a document over to an mp3 or something like that doesn’t work. So explanation of the pictures: 1. Navigate to the files you want to convert. 2. Right-Click/Hold-Press file and select “Rename”. 3. De-highlight the file name, and move the text cursor to the end of the file extension and backspace it. Replace it with the file extension you want. 4. A pop-up window appears asking if you want to change the files extension. Select the extension you want to use. 5. It changes the file extension to the one you chose, and generally converts it to the file type you changed the extension to (as long as they are appropriate file types the original file type can be converted to as mentioned earlier) Hopefully this works for you, as I said, this feature was introduced in iPadOS 16, so if you’re on an earlier version of iPadOS, then it won’t work.

As for your point regarding apps not doing what you want them to do, I completely sympathize! 👍🏻. For me, probably the biggest offender is Microsoft Word. The “insert image” tool only allows me to insert images from the Photos app, not even OneDrive (which is super bizarre since Microsoft wants to convince you to used OneDrive). And after you do insert an image, you have no positioning options, so you can’t precisely center images or other visual elements of a document on a page, which is extremely weird and limiting. That’s why I’ve moved my workflow over to Pages, because it has far more desktop-level functionality, and it’s a really nice software. I hope some of these app developers get their acts together and improve their apps to make better sense with the system. 👍🏻

But I really hope this helps you out with your workflow! 👍🏻

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Just tried that. I don't think it does what you appear to think it does. It actually only changes the file extension and nothing else. In my case, neither a .docx nor a .pages file will actually be converted, i.e. after changing the extension they do not open as PDF files, but rather just the file name is being shown in Preview when trying to open them. I am on iPadOS 16.3.1.

 

[Kal Madda]

Just tried that. I don't think it does what you appear to think it does. It actually only changes the file extension and nothing else. In my case, neither a .docx nor a .pages file will actually be converted, i.e. after changing the extension they do not open as PDF files, but rather just the file name is being shown in Preview when trying to open them. I am on iPadOS 16.3.1.

You’re right, I guess I must have been mistaken. But another easy way that I know works at least for documents is Pages or several other word processor apps that allow you to export a document as a PDF. Perhaps there’s a third-party app for converting html to PDF and vice versa, I have seen several file converter apps in the App Store. Sorry that idea didn’t pan out as a solution, hopefully an app can help with that. 👍🏻

 

[CarAnalogy]

There are so many EASY areas they could address on iOS and iPadOS that they ignore, not just for one or two annual updates but into perpetuity and at the same time the struggle to make each year's release meaningful.

IT'S BECAUSE they don't REALIZE that some of the items they neglect to improve upon and fix would actually be meaningful!! Apple - it's ok to fix stuff as a "new feature".

Exactly. I feel like the people that have the power to improve it (cough Allen Dye cough) have too many assistants to actually use their own products directly anymore and have spent too much time on vision OS and ignored core improvements to the others.

 

[Surf Monkey]

Exactly. I feel like the people that have the power to improve it (cough Allen Dye cough) have too many assistants to actually use their own products directly anymore and have spent too much time on vision OS and ignored core improvements to the others.

The car and the headset projects seem to have taken a ton or resources from Apple’s core products.

 

[roland.g]

You could create a separate account for that and add it to family sharing.

Family sharing has a limit on accounts. I have to use one of those for a Home Hub?!?!

 

[klasma]

Family sharing has a limit on accounts. I have to use one of those for a Home Hub?!?!

It’s not ideal, but it’s an option if you’re still under the limit.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Family sharing has a limit on accounts. I have to use one of those for a Home Hub?!?!

Currently sadly yes that is probably the best solution. If you are already at or near your limit with real people they don't have a better answer for multi user right now.

Ironically the Mac has a guest mode and has had since its origins.

Despite this they've taken three tries at multitasking and zero at a kiosk mode. Maybe next year.

Also I don’t think guided access counts. Very limited scenarios where it actually works for what I want it to do.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

iPad is the red headed step child in the Apple family. They have no idea what to do with it and instead treat it with contempt.

