iPadOS 19 rumored to get more Mac-like in productivity push
Apple's iPadOS 19 at WWDC is rumored to be a more macOS-like update, with boosts to multitasking and productivity potentially making the tablet even more of a workhorse.
iOS and iPadOS 19 will be shown off at WWDC this summer
As a format, the iPad doesn't easily lend itself to productivity, outside of art and design. Even with the addition of a keyboard to the mix, it's not quite a full replacement for a MacBook Pro, but it could get closer with some tweaks at WWDC.
According to Mark Gurman in Sunday's Bloomberg newsletter, Apple's changes to iPadOS 19 will involve a shift to make the design of its operating system catalog more consistent.
However, an apparent big theme of WWDC will also be iPad software, the report claims.
While details are scant, sources cited by the report say that there will be a focus on productivity, multitasking, and app management. While this has always been relatively weak on iPad compared to a Mac, Apple apparently intends to make iPadOS more Mac-like in this regard.
While there have been the hope by some users for iPadOS and macOS to become one operating system, Apple is still resisting. Mac and iPad will still have their own operating systems, but it will be a bit closer usage-wise at least.
This occurs at a time when the iPad Pro models use the same Apple Silicon chips as the Mac models. There is also the anticipation of new iPad Pro updates using M5 chips, which could certainly benefit from some iPadOS productivity changes.
Previously, Apple was reported to make large-scale operating system changes for 2025, with revamps for iPadOS and iOS 19 apparently codenamed "Luck" with macOS 16 being "Cheer." There have also been insinuations that visionOS will influence the designs of the other operating systems, while ease of use will seemingly be a big feature of Apple's new introductions.
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- Lack of third party software, or iPadOS versions of desktop software that are not fully featured (looking at you, Adobe), for reasons that are largely not Apple’s fault, but could be improved with a concerted push by Apple and some tools to make porting desktop apps to iPadOS easier
- Inability to do certain things that require having multiple documents / tabs open simultaneously. Most desktop apps support this, but on iPadOS, only Safari does (you can have multiple windows in many Apple iPadOS apps, but not tabs). There’s no technical reason it needs to be like this, so I hope Apple makes it easier for developers to incorporate multi-document design into their apps and I hope they lead the way with their own apps
- Background tasks that are broken / killed when an app is not on screen. This may be alleviated by getting a modern iPad with more RAM (my 2019 Air has just 3GB), but I don’t know. But that is one thing Mac OS definitely has over iPadOS currently. I don’t have to worry my Box upload is going to fail because I’m not looking at it on a Mac, but that happens on iPads, and it’s dumb.
duh! anyone with a half a brain would easily anticipate this over the last few years. I've been saying this for years. You have to believe Apple is most definitely working hard to bring this to reality.
Let's talk small screen. Even if the iPad Pro ran macOS straight up, I don't know why I would choose it over a MacBook Pro/Air, especially the MacBook Air. The Apple Silicon MacBook Airs are absolutely amazing devices. Ergonomics are spot on. As quiet as an iPad. The case is built-in, the excellent keyboard is built-in, the excellent trackpad is built-in, and it works wonderfully in my lap. It's lightweight enough to justify the weight it adds to my bag or sleeve. What am I giving up on the MacBook Air versus an iPad Pro? I don't know, at least for the apps I use. The backside camera, touch screen, easier navigation I suppose, and the small weight savings of the iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard come to mind. For gamers or drawing artists it may be a no-brainer to prefer the iPad Pro.
I can imagine there are potentially some use cases where a person only has access to an iPad Pro but absolutely has to access an app or a built-in macOS feature that is simply not available on the iPad Pro or remotely accessible via the iPad Pro. There may not be a Mac to remote into. Assuming that was the case and every resource required was either on the iPad Pro and/or in iCloud, then I can imagine being able to fire up macOS on an iPad Pro with keyboard and trackpad/mouse would serve that particular use case. One device that serves two different operating system paradigms. So yes, it's not impossible to come up with some scenarios and use cases where the two distinct worlds can be instantiated separately on the the same hunk of hardware.
