iPad

100,000 miles and one week with an iPad Pro

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Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief, took his iPad Pro on a one-week trip to Brazil:

The trip changed my mind completely about whether I could run TechCrunch wholly from a tablet. It turns out that it was lighter, smoother and more willing than my MacBook at nearly every turn. I never went back.

Balance that comment with:

The new iPad Pro offers an attractive refresh for new buyers, but not current ones.

That last is not a complaint, as much as a note that the new A12Z Bionic processor appears to be in-line, power wise with the A12X in the previous iPad Pro, the so-called third generation, introduced in October 2018.

Obviously, there’s much more to this fourth gen iPad Pro, including the celebrated LiDAR Scanner (early days for AR, but a machine ready for those apps as they come), eight-core CPU and GPU, doubling of base storage to 128 GB and, of course, the soon-to-arrive Magic Keyboard.

Great, real world review. If you’re considering the new iPad Pro, this is worth reading.

Apple finally admits Microsoft was right about tablets

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Well, no, Apple never said any such thing.

The Verge article paints the path that Microsoft took to bring the touch screen Surface to market, while Apple maintained the chasm between the Mac and iPad.

That chasm has been bridged, first by enabling a mouse on the iPad via Accessibility settings, and now by the trackpad support in iPadOS 13.4.

But, to me, rather than being an admission that Microsoft was right all along, the 13.4 addition of trackpad support is more like the emergence of Apple Watch (and a very different approach than the glued on feel of mouse support via Accessibility). As they do, Apple took their time bringing Apple Watch to market, creating something different than the rest of the electronic watches in the market. And, as history has proven, Apple got it right.

Microsoft Surface is, in effect, a touch-screen laptop, with little UI difference between mouse on the tablet and the mouse on a laptop or desktop. To me, the finger is a second class citizen on the Surface and in Windows 10. Apple took a different path here.

With your finger, the elements on your screen are passive. Until you tap on an element, the screen waits for input, with no sense of where your finger is, or is going, until it makes contact with the screen.

With a trackpad, there is context. As you slide the trackpad cursor, and it approaches an element, the cursor animates to give you a sense of context, and the object being approached by the cursor might animate as well. This is a hybrid approach. While it might not be ready for prime-time (time will tell), this shows how carefully Apple is considering this problem, how much they care about creating something that works well, without losing responsiveness.

Looking forward to watching this new hybrid model evolve. Also wondering if the new hybrid model will cross the chasm as iPad apps make their way to macOS via Catalyst.

Apple posts two new iPad ads

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[VIDEO] First up, “Your next computer is not a computer”, followed by the sly, “How to correctly use a computer”. Apple is clearly all-out pushing the new iPad Pro as the computer for the masses. Both are embedded in the main Loop post.

Apple unveils new iPad Pro with Ultra Wide camera, LiDAR Scanner, and trackpad support, starting at $799

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Apple:

With iPadOS 13.4, Apple brings trackpad support to iPad, giving customers an all-new way to interact with their iPad. Rather than copying the experience from macOS, trackpad support has been completely reimagined for iPad. As users move their finger across the trackpad, the pointer elegantly transforms to highlight user interface elements. Multi-Touch gestures on the trackpad make it fast and easy to navigate the entire system without users ever lifting their hand.

This feels like a huge leap to me, beyond the trackpad experience on any existing computer. Makes me wonder if we’ll see a change to the Mac trackpad support to bring some of this new experience to macOS. This seems logical to me, especially for iPad apps ported to the Mac via Mac Catalyst.

As to LiDAR:

The breakthrough LiDAR Scanner enables capabilities never before possible on any mobile device. The LiDAR Scanner measures the distance to surrounding objects up to 5 meters away, works both indoors and outdoors, and operates at the photon level at nano-second speeds. New depth frameworks in iPadOS combine depth points measured by the LiDAR Scanner, data from both cameras and motion sensors, and is enhanced by computer vision algorithms on the A12Z Bionic for a more detailed understanding of a scene. The tight integration of these elements enables a whole new class of AR experiences on iPad Pro.

The stage is set for AR. This feels like a deflection point to me, Apple introducing key new technology that will mark a sea change to future user experiences.

And no small thing, Apple also delivered an amazing new keyboard case, the Magic Keyboard. Comes with a built-in trackpad, smooth laptop-like viewing angle adjustment, and a USB-C port (which charges the iPad Pro) built into the hinge. The case is pricey, $299 for the 11 inch, $349 for the 12.9 inch.

The line between iPad and Mac has never been more blurred. Will Apple port Xcode to iPad, give iPad users the ability to build apps on device?

