There’s been a few articles over the last couple of weeks where the iPad has been picked apart.
The one to kick things off was Daring Fireball that mostly dug into how multitasking doesn’t work, which to be honest when it comes to this functionality I mostly agree with.
I like my iPad very much, and use it almost every day. But if I could go back to the pre-split-screen, pre-drag-and-drop interface I would. Which is to say, now that iPadOS has its own name, I wish I could install the iPhone’s one-app-on-screen-at-a-time, no-drag-and-drop iOS on my iPad Pro. I’d do it in a heartbeat and be much happier for it.
It’s strange I work in one app at a time 90% of the time and when I do accidentally invoke multitasking I remember it’s there then promptly forget about it again. I use my iPad almost all day and for the majority of my personal computing yet I don’t have the same frustration of having it there. It’s there for those that want to use it and doesn’t get in the way for those that don’t, like me.
I know a lot of relatives that use an iPad as their main device and I haven’t received any feedback of it getting in the way or them being stuck. They use it in the same way, load an app to use it then press the home button and load another app. To my knowledge none of them have ever used multitasking or really know it’s there. If you’re coming from an older iOS and used to the one app paradigm then they continue to use it in the same way.
On the multitasking itself when I do use it I do struggle a little to get the apps split quickly but I use it so rarely it’s not bothering me. I can see that making it easier would be a benefit but I have no idea how they would implement it, all I do know is not to turn it into a Mac.
Having two apps side by side is where I think I’d limit it. For me it’s gets confusing when you have three on screen and you have content hidden by the top window, it’s also tricky to get rid of.
App switching is fine as is and swiping up to expose all of the apps is also fine.
I might dig into other comments separately but in general I have to say that I’d like iPhone development to slow down and iPad development to speed up. iOS 14 should be stability and no new features on iPhone and a real effort put into pruning iPadOS. I’d also love to see more work put in by Apple to make professional apps such as Final Cut Pro on iPad and it’s own apps such as Reminders split out of the OS and put into the store as an app that can be worked on independently just like Microsoft or Google do. I’ve tried to use Reminders again and it’s pretty demoralising when you see bugs you’ve been reporting since last year and you know you’ll be lucky to see anything addressed in iPadOS 14.
Goes without saying that the hardware is great but Apple needs to up it’s software game, especially in it’s own apps.
The iPad in my opinion isn’t tragic or a failure, it just needs a bit more focus for the power users.
