First look: The best iOS 11 features for iPad

Posted:
in iPad
Apple will introduce a wide range of enhancements to its mobile platform when iOS 11 sees release this fall, including a host of iPad-specific features like multitasking, a customizable dock and redesigned app switcher. AppleInsider takes a closer look at how the beta runs on iPad in this video.











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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 22
    krawallkrawall Posts: 162member
    Nice video, thanks!
    peterhart
  • Reply 2 of 22
    radarthekatradarthekat Posts: 3,842moderator
    A while back I wrote this...

    ---

    iPad has always been about how the tools we use for doing work change according to the work we need to do, and that in turn changes the work we do, to take advantage of the tools available.  

    In 1960, it took a roomful of people with mechanical calculators on their desks to do the work that later generations could easily perform with a spreadsheet.  But when spreadsheets and other business applications came along, the work they made possible was wholly different from the problem they were initially designed to solve.

    iPads, and specifically the iPad Pro, is not designed to do the same work that a PC traditionally did.  Those who are suggesting the iPad Pro is a poor replacement for a PC are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.  The tablet form factor has its own destiny, which will take on many, but not all the tasks of a PC, while enabling new forms of work and productivity that PCs cannot accommodate.

    ---

    A good example is the document scanner and annotations capability.  You aren't going to use a PC to scan a document and then annotate it. But this task is perfect for a tablet.  So the work (annotating or signing, and then distributing a document) is done differently, and more conveniently, on this new tool, the tablet.  It does what a Traditional PC would require a separate peripheral (a scanner) to accomplish.  

    Actually, the same can be said in a generic way about all interactions on a tablet; it does, with your finger, what was done in the past with a separate peripheral; the mouse.  Looking back, it can be said the touchpad on PCs was an evolutionary step away from the mouse and toward direct human interaction with content.  Something a tablet provides far better than even a touch screen PC, due to the angle of the screen relative to the user. 

     Apple pencil support is yet another way in which a tablet does work that has never been done by a PC.  The traditional PC required a peripheral for pen input, in the form of a Wacom slate sitting off to the side.  Newer PCs, like the Surface Pro, attempt to bridge a gap already negotiated by the iPad Pro, by supporting pen input on the touch sensitive screen.  But who would use a pen to do art or architectural drawing on a Surface screen while it's angled in the traditional PC clamshell orientation?  Nobody.  And so those touch screen PCs are forced to accommodate the compromise they make by also being 2-in-1s, allowing use in a tablet orientation, with the keyboard either detached or hinged back behind the device.  A rough and bulky tablet experience is what results, and why Apple doesn't go there.  Better to create an optimized tablet (iPad) and support occasional use as a PC for mundane tasks like text entry via an attachable keyboard.  This is not the iPad trying to be a 2-in-1 device; it's simply an accommodation of a legacy task better accomplished by the PC clamshell form factor. 

    mattinozRayz2016pscooter63vukasikatycho_macuserStrangeDaystmaybrucemcthedbajony0
  • Reply 3 of 22
    canukstormcanukstorm Posts: 2,695member
    A while back I wrote this...

    ---

    iPad has always been about how the tools we use for doing work change according to the work we need to do, and that in turn changes the work we do, to take advantage of the tools available.  

    In 1960, it took a roomful of people with mechanical calculators on their desks to do the work that later generations could easily perform with a spreadsheet.  But when spreadsheets and other business applications came along, the work they made possible was wholly different from the problem they were initially designed to solve.

    iPads, and specifically the iPad Pro, is not designed to do the same work that a PC traditionally did.  Those who are suggesting the iPad Pro is a poor replacement for a PC are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.  The tablet form factor has its own destiny, which will take on many, but not all the tasks of a PC, while enabling new forms of work and productivity that PCs cannot accommodate.

    ---

    A good example is the document scanner and annotations capability.  You aren't going to use a PC to scan a document and then annotate it. But this task is perfect for a tablet.  So the work (annotating or signing, and then distributing a document) is done differently, and more conveniently, on this new tool, the tablet.  It does what a Traditional PC would require a separate peripheral (a scanner) to accomplish.  