9 questions about the rumored iPad Smart Keyboard with trackpad

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First things first, this from a paywalled article from The Information that’s been making a lot of noise:

Apple is planning to release an iPad keyboard accessory later this year that will include a built-in trackpad, the latest step in its effort to position the tablet device as an alternative to laptop computers, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company will likely release the accessory alongside the next version of the iPad Pro expected later this year, the person added.

And this, from the headline linked article by Jason Snell:

I’m excited. For a long time I’ve been an advocate for iPad keyboards and pointing devices, and this potential product would offer a way for Apple to differentiate the iPad Pro from its increasingly capable lower-end iPads.

But I’ve got a lot of questions, too.

Follow the link. These are some thoughtful questions.

A few thoughts of my own:

Is there a need for a pointing device? Are we approaching an uncanny valley with a device that looks an awful lot like a MacBook with a touchscreen, but without the unifying elements like the Finder and window-management system that make a MacBook so intuitive to use?

From this article by The Verge’s Dieter Bohn:

I don’t want Apple to fall back on the crutch of just using desktop OS paradigms to solve the iPad’s user interface intuitiveness problem. The last thing we should want is for the iPad to turn into a Mac. It’s on a different path and it would be a shame to have those ideas tossed out the window just so we can have more traditional windows on the iPad.

I’m in the same camp as Dieter. I’d hate to see the lines between the MacBook and iPad get blurry. As is, I know when to reach for my iPad, my iPhone and my Mac. Different tools for different jobs.

If the report is true, it will be interesting to see what Apple has in mind.

Watch Jason Snell edit a podcast on an iPad

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[VIDEO] Many reasons to watch this (video embedded in main Loop post). First, check out how much work goes into editing a podcast. I’d wager few podcasts get this much attention, this much love. This is amazing work.

Next, check out the design of Ferrite Recording Studio. The details are wonderful. And watching Jason work with Ferrite is like watching a master craft with beautifully well-designed tools.

To me, this is an app that raises the value of iPad, just as page-layout tools and LaserWriter raised the value of Mac, back in the day.

A fix for iPad multitasking

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Ryan Christoffel, MacStories, lays out his fix for iPad multitasking. This is some thoughtful, detailed feedback for Apple, a proposal to fix a system that is certainly problematic.

Personally, I find iPad multitasking to be confusing at best. So much so, I’ve just avoided it. There have been times when I’ve gone to swipe a second app off the screen, only to have the swipe get processed by the app and, on more than one occasion, swipe-deleted something from an app accidentally.

That said, I see the massive potential in iPad multitasking. It’s not an easy system to design, and I hope the team at Apple takes Ryan’s thoughts to heart, is willing to take a step back and consider some design changes to address user confusion.

The iPad’s original software designer and program lead look back on the device’s first 10 years

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Terrific interview from Input Magazine.

A bit about the two iPad leads, just to whet your appetite.

Imran Chaudhri, Former Director of Design on the Human Interface team:

I came to Apple in 95 as an intern in the Advanced Technologies Group. When I finished school in 97, I came to Apple and Steve was there after the NeXT acquisition and he was going through and cutting and trimming the fat at Apple — and ATG was a place that he wasn’t a huge fan of. He wasn’t a huge fan of research for research sake and I wasn’t either, which was kind of an interesting thing. I always wanted to really, really ship products and ATG really wasn’t about that. Steve laid off everybody in ATG and I was kind of left to figure out what I was going to do. I started emailing Steve some ideas and we started working closely together and the relationship formed a lot of products, the revitalization of the Mac, going on to the iPod, the development of multitouch to the iPhone and iPad and, post, to a bunch of stuff like the Watch, the AirPods and HomePod, etc. All things we finished before I left a couple of years ago.

Bethany Bongiorno, Former Software Engineering Director:

I joined in 2008, actually, right after they shipped the first phone. I joined immediately after that and started as a project manager on the iPhone. There was a very small team back then; we sat kind of in one hallway. [The phone] was definitely a startup within Apple and I was brought on board because the project manager that was working there really didn’t like working with designers and really didn’t like working at the higher levels of the stack. She preferred kind of working at a lower level; the core operating system and the kernel and things like that.

Then very quickly after that, they told me that the real reason they had to hire me was because Steve had this pet project that he was really excited about and they needed somebody to lead that effort because the team really needed to remain focused on development of iPhone.

Fantastic read.

The Secret History of iPad

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[VIDEO] This is simply great. Rene Ritchie doing what he does best, tell a story with clips and voiceover.

This is fun to watch and, in my opinion, one of the best pieces Rene has ever done. Video embedded in the main Loop post.

Using an iPad Pro to create posters for Apple TV+ shows

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[VIDEO] These two videos, released yesterday by Apple, act as ads for both Apple TV+ and the iPad Pro (videos embedded in main Loop post). They also serve to highlight artists and their specific techniques.

Some great artwork. Watching these two, it struck me how incredibly complex these posters are, how many layers they each had.