 

[koelsh]

iPad is the red headed step child in the Apple family. They have no idea what to do with it and instead treat it with contempt.

With Vision Pro coming out it might be. It felt like the Mac was the unwanted step child after release of the iPad until Apple Silicon.

 

[kkee]

Tim Cook 2015: "the iPad is the clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing".

2023: A new lock screen

at least they include the stage manager on iPad 😀

 

[Ghost31]

Can't believe it's 2023 and still no stock iPad Calculator App for iPadOS.

View attachment 2227576

People are still waiting on apple to make a calculator? What a weird complaint most of us solved a decade ago

 

[Ghost31]

It’s a gross misrepresentation of the situation to pretend that the only improvement to the iPad since 2015 is the new Lock Screen. This was 1 smaller update after many bigger ones that added lots of Mac-like functionality such as multi-windowing, pro apps, external drive support, Files app improvements that bring it very close to Finder, etc. This year was a smaller update, and many people expected it would be, because Apple had to invest a bunch of resources into launching the Vision Pro and a brand new OS for it called visionOS. A smaller update every once in a while isn’t the end of the world. Is it a bit disappointing? Sure. But there are lots of “small” improvements being made in the betas that don’t get much attention. Under the logic of your comment, I could make a similar claim about macOS:

Apple back when they viewed the Mac as the future of personal computing: “We view the Mac as the future of personal computing”

2023: Desktop widgets.

But of course this doesn’t consider any of the major improvements to macOS across that period of time, just as your comment doesn’t consider the major advancements and improvements to iPadOS over the course of time between 2015 and today.

Man maybe I’m an ipad simp but I’m excited i can finally use an eternal camera with ipad. Some of these changes are things people will actually use and benefit from

 

[dca100]

Meh

 

[Somesayimhandsome]

Until a iPad can restore an iPhone don’t talk to me Tim Apple 🍎🍏📱⌚️🖥️💻⌨️

 

[spinedoc77]

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......... Wake me up when they add big boy OS stuff.

 

[DeepIn2U]

After several years it's become apparent that's how development works at Apple now. Work on iOS first. Port its features to the Mac. Queue them up on the iPad for next year.

And now it's become apparent the last part of that is "and put all the best engineers and most time into the headset and the car."

iOS is central to all software development at Apple now. That's why I'm afraid you'll never hear Apple say the word Finder on stage again. The Mac is done except for getting what's added to iOS. I know that's a dramatic oversimplification but from a marketing perspective it's pretty clear.

I wholeheartedly agree!

To that I say ... 🤓 = look at whom is in charge of, guiding and driving macOS, iOS and iPadOS 🙄😡🤯 This particular person, although well loved by Apple fans (especially the youth) acts like a child in his own doll-house with absolutely no parental guidance or discipline to air for better. MOST of what has been offered within macOS since macOS X died/aged is what the base common USERs have submitted.

There are a few on the macOS engineering team that have done incredible work and great strides adding great features and improvements, so fingers crossed.

The Mac Studio is a wondrous machine and hopefully we'll see a LOT of improvements yet to come as it trounces getting the Mac Pro for so many users. Yet for me I think I'll once again try for iPadOS as my personal home and portable device other than my iPhone.

 

[Unami]

I just type the math expression into the search field.

I do that if it's a very simple calculation. But you can't remember values there - also, I wouldn't even know where to find the symbols for square root or "cube of" on the iOS keyboard - but I also wouldn't want to downlad a third-party app woth ads or pay for an app for simple things like that.

 

[Kal Madda]

I do that it it's a very simple calculation. But you can't remember values there - also, I wouldn't even know where to find the symbols for square root or "cube of" on the iOS keyboard - but I also wouldn't want to downlad a third-party app woth ads or pay for an app for simple things like that.