    Actually, the same can be said in a generic way about all interactions on a tablet; it does, with your finger, what was done in the past with a separate peripheral; the mouse.  Looking back, it can be said the touchpad on PCs was an evolutionary step away from the mouse and toward direct human interaction with content.  Something a tablet provides far better than even a touch screen PC, due to the angle of the screen relative to the user. 

     Apple pencil support is yet another way in which a tablet does work that has never been done by a PC.  The traditional PC required a peripheral for pen input, in the form of a Wacom slate sitting off to the side.  Newer PCs, like the Surface Pro, attempt to bridge a gap already negotiated by the iPad Pro, by supporting pen input on the touch sensitive screen.  But who would use a pen to do art or architectural drawing on a Surface screen while it's angled in the traditional PC clamshell orientation?  Nobody.  And so those touch screen PCs are forced to accommodate the compromise they make by also being 2-in-1s, allowing use in a tablet orientation, with the keyboard either detached or hinged back behind the device.  A rough and bulky tablet experience is what results, and why Apple doesn't go there.  Better to create an optimized tablet (iPad) and support occasional use as a PC for mundane tasks like text entry via an attachable keyboard.  This is not the iPad trying to be a 2-in-1 device; it's simply an accommodation of a legacy task better accomplished by the PC clamshell form factor. 

    Well said!
  • Reply 4 of 22
    dysamoriadysamoria Posts: 3,430member
    That new control center looks absolutely horrible. Total garbage. I thought it looked bad but it is even worse when seen in use.

    • extra effort to get to the control center

    • nothing looks like a control, requiring touch and gestural exploration and wild guesses (which tends to scare off new users, who won't use it for fear of doing something wrong).

    • nothing looks distinctively different from anything else (compounding the current disease of flat design in the icons). Why do we have to spend so much more time switching context with Apple's current design? Nothing has distinctiveness, that's why.

    • no color??

    • Too much customization choice leads to bad visual design and no layout consistency between devices and users. Customization is not the end-all be-all of giving users a good system. Now when users customize their CC, they'll memorize their own layout (the few people who will customize this) and hit a road block when they use someone else's customized CC. This is one of the things Apple used to be very explicit about NOT doing, yet here they are adding this edge-case customization crap, causing a complete redesign to an otherwise feature-complete usable prior design, instead of refining the [still hard on the eyes] existing design... and instead of fixing the MANY bugs still in iOS since this flat GUI BS started with iOS 7 in 2013!!

    Why are we devolving computer GUIs to be no more than thin lines, black & white boxes with black & white clip art...??? It's either too low contrast or too much contrast. No middle ground. We could go back to CMYK CGA graphics at this point. Hell, monochrome displays, even, instead of the expensive full-color high-ppi displays being wasted on this difficult to look at (and to intuit) minimalist garbage.

    The flat GUI design fad is like a bastard offspring between ASCII graphics and 90s-era Corel Draw/MS Word bundled clip art.

    This new control center looks like they put the programmers in the design jobs at Apple (I think even the print team responsible for iOS 7's ugly redesign would do better than this new junker). Too lazy to learn graphic design and UX, or too cheap/poor to pay for actual expertise to create an interface with actual imagery, depth, distinctiveness, and more than two colors. That expertise used to be AT Apple. It used to be BRED at Apple. Where is it now???
    williamlondon
  • Reply 5 of 22
    MisterKitMisterKit Posts: 492member
    I haven't seen anything about how iOS 11 will scale to your 64bit device. A7 iPads didn't get all the features of A8 and up with iOS 9 and 10. For example slide over on A7 but no split screen.
  • Reply 6 of 22
    markm49ukmarkm49uk Posts: 97member
    dysamoria said:
    That new control center looks absolutely horrible. Total garbage. I thought it looked bad but it is even worse when seen in use.

    • extra effort to get to the control center

    • nothing looks like a control, requiring touch and gestural exploration and wild guesses (which tends to scare off new users, who won't use it for fear of doing something wrong).

    • nothing looks distinctively different from anything else (compounding the current disease of flat design in the icons). Why do we have to spend so much more time switching context with Apple's current design? Nothing has distinctiveness, that's why.

