First look at iPadOS

Simply put, iPadOS is the best thing to happen to tablets and the iPad since its inception. For the longest time Apple had been using beefed up iOS updates for the iPad and it was holding back the new line up of iPads. The new iPad and iPad Pro have stellar hardware and features but the same cookie cutter software wasn't to most people's liking, until now.  And along came iPadOS, changing all of that.

The first major change is the new home screen on the iPad. Moving away from the general iPhone layout, the app grid is tighter and aligned to the right of the screen. This will leave users with much more screen estate to view activities, weather, photos and other widgets of your choosing. Simply swiping up from the left of the screen will take you to a list of widgets which you can keep aligned to the left side of your screen.

Another welcome addition would be to multi-tasking features, which have seen some major overhauls. You can use two apps on one window now using Split View, and iPadOS's drag and drop feature makes jumping between apps easier. Another welcome gesture based feature is Slide Over and it will allow you to slide between open apps while having another one open on one corner of the screen. You can quickly check for new messages or emails and updates with this while you keep watching your YouTube videos.

But the features that really strengthen the iPad as a laptop argument have been possible because of iPadOS, the first of which is USB drive and SD card support. This will finally allow the iPad to access external media without having to connect to a computer like a regular old phone. Using the iPads USB-C port, users can connect external HDDs and other Medias, and view and transfer content from it.

Another great addition to the desktop oriented features is the addition of desktop-quality websites and overall improvements to web browsing on Safari. Safari has been updated with the iPad experience in mind and it has vastly improved touch based browsing for the tablet. iPadOS also brings new gesture based control for more customisability over the size of your keyboard and for switching over between apps. iPadOS also has an impact on performance as Face ID unlocks are 30% faster while apps load twice as fast as they did on iOS 12.

iPadOS will be officially available on the iPad Pro 12.9 (2018), iPad Pro 12.9 (2017), iPad Pro 12.9 (2015), iPad Pro 11 (2018), iPad Pro 10.5 (2017), iPad Pro 9.7 (2016), iPad Air (2019), iPad Air 2, iPad (2018), iPad (2017), iPad Mini (2019) and the iPad Mini 4. The public beta which released on June 24, 2019, gave users a taste of what's possible on the iPad. But it has helped to solidify the iPad's potential as a standalone desktop PC and laptop. iPadOS will be releasing very soon for the aforementioned range of devices.