I’m told that that “layers rendering slowly” effect is a feature of Procreate, gives the artist a chance to see all the elements fall into place, something the iPad Pro renders too quickly to see without help.

Desktop-class Safari for iPad: A hands-on look at the difference the iPadOS update makes to Apple’s browser

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John Voorhees, MacStories:

With the release of iPadOS 13, Safari took a big step forward as a ‘desktop-class’ browser with a wide variety of enhancements that collectively eliminate a long list of complaints leveled against the app in the past. Safari’s ability to dynamically adjust the viewport to fit the iPad’s screen, enhanced support for pointer events, hardware-accelerated scrolling of frames and other regions of a webpage, along with other under-the-hood changes add up to a genuinely new browsing experience that has made work in sophisticated web apps like Mailchimp a viable option for the first time.

Great read. John Voorhees uses a specific use case to make clear the value of desktop Safari on iPadOS 13. To me, this is one of the tethers keeping me tied to my Mac falling away.

How to activate and use Hot Corners on the iPad

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[VIDEO] Peter Cohen, Harris Craycraft, iDownloadBlog:

iPadOS 13.3 adds Hot Corners, a new feature that works with a Bluetooth mouse. You can set up the corners of your iPad screen to automate actions just like you can on the Mac. Learn how it works in this short video.

Great feature, nicely detailed in the video embedded in the main Loop post.

Steve Jobs was right: Smartphones and tablets killed the PC

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Farhad Manjoo, New York Times:

I got an iPad Pro recently, and I’ve fallen madly in love with it.

And:

Apple unveiled a new 16-inch MacBook with a revamped keyboard on Wednesday, good news for the many Apple lovers who’ve been grumbling about the company’s lackluster slate of recent Macs. But I think the iPad is already beginning to eclipse the traditional personal computer. In the four months I’ve had this latest model, the iPad Pro has eaten into the time I spend on my phone and my old-school laptop and desktop. Among other things, I now research and write just about every column using an iPad.

And:

In one of his last interviews before his death in 2011, Jobs declared the iPad to be the future of computing. “PCs are going to be like trucks,” he told the journalists Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg — meaning the traditional Mac and Windows machines would still be around, but like big rigs, they’d be used by a small set of power users for a dwindling set of specific, high-power tasks. The “cars” of the tech industry, as Jobs saw it, would be phones and tablets.

That opening line really caught me by surprise. Not used to such Apple praise from The New York Times. Interesting read, fair take on the iPad’s impact on the PC market.

Adobe releases Photoshop for iPad

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Here’s a link to Adobe Photoshop on the iOS App Store.

And here’s a link to a MacStories writeup by John Voorhees, with a bit of background and hands on.

Seems clear to me that the public expects a full version of Photoshop, and will be disappointed by the limited functionality here, no matter how terrific a job Adobe’s developers did. Adobe lost control of the message early on. The MacStories piece does a great job laying all this out.

John Gruber: On the upcoming Photoshop for iPad

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First things first, take a minute to read this Bloomberg article, titled Photoshop for iPad Nearing Launch With Some Key Features Missing.

In a nutshell, Mark Gurman and Nico Grant interview Adobe’s Chief Product Officer Scott Belsky, raising the issue that this coming Photoshop is not feature-complete when compared to desktop Photoshop.

Enter Gruber:

From what I gather, the mistake Adobe made was not precisely setting expectations for the initial release of Photoshop for iPad. When Adobe described it as “real” Photoshop, what a lot of people heard was “full” Photoshop, and that was never the plan. Some of this expectation-setting is attributable to Bloomberg, which described the project as “the full version of its Photoshop app” as far back as July last year.

Gruber points out that the iPad Photoshop is based on “the same code base that’s been running on the desktop for decades.” Glass half full, rather than glass half empty. After reading the DF article, I walked away thinking Adobe is all-in on bringing their tools to iPad, taking the time to rework the interface elements for touch screen, while maintaining a high degree of interoperability with the desktop.

That sense is only strengthened by this Bloomberg follow-up, Adobe Plans to Launch Illustrator App for iPad After Photoshop.

Tiny side note: Check the footnote at the top of the Daring Fireball article. It’s a callback to the lack of closure on Bloomberg’s “The Big Hack” piece from 2018. But check that footnote’s URL. Gruber has gotten me in the habit of being careful about changes to my own URLs, and the whimsy of sometimes hiding messages in them as well.

Catalina and Sidecar

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One of the many features that came along with iOS 13 and macOS Catalina is Sidecar, the ability to connect your iPad to your Mac as a second display, one that supports touch and Apple Pencil.

Have you heard about Sidecar, but not yet given it a try? Check out the linked doc, Apple’s detailed, but easy-to-follow Sidecar overview and set-up instructions.

