The State of iPadOS in 2024

Matthew Snyder (via Steve Troughton-Smith):

The iPad feels like it’s caught between being the best hardware Apple makes, alongside the most ignored software.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Some of the iPad angst isn’t that we have to wait ‘till WWDC to see if the software is improved.

It’s that little birdies have strongly hinted to us not to expect iPad to really go anywhere from here, that Vision Pro has sucked up all the oxygen inside Apple.

That iPad never really had the resources to fulfill its promises, and much of what was there has now been diverted.

Federico Viticci (Mastodon, Hacker News):

My goal with this story was threefold. First, as I’ve said multiple times, I love my iPad and want the platform to get better. If you care about something or someone, sometimes you have to tell them what’s wrong in order to improve and find a new path forward. I hope this story can serve as a reference for those with the power to steer iPadOS in a different direction in the future.

Second, lately I’ve seen some people argue on Mastodon and Threads that folks who criticize iPadOS do so because their ultimate goal is to have macOS on iPads, and I wanted to clarify this misunderstanding. While I’m on the record as thinking that a hybrid macOS/iPadOS environment would be terrific (I know, because I use it), that is not the point. The reality is that, regardless of whether macOS runs on iPads or not, iPadOS is the ideal OS for touch interactions. But it still gets many basic computing features wrong, and there is plenty of low-hanging fruit for Apple to pick. We don’t need to talk about macOS to cover these issues.

[…]

Despite Apple’s promise of desktop-class apps a couple of years ago, the company’s actual implementation has been erratic at best, with an inconsistent delivery of Mac-like features that haven’t done much to raise the status of iPad apps.

[…]

Out of all the apps I’ve mentioned so far, I want to shine a spotlight on Files. It’s a bad product that needs a fundamental rethink from a design and performance perspective.

[…]

iPadOS needs to gain support for executing long-running, complex tasks in the background. […] As a result, not only have these limitations fostered an environment in which third-party developers are actively discouraged from bringing true desktop-class experiences to iPad, but existing iPad apps still largely feel like blown-up versions of their iPhone counterparts.

Steve Troughton-Smith (Mastodon, Federico Viticci):

Apps should be able to create long-running tasks, or persistent tasks, that can use meaningful resources in the background as sub-processes.

[…]

Virtualization isn’t the answer to all of iPad’s problems, but it provides a runway to let Apple take as long as it wants to evolve iPad’s software while ending the ‘can this replace my computer?’ angst. It also immediately justifies the iPad Pro pricing and strips away the pointless ‘them vs us’ divide between iPad users and Mac users. If a $3,000 Mac can run iPad apps, why can’t a $3,000 iPad do the inverse of this?

[…]

Stage Manager was such a missed opportunity: it tried to bolt-on a windowing model onto iPadOS without providing developers any way to optimize for it, and has had virtually no meaningful improvements in two years. What I really want to see are APIs.

[…]

Massively improve the reliability of the Files app infrastructure, including for third-party file services. I should never have to reboot my iPad because an SMB share isn’t connecting properly, or a file service is showing stale, cached data. I should be able to reliably copy large files off USB mass storage without random disconnects or corruption.

[…]

So much high-end iPad software ends up hiding its advanced functionality behind mystery-meat multi-finger gestures, when really what would be helpful is a persistent menu bar at the top of the screen.

Jason Snell:

I’ve been stunned to see some reactions to our criticism of iPadOS this past week suggest that, somehow, people like Federico and myself just don’t “get” the iPad. We’ve spent years using the iPad and pushing what it can do. We get it all too well.

Matt Birchler:

The more I think about it, the more I’m squarely in the camp of people who want iPad-like hardware that runs macOS, and I’m not sorry for saying it.

Ged Maheux:

I really must be an outlier. I use my iPad Pro for real work all the time. I don’t feel particularly hampered by iPadOS. There are times when I’d like to easily do some things my Mac can do but in general I’ve been super happy with the iPad and its software.

Previously:

• iPad Pro (M4, 7th Generation)
• Final Cut Pro 2 and Logic Pro 2 for iPad
• Where iPad Fits In
• MacPad: Hybrid Mac-iPad Laptop and Tablet
• Rediscovering the Mac
• Your Move, iPad
• iPad at 10
• The iPad’s Identity Crisis
• Beyond the Tablet: Seven Years of iPad as My Main Computer
• The iOS Menu

Update (2024-05-16): Adam Tow:

As you can see, I’m still getting good use out of nearly all the iPads in the house, despite being reminded that buying tech is participating in planned obsolescence.

[…]

I would welcome the ability to have a windowing system that works with me rather than against me, along with system-level and app-level plug-ins to increase my productivity.

[…]

At the same time, I think of family members for whom a more complicated operating system on the iPad would leave them bewildered and confused. Multiple windows, background tasks, and file management are things they don’t want or at least want abstracted away from them. I’ve seen first-hand how they are tripped up by features like Split View, Slide Over, Stage Manager, Control Center, Home Screen widgets, Safari tabs, and various swiping gestures. For them, iPadOS needs to be even simpler and easier to use.

In order to be the most versatile device Apple has ever made, iPads need to cater to a broader category of people. It’s clear over the years that toeing this line between simplicity and power has been challenging for Apple. The company has to focus on multiple operating systems every year, and it can’t give its best to all of them. iPadOS has gotten the short end of the stick far more often than not.

