Introduction

If you read a lot of articles online or watch a lot of reviews on YouTube Tube, you’ve no doubt heard that many bloggers/vloggers consider iPadOS to be the way part of using an iPad.  And in some ways, that can be true.   Many feel that iPadOS 18 didn’t change things up enough or because Apple didn’t make the device more Mac-like it’s somehow a negative, but I actually don’t feel that way.   Don’t get me wrong, there are still improvements I’d like to see in the iPadOS, but in general, it has developed and improved slowly and continuously, and I’ve been pleased with the progress over the last few years.  I really don’t want them to change too much, too quickly – that never seems to work out well – look at the old example of Windows 8.  That wasn’t a terrible release, but it got horrible reactions and reviews because it was too much of a departure from what people expected Windows to be.  So Apple, keep changing things slowly and we will be just fine!

So, what’s coming up new in iPadOS 18?  A few things.  There will be, as expected, more AI improvements, but currently, they’ve added a calculator (finally!), and it supports the ability to write your math equation out and have it provide the answer or a graph, for example, by interpreting what you wrote.  It’s really a very cool feature!

There is a new kind of floating sidebar that is appearing in many of the Apple first-person apps (I expect to see it in other apps as we get close to the final release) and it makes selecting certain options easier and less intrusive than before.

The Settings App has been reworked a little to arrange things in, what Apple hopes is a more logical arrangement.   I think it mostly achieves that, but,as with any user-interface type changes, I think you need to try it for yourself to determine if it’s more intuitive for you.  One big change I’ve noticed is that App settings are kind of pulled out to the top layer in a new category called “Apps”.  It took me a minute to realize that this is where the app settings moved, but, after using it a bit, it really does make more sense than the previous setup – at least to me, it does!

The control panel (quick settings) you get by pulling down from the upper-right-hand corner has also been reworked a bit.  Things are now available in kind of a tab/categorization arrangement.  Again, it takes a minute to get used to the changes, but overall, it does seem to be more sensible and allows the setting to kind of expand in a way that wasn’t possible before.

Using the iPad for Productivity

I do want to touch briefly on the topic of using the iPad for productivity tasks.   I do mine in conjunction with my day job (as well as a laptop), but there is an opinion out there in the world that it can’t do the job or that it does those things poorly compared to a MacBook or a Windows PC.   That could be the case, depending on the specific tasks you need to do, but in general, I would say this is a false narrative.  You have to do things a bit differently than you do on a traditional desktop-based computer, but the way it handles multiple apps and productivity tasks is perfectly usable and workable for most things.   It is not reasonable to present the discussion as “computer” vs “iPad”.  They are different devices with a different approach to work and we assume, just because it’s been around for years, that the desktop approach used by laptops/desktops is the only (or even the best) way to do things.  The net is full of videos of people taking an “iPad challenge” where they switch to the iPad for a week or a month and then come to the conclusion that it just doesn’t work well when all they did was try to use it the same way they used their traditional desktop.  That’s never going to work and always going to end it disappointment, I think.

In my opinion, you need to approach the iPad in one of two ways:   One – treat it, as it was originally intended, as a companion to your desktop/laptop computer.  Especially if you have an Apple computer, the companion features you get using continuity (an Apple device integration feature if you aren’t familiar with it) are amazing.   The other approach you can take – two – is to view it as a unique device with a unique way of working and explore how features like Stage Manager actually work and what they can do for you and then decide if that’s the way you want to work.  I happen to use a combination of both approaches, and it’s worked amazingly well for me.

An example I’ll give compares the productivity approach of the Samsung Tab S Ultra series to the iPad approach.  Samsung’s productivity/multitasking approach is called Dex, and it provides a really good desktop metaphor – similar to a Mac or Windows desktop (with a few limitations), and it works pretty well.  But it only supports a single screen (either your device screen OR your external monitor not both for display), whereas the iPad will allow you to use BOTH the device screen and an external monitor at the same time (again with a few limitations).  To me that’s more productive.  I use that feature during our weekly podcasts so I can see the Zoom chat while I am looking at the show notes and the websites/external articles are discussing.  That ability to split things up is really helpful and something Samsung Dex can’t currently do for me despite it supporting a desktop metaphor.  The M4 in the iPad actually now has the ability to support multiple external monitors, but that is NOT executed in iPadOS and I’m not sure what it would take for them to get there, but I’d love to see it!

Summary

So to bring it all back home again, I have to say that, overall, I think the M4 iPad Pro 13” is the best one they’ve ever made.  iPads are my primary (but not only) computing device, getting more use than any other one I own (except possibly my phone), but it’s changes are evolutionary and iterative, not revolutionary.   I know that people hoped we’d get more changes in iPadOS 18 and that has left some people, especially tech-bloggers disappointed, but not me.  I am really happy to be working with this device.  It’s the best one they’ve ever made and iPadOS, which is on a slow, evolutionary path, had definitely brought great new features to every iteration of the OS so far.  That said, let’s see what Apple does going forward!

 

 

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