If you’ve updated to Catalina, do give this a try. It’s kind of cool.

Haptic Touch vs 3D Touch: What’s the difference?

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Juli Clover, MacRumors:

With the iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max, Apple did away with 3D Touch across its entire iPhone lineup, replacing the former 3D Touch feature with Haptic Touch.

In this guide, we’ll go over everything you need to know about Haptic Touch and how it differs from the 3D Touch feature that’s been available since the iPhone 6s.

If you are confused about Haptic Touch, or want to learn about the settings, read the article. Well done.

And personally, I am very happy with this change. 3D Touch and Haptic Touch had too much overlap, confusing discoverability.

New seventh-generation iPad shipping today

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Apple:

The new seventh-generation iPad starts shipping on Wednesday, September 25 and will arrive in stores beginning later this week. Starting at just $329, the new iPad brings more screen area and support for the full-sized Smart Keyboard, as well as a new iPad experience with iPadOS. The upgrade packs even more value into the most popular and affordable iPad, featuring a stunning 10.2-inch Retina display and the latest innovations including Apple Pencil support, the fast A10 Fusion chip, advanced cameras and sensors, unmatched portability and connectivity, ease of use and great all-day battery life.

Note this footnote attached to that Apple Pencil mention:

The first-generation Apple Pencil sold separately.

Just in case you were thinking this iPad worked with the newer Apple Pencil.

MacStories posts remarkable, encyclopedic iOS and iPadOS 13 review

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Federico Viticci, MacStories:

It was only natural (and well-deserved) for the iPad to begin advancing in a parallel direction to iOS – informed and inspired by it, but also capable of growing on its own and tackling problems that an iPhone doesn’t have to solve.

From this standpoint, there are two sides to iOS 13: on one hand, an underlying tide that raises all platforms, featuring a distillation of themes Apple comes back to on an annual basis; on the other, a fork in the road, opening a new path for the iPad’s next decade. And against this backdrop, a single question looms large:

Can Apple balance both?

This is a remarkable read, just chock full of detail on every aspect of iOS and iPadOS 13. As you make your way through it, tap the table of contents icon in the upper right corner (looks like a 2×2 grid of squares) to get a sense of the overall structure, and to jump to a particular chapter that interests you.

This is incredible work.

APPLE EVENT: New 10.2″ Retina display iPad, starting at $329

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Apple:

Apple today introduced the new seventh-generation iPad, bringing more screen area and support for the full-sized Smart Keyboard to its most popular and most affordable iPad. Starting at just $329, the upgraded iPad features a stunning 10.2-inch Retina display and the latest innovations including Apple Pencil support, the fast A10 Fusion chip, advanced cameras and sensors, unmatched portability and connectivity, ease of use and great all-day battery life.3 The new iPad is available to order starting today and in stores starting Monday, September 30.

Don’t forget to use your Apple Card if you plan to buy this for that 3% daily cash bonus.

Live from space, an astronaut uses an iPad to DJ a party back on Earth

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[VIDEO] Digital DJ Tips:

This past week, the first ever live DJ set from space took place. Using an iPad with djay Pro, European astronaut Luca Parmitano’s performance was beamed from the International Space Station straight to a cruise ship packed with ravers. Floating inside one of the ISS’s rooms, DJ Luca dropped a mix of EDM, hardstyle and uplifting (ahem) trance to an enthusiastic audience watching him from massive LED walls back on Earth.

This is amazing. Check out the video embedded in the main Loop post. Tiny detail I love is the velcro on the back of the iPad that Luca uses to keep his iPad from floating away.

16 indispensable gestures you’ll need to navigate iPadOS

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I really like posts like this one: Very visual, easy to make your way through, focused on a single topic.

In this case, it’s a series of GIFs showing the key gestures your want to master to get the most out of iPadOS. Worth your time, if only to make sure you are aware of all of these.

Have an old iPad or iPhone? There’s a special iOS update coming

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Apple:

Starting November 3, 2019, some iPhone and iPad models introduced in 2012 and earlier will require an iOS update to maintain accurate GPS location and keep the correct date and time. This is due to the GPS time rollover issue that began affecting GPS-enabled products from other manufacturers on April 6, 2019. Affected Apple devices are not impacted until November 3, 2019.

By my math, that’d be iPhone 5 or earlier, iPad (4th gen), iPad mini or earlier.

iPadOS and an intelligent desktop Safari as the default. And more.

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[VIDEO] This Rene Ritchie review of iPadOS (video embedded in main Loop post) starts off by walking through something both subtle and compelling: Apple’s tweaking of iPadOS Safari to make the desktop version of websites the default, intelligently pouring them into the form factor of the iPad on which its running.

Watch the video to wrap your head around this. And then keep watching for lots more detail on iPadOS.