The question is whether serving those niche use cases is worth the investment in hardware, software, and development budget to bring a new unified device to market. Personally, I love the added portability and couch-worthiness of the iPad Pro but still prefer a MacBook Air for anything more production focused. The ergonomics of the MacBook Air fit me perfectly when I'm at a desk or working from my lap. For nearly all of the apps I use that are available on both platforms, I overwhelmingly find the Mac versions to be more to my liking. I'm not a gamer. No matter how hard I try to compensate, a lot of the dual platform available apps I use, the iPad ones are usually simplified enough to bother me.
If I could only have an iPad Pro or a MacBook Air I would pick the MacBook Air every time. For me, it's just that damn good of a machine.
I hope this is more than interface deep. And they free up the security model or find a nice sandbox way to make it seem freed up and allow non-signed code in say a signed runtime. So pro apps games and the like which have a platform independent scripting language can move to supporting the pad as a productivity machine.
My comments were just a warning that there isn't any magic here to bring about productivity increases on an iPad. If you put macOS on a 11" display, it isn't going to be a multitasking dream either. You are limited in the font size you are comfortable with reading. You can on put so many UI elements on an 11" display on an app like Keynote or Excel. UI designs that allows all the functionality of complicated apps would be great. They have resisted using something that contains all the menubar functions for so long. Just having a hierarchal popup menu for Menu Bar items would be a help. They really need to stop using the pop-up horizontal menu bar too, though I suppose hit targets on a vertical version would make too fat. Still, you have to scroll horizontal one, which is bad imo.
Just having unlimited background tasking will get iPadOS 80% of what people want, no UI changes needed. For a lot of people, that's all they need. They couldn't get developers to properly save state upon being killed, which was predictable, resulting in a lot of apps being killed and having to return to where you were. With most iPads having 8 GB RAM and 128 GB storage, perhaps this probably has now solved itself, and unlimited background is much more reasonable for iPads now.
On gestures, I think the biggest UI faux pas has been the long press and drag on a URL to get a Slide Over or Split View window. Many people do this accidentally and it is a net negative. People scroll a lot on iPadOS and iOS. A lot. And virtually every scrolling view is littered with URLs or other links of some kind. A lot of people have a tendency to rest their finger on the screen while scrolling. So, they end up resting their finger on a URL, the preview pops up in like a second, and they slide their finger up to scroll down at the same time. A Split View or Slide Over window appears.
This is too much of a gesture and way too easy to do unintentionally. You are not going to get people to not rest their fingers on the display. Best option is to slow it down: add a drop target that is small (like the top 1" of the display), and add a small time delay at the end of the drag for the drop to turn the URL to become a window. Btw, you can cancel almost any drag by returning back to the original spot or near the original spot of the lift. Accidentally long press, lift and slide an object like a URL or a file, as long as you haven't lifted you finger from the display, you can cancel the action by dragging back to the place of the lift.
Some of the multi-point inputs are not that useful in they require too much dexterity or they are not discoverable; and, there is a lot of overloading of actions. You can copy selected text by doing a 3-finger (3 point) close and paste it with a 3-point open. That is not easy to do. The whole two finger slide, three finger slide can get confusing! Two finger slide in a text box can move the cursor. Two finger slide in a non text box is 2D move (no scroll lock). With unlimited background tasking, 4 finger slide will be used much more!
There's just a lot of things that need to be cleaned up with multi-point inputs and gestures. I think they need to add a meta key to a bottom corner to create the equivalent of right-click or alt-click.
Oh, please. Multitasking in iPadOS is the definition of inelegant kluge. And what's not elegant about a tablet that can easily boot into whichever OS suits your needs best at the time? What Apple would say in protest is this: we want to keep selling you two devices, not one.
noting Apple have been working towards this seemlessness of devices for a number of years with many baby steps. It is the last unrealised part of Steve Jobs “if I was to return to Apple on a full CEO basis here is what I’d do” speech at wwdc97. I thought they would have gotten there faster but will welcome any advances we do get.
First of all, it creates a terrible user experience, having to constantly boot between OS’es based on your use case.
Secondly it would create the narrative “we don’t know what the iPad is about so we give you all the option”. No, instead the iPad has its own positioning and the operating system is designed around that.