Apple Preparing Major iPadOS 19 Overhaul with Mac-like Features (bloomberg.com) 53
Apple is readying a substantial overhaul for iPadOS 19 that will transform the tablet experience to function more like macOS, according to Bloomberg. The update will focus on productivity features, multitasking capabilities, and app window management - areas where iPad power users have long requested improvements.
The software revamp comes approximately a year after Apple introduced the M4 chip to the iPad Pro lineup and coincides with the expected arrival of new iPad Pro models featuring M5 processors. According to Bloomberg, many users have expressed frustration that iPad hardware capabilities have consistently outpaced software functionality.
While the company won't fully port macOS to iPad as some users have wished, the changes will reportedly be substantial enough to satisfy much of the professional user base that has been pushing for more desktop-like functionality. The upcoming changes are expected to be highlighted at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
The software revamp comes approximately a year after Apple introduced the M4 chip to the iPad Pro lineup and coincides with the expected arrival of new iPad Pro models featuring M5 processors. According to Bloomberg, many users have expressed frustration that iPad hardware capabilities have consistently outpaced software functionality.
While the company won't fully port macOS to iPad as some users have wished, the changes will reportedly be substantial enough to satisfy much of the professional user base that has been pushing for more desktop-like functionality. The upcoming changes are expected to be highlighted at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June.
Captain Dunsel (Score:2)
I'm... fairly surprised... they didn't skip the M5.
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I saw this yesterday, but just now got it. Not proud of that. (I'm a Yank, but I'm a big nerdy Anglophile.) (To be fair, though, USS Exeter was also a Constitution-class and I couldn't remember if it was one of the ones damaged in the M5 trial. ;) )
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I'm hoping they put a red shirt in the box.
Is it going to be a real OS, though? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it going to fix the underlying reasons why iPadOS is not a real operating system for real work, though?
The lack of any background processing that you can rely on. The tendency for programs to just stop if you're not using them, so you can't leave them thinking about something while you go to a different task. The relentlessly single-app, single-window view (yes, I know you can have exactly two equal-size windows if you want, that's not an effective counter-argument). The lack of an actual filesystem of data but only interchange of data between apps if the app publisher thought you might want to interchange data between these two apps - tough luck if they didn't. The lack of ability to host and run any programs for any automation or extension uses (except if someone happens to publish an app like that). And so on and on.
Also, $300 for a keyboard and trackpad? Pull the other one, I may as well buy a Macbook Air for the same money as the iPad and keyboard, and that's a real computer.
If you want a tablet to do real general work on, you need to buy an MS Surface tablet. Now that's a useful computer... or as useful as it will ever be, running Windows.
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"or as useful as it will ever be, running Windows."
Never understood the OS wars. My OS is just a way to run the software I want to use.
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WTF?
Since the 90s the biggest difference has been code execution, adaptability, backwards compatibility, and handling of exploits.
Neither does either well, but Windows and Linux are the only ones with backwards compatibility abilities.
Thats the "big difference".
Also, Apple sucks with its overpriced and bloated corpo bullshit. Cant repair something, have to take it to Apple to tell you to buy a new one even if the price of the fix is $4. They are a bullshit company who
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It feeds in here, because I talked about backwards compatibility.
If you want the Macintosh OS, you have no choice but to buy it on their hardware they provide.
Nice try on trying to discredit the valid points made though. Capitalism isnt a fan based system, so its odd you chose to be a fan of one.
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For many years MacOS/OSX had no way to resize a window from any edge/corner of a window, a window could only be resized from the lower right corner, and if you wanted to resize a window to the left you had to drag the entire window to the left, and then resize the window from the lower right corner. That alone was a pain in the ass for the most basic things a modern OS should do.
Been using Macs since roughly 1986. Never found that to be a "pain in the ass."
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I use windows machines all the time.
I don't view it as an important feature.
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The thing that ticked me off with the apple ecosystem, is when they started iosifying the MacOS, putting in ios stuff that couldn't be removed (icons, etc) and now they want macOS to bleed into ios?