Why not just use your iPhone as a calculator? 🤷🏼‍♂️. It doesn’t take up room on your iPad’s display, and with Continuity, if you need to copy paste the results, you can do that just fine. I mean, I get that some people want a calculator on the iPad, but I don’t really understand why. I installed a calculator app that looks nearly identical to the iOS one on my iPad, but I never use it because it’s far more convenient to use my iPhone as the calculator rather than wasting screen real-estate on the iPad. Same thing I do with my Mac, even though it has a calculator app as well. 🤷🏼‍♂️. Not saying it wouldn’t be good to include, I just don’t think it’s that big of a deal from a practicality perspective. And there’s plenty of third-party apps if you really want a calculator on the iPad. 🤷🏼‍♂️

 

[Unami]

I have the feeling the whining just won’t stop until one is built in…

I, for one, won't stop. It's a basic function of an OS, imho. But, yes, if I really needed a calculator on my iPad regularly, I could just download pcalc lite and call it a day. The missing calculator is a deficit of the OS, but it's really one of the least problems of iPadOS.

 

[Unami]

Why not just use your iPhone as a calculator? 🤷🏼‍♂️. It doesn’t take up room on your iPad’s display, and with Continuity, if you need to copy paste the results, you can do that just fine. I mean, I get that some people want a calculator on the iPad, but I don’t really understand why. I installed a calculator app that looks nearly identical to the iOS one on my iPad, but I never use it because it’s far more convenient to use my iPhone as the calculator rather than wasting screen real-estate on the iPad. Same thing I do with my Mac, even though it has a calculator app as well. 🤷🏼‍♂️. Not saying it wouldn’t be good to include, I just don’t think it’s that big of a deal from a practicality perspective. And there’s plenty of third-party apps if you really want a calculator on the iPad. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Nah, it's not a big deal, to be honest, it's just a little annoying every time. And I do sometimes use my iPhone as a calculator, but I also often don't have it next to me, when I'm using the iPad (and the calculator of the watch is too small and limitied - so it's off to google's web-calculator in these cases)

 

[jlc1978]

Why not just use your iPhone as a calculator?

Or the search function?

 

[DailySlow]

Here are some screenshots for the Files app renaming process. One thing to note is that after I changed the extension for these files from .pages and .docx respectively to .pdf, it seems to make the document blank. I’m 99% sure that I used this method several times a while back to change several documents over to PDF. But I am running a beta version of iPadOS 17, so that may be a bug or something. I know it works for several other file types as well, but I know some conversions don’t work like obviously trying to convert a document over to an mp3 or something like that doesn’t work. So explanation of the pictures: 1. Navigate to the files you want to convert. 2. Right-Click/Hold-Press file and select “Rename”. 3. De-highlight the file name, and move the text cursor to the end of the file extension and backspace it. Replace it with the file extension you want. 4. A pop-up window appears asking if you want to change the files extension. Select the extension you want to use. 5. It changes the file extension to the one you chose, and generally converts it to the file type you changed the extension to (as long as they are appropriate file types the original file type can be converted to as mentioned earlier) Hopefully this works for you, as I said, this feature was introduced in iPadOS 16, so if you’re on an earlier version of iPadOS, then it won’t work.

As for your point regarding apps not doing what you want them to do, I completely sympathize! 👍🏻. For me, probably the biggest offender is Microsoft Word. The “insert image” tool only allows me to insert images from the Photos app, not even OneDrive (which is super bizarre since Microsoft wants to convince you to used OneDrive). And after you do insert an image, you have no positioning options, so you can’t precisely center images or other visual elements of a document on a page, which is extremely weird and limiting. That’s why I’ve moved my workflow over to Pages, because it has far more desktop-level functionality, and it’s a really nice software. I hope some of these app developers get their acts together and improve their apps to make better sense with the system. 👍🏻

But I really hope this helps you out with your workflow! 👍🏻

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But can't you "drag" an image over = oh wait, iPadOS

 

[Kal Madda]

But can't you "drag" an image over = oh wait, iPadOS

Actually, I can drag an image over, it’s just more of a pain than being able to use the built-into-the-app insert image option because I have to open a window for the Files app or OneDrive app.