See also: Mac Power Users.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Having read and watched through all the iPad coverage, it really seems like a lot of people are aligned on the top items where iPad falls down

• The Files app infrastructure
• The too-restrictive audio system
• Background processing
• Multiple user support

“Just put macOS on it” is the fallback for most criticism, because it’s hard to articulate just why iPadOS doesn’t cut it. And the “Where’s the Calculator?” discourse isn’t about a calculator app, it’s about the missing apps of the core OS

Steve Troughton-Smith:

I know people like to think iPadOS ‘forked’ from iOS when it was renamed a few years back, but it really didn’t. If you install Xcode, both iPhone and iPad simulators run out of the exact same OS root. It’s the same set of apps, the same SpringBoard — it just decides which features you get at runtime based on screen size and a feature map. That’s not a fork; the name essentially means nothing.

Jeff Johnson:

All I want is for my Macs not to be iPadified.

Update (2024-05-17): Joe Rosensteel:

The iPad Pro doesn’t need to run macOS, but the answer to why an iPad Pro can’t do something a Mac can do, shouldn’t be to carry two kinds of computers with the same M-series chips, with the same RAM, with the same storage, and do different things on each.

Francisco Tolmasky:

The iPad would be 1000% better if I could just buy comics on the Kindle directly instead of having to go to the website. Too bad insisting on 30% is clearly more important than that. But, yes, let's pretend that all the iPad's issues are around whether or not it would be confusing to users if Final Cut Pro used the GPU in the background. Because not having any clue how to buy a comic book in the Kindle app isn't confusing at all. iPadOS: THE KING of usability.

Update (2024-05-21): Jack Wellborn:

I am not opposed to the idea and agree that virtualized macOS would serve as an “escape hatch” of sorts. Instead of physically fleeing to Mac hardware at the first sight of a complicated task, users could merely flee to macOS while using the same iPad hardware. I also think virtualized macOS is a way better idea than using macOS as a tablet OS because it would be a distinct mode where touchability isn’t expected.

That being said, I think supporting of virtualized macOS on iPads would only serve power users who are not necessarily pro users. While the two aren’t mutually exclusive — there are undoubtedly countless pro users on the Mac using things like Homebrew, Applescript, and all sorts of other utilities — I would wager most pro users aren’t power users. To them, the computer is merely a conduit to the apps required to do their job. To non-power users, pro or otherwise, virtualized macOS on iPad would be messy.

[…]

macOS can be information rich on 11 and 13-inch screens specifically because it doesn’t support touch. In theory, iPadOS could also become information rich at the expense of touch friendliness whenever a trackpad and keyboard are connected. Modern iPads already offer display scaling and it’s easy to imagine a future where this sort of scaling could change based on peripherals, orientation, and/or whether Stage Manager is enabled. While I don’t like the idea of diminishing touch in iPadOS, it would still be way better than running an entirely separate OS. Merely toggling scale modes when disconnecting an iPad would be way more elegant than suspending macOS running in a virtual machine.

Quinn Nelson:

The simplest tasks on iPadOS are either incredibly difficult and time-consuming, or they’re so unintuitive that even a 25-year Apple veteran can't figure them out. Frankly, neither reflects well on iPadOS.

Update (2024-05-29): Steve Troughton-Smith:

I could make this a long thread already just from using Files for 20 mins this morning 😛 File transfers failed for no reason, copying a group of files has a ‘calculating’ step that takes several minutes but copying them individually does not, folder contents disappeared periodically, the ‘This Folder is Empty’ placeholder UI doesn’t support dropping files into it, and more. It really is a miserable experience, and it makes it hard to trust that any file actually made it safely to the iPad at all

Update (2024-05-31): Federico Viticci is also having problems with the Files app.

Update (2024-06-04): Steve Troughton-Smith:

Unfortunately, even if iPadOS were ‘fixed’ tomorrow, the entire platform is filled with baby apps, not desktop-class software. Almost every app you can think of is a lesser version of its desktop or web counterpart (with exceptions, of course), or is stripped down or nerfed in some way — be it in UI, or in input. Developers generally think of iPad as a lesser device, so will design lesser apps for it. iPad has an ‘app gap’.

Update (2024-06-12): Matt Birchler:

Some will say that the fundamental difference between iPadOS and macOS is what input method they were originally built for. That’s definitely a notable difference, but to me the more fundamental difference is in what users can do when they run into limitations. The solution may end up being more complicated or it may involve trusting a company other than Apple to do something, but there is almost always a way forward. This is what I love about the Mac, and this is why I want Apple to bring their best hardware and screen technology into the Mac product line. A tablet-style, touch-capable Mac doesn’t remove the need for the iPad to exist, the iPad still has plenty of differentiation to live alongside the Mac line.

Update (2024-06-18): Tom Harrington:

I downloaded some files on my iPad and I want to get them onto my Mac. So I tried Files. Fifteen minutes later nothing is transferred and I’m looking up how to force-reboot an iPad because nothing is responding.

I’m not asking for iPads to be like Macs but could we get basic stuff working at least?

Backup Files.app iOS Multitasking iPad iPadOS iPadOS 17 Just-In-Time Compilation (JIT) Spotlight Stage Manager Virtualization

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