Here's a concept apple, keep them separate and distinct. (This goes for Windows throwing ever more crap into their OS, but that's neither here nor there)
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The thing that ticked me off with the apple ecosystem, is when they started iosifying the MacOS, putting in ios stuff that couldn't be removed (icons, etc) and now they want macOS to bleed into ios? Here's a concept apple, keep them separate and distinct. (This goes for Windows throwing ever more crap into their OS, but that's neither here nor there)
I don't want them to be *fully* separate. In theory, the ability to run iOS apps on macOS could be useful. In practice, the ability to run Mac apps on iOS would be incredibly useful. But I don't want their normal user interaction experience to bleed into the other. I just want to be able to run Mac apps in a wrapper environment on iOS and VisionOS.
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This is so silly. There should be a single operating system that offers multiple UIs based on screen size and usage case. I should sit down, place my phone on a charging pad or screen mounted dock, and that should be the only PC I need, with external wired hardware for offering additional computing power. Your laptop and ipad should be dumb screens driven by your iphone wirelessly.
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Having two totally different operating systems is stupid, especially since they are NOT totally different, they are the same thing underneath. It makes many times more sense to have one OS with different UIs, and further, to allow the user to select which they use at any given time regardless of platform.
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I disagree. They should not be separate products at all. Hell it is already more or less the same hardware. It should have two personalities.
Attach the keyboard, you get Finder, detach it you get Spring Board. Add the services and libraries to MacOS needed to run sanboxed iOS apps. Add some wrapper to MacOS open() and friends to see some presentation of documents by iOS apps that want to register the ability to present 'documents' as files to MacOS in someway for those that want to. let the iOS that want
Correct: A good mouse UI is a terrible finger UI (Score:3)
Now you could easily make them 90% alike and share internals and not double-cha
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Buy an iPad so you can Procreate (Score:2)
why would anyone buy an ipad?
To run iPadOS-exclusive applications. For example, without an iPad, you cannot run Procreate [procreate.com].
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Because they want one.
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Yes. People buy shit they want all the time. There are entire industries built around this fact.
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I may as well buy a Macbook Air for the same money as the iPad and keyboard
Yes, they are different products with different intended uses. I don't want my iPad to be a glorified Macbook. I want it to be easy to use with one hand on the go, and to be small and light enough to carry through the airport, to take notes at a meeting, etc. No, I don't want them to be the same.
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Correct.
I wouldn't buy a Macbook Air to use to read PDFs on, and I wouldn't buy an iPad to leave background tasks running and sucking down battery power.
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You know for the vast majority of people whose "real work" involves a computer, it's reading and writing e-mails and documents?
Microsoft sells a $400 mouse and keyboard combo. Guess what? Most people buy something else.
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Is it going to fix the underlying reasons why iPadOS is not a real operating system for real work, though?
Probably not, because at the end of the day, the iPad is a consumption device. They can be effectively leveraged for some purpose-built functions - point-of-sale terminals, punch clocks, photo booths, and customizable MIDI controllers are a few go-to examples that spring to mind, but for every iPad implemented in such a way, 100 more are used for e-mail and Tiktok and video games.
The iPad doesn't need to be a general purpose computer because the overwhelming majority of use cases - including most of the pro
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If the iPad is only a service and data consuming device, a very nice display for the remote processing and storage, then why do Apple want to add MacOS features to it?
It's great at being a data terminal - it's why I own one, and just bought another.
But it's bad at being an actual flexible computer.
Re: Is it going to be a real OS, though? (Score:1)
Long overdue. (Score:2)
Opposite of Microsoft (Score:2)
What does this mean for my iPad Air 2? (Score:1)
Not useful unless it can run Mac software as-is (Score:3, Informative)
To answer the question from the summary, IMO, this isn't necessarily a step in the right direction. It might be if it is enabling the underlying technology that would be required for a full emulation environment in the future, or it could just be trying to distract pro users with shiny things, in which case it will still not be a good enough reason for me to own an iPad*.
* Technically, I own an iPad. It's an original iPad Mini. It was given to me for free. I never did find anything useful to do with it, and other than a brief period long after Apple stopped supporting the hardware when I used it to let me continue to watch movies and TV shows in the shower, I basically haven't done anything with it. For that one purpose, it was quickly replaced by a roughly $70 Kindle Fire tablet that worked 1000x better because it was running an up-to-date OS.