    • no color??

    • Too much customization choice leads to bad visual design and no layout consistency between devices and users. Customization is not the end-all be-all of giving users a good system. Now when users customize their CC, they'll memorize their own layout (the few people who will customize this) and hit a road block when they use someone else's customized CC. This is one of the things Apple used to be very explicit about NOT doing, yet here they are adding this edge-case customization crap, causing a complete redesign to an otherwise feature-complete usable prior design, instead of refining the [still hard on the eyes] existing design... and instead of fixing the MANY bugs still in iOS since this flat GUI BS started with iOS 7 in 2013!!

    Why are we devolving computer GUIs to be no more than thin lines, black & white boxes with black & white clip art...??? It's either too low contrast or too much contrast. No middle ground. We could go back to CMYK CGA graphics at this point. Hell, monochrome displays, even, instead of the expensive full-color high-ppi displays being wasted on this difficult to look at (and to intuit) minimalist garbage.

    The flat GUI design fad is like a bastard offspring between ASCII graphics and 90s-era Corel Draw/MS Word bundled clip art.

    This new control center looks like they put the programmers in the design jobs at Apple (I think even the print team responsible for iOS 7's ugly redesign would do better than this new junker). Too lazy to learn graphic design and UX, or too cheap/poor to pay for actual expertise to create an interface with actual imagery, depth, distinctiveness, and more than two colors. That expertise used to be AT Apple. It used to be BRED at Apple. Where is it now???
    Blah blah blah - get off my lawn. 
    macky the mackyRayz2016watto_cobraBluntdecoderingStrangeDaystmaypeterhartwaltgjony0
  • Reply 7 of 22
    dugbugdugbug Posts: 283member
    How does one cancel a drag n drop if you change your mind mid drag
    schlackpeterhart
  • Reply 8 of 22
    dugbug said:
    How does one cancel a drag n drop if you change your mind mid drag
    Tell Siri you want to cancel...

  • Reply 9 of 22
    entropysentropys Posts: 4,152member
    Does the drag and drop work to add multiple files to an email?
  • Reply 10 of 22
    mac'em xmac'em x Posts: 108member
    dysamoria said:
    [grrr... arghh... why can't we just have Matlock instead of all these new shows...]
    Thank you for the input, Grumps McCrotchety of Outrage Falls, Kvetchachussetts. 

    Over here in the real world, the new Control Center looks great. I wish we'd had it right from the start of the iOS 7 redesign (which, by the way, also continues to look flat-tastic).

    Looking forward to more great designs, Apple! Keep it comin'.
    williamlondonStrangeDaysjony0
  • Reply 11 of 22
    BluntBlunt Posts: 224member
    dysamoria said:
    Too lazy to learn graphic design and UX, or too cheap/poor to pay for actual expertise to create an interface with actual imagery, depth, distinctiveness, and more than two colors. That expertise used to be AT Apple. It used to be BRED at Apple. Where is it now???

    You don't know shit about graphic design. Still running Windows 95?
    edited June 2017 peterhartjony0
  • Reply 12 of 22
    BluntBlunt Posts: 224member
    entropys said:
    Does the drag and drop work to add multiple files to an email?

    I think they showed that during the keynote demo.
  • Reply 13 of 22
    entropysentropys Posts: 4,152member
    I was watching but didn't see it.

    If it does I am soooo buying the ipad pro
    edited June 2017
  • Reply 14 of 22
    dysamoria said:
    That new control center looks absolutely horrible. Total garbage. I thought it looked bad but it is even worse when seen in use.

    • extra effort to get to the control center

    • nothing looks like a control, requiring touch and gestural exploration and wild guesses (which tends to scare off new users, who won't use it for fear of doing something wrong).

    • nothing looks distinctively different from anything else (compounding the current disease of flat design in the icons). Why do we have to spend so much more time switching context with Apple's current design? Nothing has distinctiveness, that's why.

    • no color??