Why is this not useful for me as a pro Mac user? An iPad can't run *any* of the apps that I run other than Safari. Some of the reasons include GPL-licensed software (Apple's app store is fundamentally incompatible with that license), code that I compile myself and run on the command line (realistically incompatible with a device that requires code signing), unsigned third-party apps, and discontinued Mac apps that will never get an iPad version.
My top apps are:
I occasionally use Logic or Digital Performer, but I use multiple FireWire-based audio interfaces, so short of the kernel layer of iOS basically gaining a whole bunch of deprecated functionality, that's never going to work. Nor are there realistic alternatives that are compatible with iPadOS because of the lack of Thunderbolt support, the lack of user-installable drivers, etc. I mean, in theory, if iPadOS starts supporting AVB and Thunderbolt Ethernet chips, we'll talk, but I'm not holding my breath.
From there, the list gets more gruesome.
You get the picture.
iOS will never be a real OS until it is out from under the thumb of Apple's App Store requirements. It cannot ever meet a significant percentage of my needs as long as I cannot take an arbitrary Mac app, including command-line tools that I have compiled myself, and run them as-is. That's really not negotiable, and making it possible to write iOS apps that are more Mac-like might make it a more viable platform in a decade or two, but by then, I'll be too old to care, much less seriously entertain a platform switch. And the issues with running unsigned code are still going to be a chain around the platform's neck even then.
I mean, I guess I could use one for reading sheet music, except that paper works reasonably well, and that's a *lot* of money to spend for something with such marginal utility.
So as long as the only significant productivity task that I could ever realistically use an iPad for is web browsing, which my laptop will always do better by virtue of having a keyboard, and as long as I can't easily move apps and data back and forth between my Mac and my iPad to, for example, use it as a smaller, lighter alternative while traveling without losing massive amounts of functionality, I can't justify owning an iPad. It's an expensive toy that provides negligible benefit beyond what I can do with that $75 Kindle Fire 7 tablet.
And nothing they do to the OS is going to fix that as long as I can't run unsigned Mac apps on the iPad.
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>Terminal with vi and compilers - can't usefully run on iOS because of the inability to run unsigned code.
This one is possible, or atleast close to it..
a-shell has a terminal with vim, clang, clang++, scripting languages, ssh, many basic unix utilities and so on..
You can only compite to wasm, not full code so you are a bit limited in what you can do, thus the "close" part.
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What? What the fuck have I been doing for the last 5 years.
My whole job is a lie! Why are there men in white suitss? Have I been imagining it all this time!
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Ah shit. Curse my shitty old eyes. I misread the comment as MacOS not iOS.
Yeah, can't run unsigned code on iOS.
This site *desparately* needs edit or delete functions for posts. Its 2025.
My bad.
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You can, but not directly.
Basically there are many tools that offer limited capability to such in form of running scripting languages and/or compiling to wasm.
Any such will be limited in what it can do, but it is still fairly much.
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This site *desparately* needs edit or delete functions for posts. Its 2025.
It has an edit function. You write the comment, you click preview. Then you edit it, then you click submit. The comment is now locked in and cannot be changed in order to gaslight people about what you said, which is the only responsible way to handle comments.
I have some sympathy for people who want to be able to edit posts and don't mind that the original version will be left behind, but even that is irritating when you're trying to understand the flow of conversation which led to other existing comments.
Desktop Mode when plugged into Thunderbolt Monitor (Score:2)
Why? (Score:2)
It is a tablet. If I want "Mac-like" features, I can use my Mac. I don't want Mac-like features on my tablet. They're bound to make it less tablet-like. I bought a tablet because I wanted tablet-like features, not Mac-like features.
Dipshits.
Would like more iOS apps running on OS/X (Score:2)
I have a number of different smart telescopes, which all have iOS & Android apps. Most of the android flavours (Vespera, Dwarf2/3) run OK on chromebooks, but only one (SeeStar) lets its iOS version run on os/x. I prefer using something with a keyboard to do my observations.
Saw this coming years ago. (Score:2)