    • Too much customization choice leads to bad visual design and no layout consistency between devices and users. Customization is not the end-all be-all of giving users a good system. Now when users customize their CC, they'll memorize their own layout (the few people who will customize this) and hit a road block when they use someone else's customized CC. This is one of the things Apple used to be very explicit about NOT doing, yet here they are adding this edge-case customization crap, causing a complete redesign to an otherwise feature-complete usable prior design, instead of refining the [still hard on the eyes] existing design... and instead of fixing the MANY bugs still in iOS since this flat GUI BS started with iOS 7 in 2013!!

    Why are we devolving computer GUIs to be no more than thin lines, black & white boxes with black & white clip art...??? It's either too low contrast or too much contrast. No middle ground. We could go back to CMYK CGA graphics at this point. Hell, monochrome displays, even, instead of the expensive full-color high-ppi displays being wasted on this difficult to look at (and to intuit) minimalist garbage.

    The flat GUI design fad is like a bastard offspring between ASCII graphics and 90s-era Corel Draw/MS Word bundled clip art.

    This new control center looks like they put the programmers in the design jobs at Apple (I think even the print team responsible for iOS 7's ugly redesign would do better than this new junker). Too lazy to learn graphic design and UX, or too cheap/poor to pay for actual expertise to create an interface with actual imagery, depth, distinctiveness, and more than two colors. That expertise used to be AT Apple. It used to be BRED at Apple. Where is it now???
    I stopped reading at "Total garbage." While everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, hyperbole -- especially unfounded hyperbole -- is the quickest way to discredit oneself.

    Actually, I didn't stop at the second sentence since I actually wanted to see if the first assertions had any merit by being backed up with useful examples. Then I got to "extra effort to get to the control center." Huh? You just swipe up from the bottom like in previous iOS versions. The rest of the post didn't get any better.

    Seriously, dude (male or female), just breathe. It's a freakin' interface with its strong points and weaknesses. 
    williamlondonStrangeDaysjony0icoco3
  • Reply 15 of 22
    boboliciousbobolicious Posts: 1,139member
    A while back I wrote this...

    ---

    iPad has always been about how the tools we use for doing work change according to the work we need to do, and that in turn changes the work we do, to take advantage of the tools available.  

    In 1960, it took a roomful of people with mechanical calculators on their desks to do the work that later generations could easily perform with a spreadsheet.  But when spreadsheets and other business applications came along, the work they made possible was wholly different from the problem they were initially designed to solve.

    iPads, and specifically the iPad Pro, is not designed to do the same work that a PC traditionally did.  Those who are suggesting the iPad Pro is a poor replacement for a PC are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.  The tablet form factor has its own destiny, which will take on many, but not all the tasks of a PC, while enabling new forms of work and productivity that PCs cannot accommodate.

    ---

    A good example is the document scanner and annotations capability.  You aren't going to use a PC to scan a document and then annotate it. But this task is perfect for a tablet.  So the work (annotating or signing, and then distributing a document) is done differently, and more conveniently, on this new tool, the tablet.  It does what a Traditional PC would require a separate peripheral (a scanner) to accomplish.  

    Actually, the same can be said in a generic way about all interactions on a tablet; it does, with your finger, what was done in the past with a separate peripheral; the mouse.  Looking back, it can be said the touchpad on PCs was an evolutionary step away from the mouse and toward direct human interaction with content.  Something a tablet provides far better than even a touch screen PC, due to the angle of the screen relative to the user. 

     Apple pencil support is yet another way in which a tablet does work that has never been done by a PC.  The traditional PC required a peripheral for pen input, in the form of a Wacom slate sitting off to the side.  Newer PCs, like the Surface Pro, attempt to bridge a gap already negotiated by the iPad Pro, by supporting pen input on the touch sensitive screen.  But who would use a pen to do art or architectural drawing on a Surface screen while it's angled in the traditional PC clamshell orientation?  Nobody.  And so those touch screen PCs are forced to accommodate the compromise they make by also being 2-in-1s, allowing use in a tablet orientation, with the keyboard either detached or hinged back behind the device.  A rough and bulky tablet experience is what results, and why Apple doesn't go there.  Better to create an optimized tablet (iPad) and support occasional use as a PC for mundane tasks like text entry via an attachable keyboard.  This is not the iPad trying to be a 2-in-1 device; it's simply an accommodation of a legacy task better accomplished by the PC clamshell form factor. 

    This reminds me of the Surface Studio, as yet another potentially evolutionary design www.wired.com/2017/02/review-microsoft-surface-studio/
  • Reply 16 of 22
    rogifan_newrogifan_new Posts: 4,297member
    I like the changes they made to control center for iPad because now maybe more people will see it and start to use it. I have friends and family still using 3rd party flashlight apps because they didn't know (or forgot) that there's one in control center. 
    peterhart
  • Reply 17 of 22
    I'm a bit confused after seeing some ios11 videos:

    - swipe up from bottom of screen on iPad invokes the dock. Double press the home button to see all apps and control center
    - swipe up from bottom of screen on iPhone invokes the control center.

    It feels a little bit weird and inconsistent to swipe up and get a different result depending on whether you're on iPad or iPhone.
  • Reply 18 of 22
    boltsfan17boltsfan17 Posts: 2,294member
    All the new features look great, but the most exciting thing for me is Affinity Photo coming to the iPad. That's a really great program. I use it all the time on my Mac. I'm really going to consider getting a Pro now just so I don't have to haul around my MacBook Pro everywhere. From my understanding, Affinity Photo iPad version retains most/if not all of the desktop features. 
    radarthekat
  • Reply 19 of 22
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,844member
    dacloo123 said:
    I'm a bit confused after seeing some ios11 videos:

    - swipe up from bottom of screen on iPad invokes the dock. Double press the home button to see all apps and control center
    - swipe up from bottom of screen on iPhone invokes the control center.

    It feels a little bit weird and inconsistent to swipe up and get a different result depending on whether you're on iPad or iPhone.
    Not really. Since the iPhone doesnt support the new dock or the new task switching, it doesn't seem weird. Different devices have different use cases. The Watch works differently, too.
    radarthekat
  • Reply 20 of 22
    radarthekatradarthekat Posts: 3,842moderator
    dysamoria said:
    That new control center looks absolutely horrible. Total garbage. I thought it looked bad but it is even worse when seen in use.

    • extra effort to get to the control center

    • nothing looks like a control, requiring touch and gestural exploration and wild guesses (which tends to scare off new users, who won't use it for fear of doing something wrong).

    • nothing looks distinctively different from anything else (compounding the current disease of flat design in the icons). Why do we have to spend so much more time switching context with Apple's current design? Nothing has distinctiveness, that's why.

    • no color??

    • Too much customization choice leads to bad visual design and no layout consistency between devices and users. Customization is not the end-all be-all of giving users a good system. Now when users customize their CC, they'll memorize their own layout (the few people who will customize this) and hit a road block when they use someone else's customized CC. This is one of the things Apple used to be very explicit about NOT doing, yet here they are adding this edge-case customization crap, causing a complete redesign to an otherwise feature-complete usable prior design, instead of refining the [still hard on the eyes] existing design... and instead of fixing the MANY bugs still in iOS since this flat GUI BS started with iOS 7 in 2013!!

    Why are we devolving computer GUIs to be no more than thin lines, black & white boxes with black & white clip art...??? It's either too low contrast or too much contrast. No middle ground. We could go back to CMYK CGA graphics at this point. Hell, monochrome displays, even, instead of the expensive full-color high-ppi displays being wasted on this difficult to look at (and to intuit) minimalist garbage.

    The flat GUI design fad is like a bastard offspring between ASCII graphics and 90s-era Corel Draw/MS Word bundled clip art.

    This new control center looks like they put the programmers in the design jobs at Apple (I think even the print team responsible for iOS 7's ugly redesign would do better than this new junker). Too lazy to learn graphic design and UX, or too cheap/poor to pay for actual expertise to create an interface with actual imagery, depth, distinctiveness, and more than two colors. That expertise used to be AT Apple. It used to be BRED at Apple. Where is it now???

    Geeze, wow, never heard of Edward Tufte, I'm guessing.
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