- All right.
It's here.
iPad OS.
Well, okay,
iPad OS 13.1.2
and maybe by the time you watch this,
it's gonna be iPad OS 13.2. whatever.
There've been a lot of bugs is what I'm saying and
there's been a lot of updates to fix those bugs
but look, here.
It's here!
iPad OS.
And, after a year or two of me talking on this channel
about the future of computers and what's a computer,
it's go time.
Apple finally shipped a thing with multiple windows,
and the ability to use USBC drives, and all the rest.
So here's a question,
did Apple do it?
Can this be your main computer?
I mean, look, with computer interfaces,
it's more about the journey
than it is about the destination.
Have you ever heard of Zeno's Paradox?
Where to go from zero to 100,
first you gotta get halfway
and then you gotta get halfway again.
And you always have to get those halfway marks
and then you never actually get there.
Yeah that's kinda how I feel about iPad OS.
So for this review,
I want to do something just a little bit different.
Look, I mean, you've already installed this, right?
You've got an iPad.
I'm sure you're already using iPad OS.
So want I want to do is talk about the things
that I think you should definitely check out
to make iPad OS and the iPad in general,
more useful to you.
Whether you're a pro
or you just wanna use the dang thing on your couch.
Also, have you noticed that the video quality
is like, (mumbles) here?
I'm doing this myself.
The actual professionals are out there,
busy editing more professional videos,
so sorry about that.
I'm gonna do my best
and you can tell I'm screwing this up
and I'm doing it on my own
because I forgot the intro graphic.
Intro graphic!
All right, the first thing that you should check out
on iPad OS is Apple Arcade.
It is this thing in the iOS store
that lets you pay five bucks a month
for complete, full access to a whole bunch of
iPad, iPhone, and even eventually Mac games
that you just play for free.
There's no in app purchases, there's no garbage or whatever.
And five bucks a month seems cheap but technically,
that's 60 bucks a year
and I am sure that you have never spent 60 bucks a year
on mobile games.
So it seems like it's a weird thing
for me to recommend you do here.
But these games are great.
They're just, they're beautiful, they're really good,
they're really fun, they're really high quality.
And, if nothing else,
more people subscribing to Apple Arcade
could mean that we get more games like this.
It's totally worth it.
You will feel way differently about your iPad
than you did before.
Plus, if you have a controller sitting around,
like for an Xbox or PS4,
it'll work with your iPad
and it makes those games even more fun.
The second thing is kind of a bonus thing.
It's Sidecar.
Which is technically a feature of Mac OS Catalina,
which is coming out pretty soon.
What it does is it turns your iPad into a second monitor
for your Mac.
You can either do it wirelessly,
but I prefer to do it over USB.
Also, if you have a lightning iPad,
you should definitely just go spend,
you know, ten bucks, on USBC to lightning cable.
This one's from Anchor.
Makes it way more convenient.
Anyway, the Sidecar thing, you can, like,
have the touch bar right on it if you want.
You can get little option things.
It doesn't make the touchscreen work
for interacting with your Mac
but you can use the Pencil on certain things
if you want to do that.
Oh that's fine.
The bottom line is, having a second monitor for your Mac
is really convenient.
And to be able to do that when you're like,
on the go is great.
You should definitely check it out.
Next, I want you to try the new floating keyboard.
Now, a lot of people have been making fun of this thing
and saying it's dumb, but I don't get it
because I think it's great.
When you have the onscreen keyboard,
you can pinch on it and then the keyboard
turns into a little iPhone sized keyboard
that you can then move around anywhere on the screen.
And then on that iPhone sized keyboard,
you can use swipe typing to type really fast.
I love this thing because if you're using the iPad
in your hands,
it's way easier than
trying to reach your thumbs across to type.
You can just use your right thumb or left thumb
over on the side of the screen.
I also love it because it doesn't take up
the whole damn screen.
It's just a little box that floats over
what you're actually doing,
so you have a much easier time doing stuff
when you need to enter
just a little bit of text on your iPad.
The next thing I'm going to recommend
is that you play around with the new Files app.
The new Files app is pretty great.
I think it works better with Cloud services.
It supports USB drives now, which is awesome.
And you can also just set up local folders
wherever you want on the iPad
instead of only depending on iCloud,
which means you can just download stuff from Safari, which,
it's all great!
I love it!
But it's not exactly like Finder on the Mac
or Explorer on Windows.
It still is a little bit iPad-y.
And that's not necessarily bad, but it is different.
And so if you are planning on having a workflow
that really matters to you,
you should play around with it at home
or at the office or whatever
until you know exactly how it's going to work
and make sure that it works for you.
In a previous video,
I talked about not going into battle
with an unproven rifle.
And that's true.
With the Files app,
you need to make sure you understand how it works
before you work with it.
So just poke at it.
Little poke.
My last piece of advice for getting the most out of
iPad OS is a little bit counterintuitive
and that's, don't think about it too much.
And I'm talking specifically about the windowing system
because it is literally counterintuitive.
iPad OS can do a bunch of new stuff with windows.
A single app can have multiple windows.
A single app can have multiple windows in Split Screen.
You can have two different apps in Split Screen.
You can have a bunch of apps sitting in Slide Over.
You can take icons and turn them into windows.
You can take links and drag them and turn them into windows.
You can do all sorts of stuff to make all sorts of windows
and they, like, come out of nowhere and they fly around,
and you forget where they are, and it's just,
it's a little bit confusing.
And I've been thinking about this ever since
I made that video where I talked about the
grammar of user interfaces and I figured it out.
The iPad mixes metaphors now.
So on your phone, you use a time metaphor.
You've got your current app and then your most recent app,
and then when you go to Multitasking,
it just kind of (mumbles) goes back in time.
On your desktop, you use a spatial metaphor.
So one window is here, one window is here,
one window is here and you move them around in space.
The iPad literally has both
so the Multitasking view goes back in time
with all your most recent apps in split screens
but then there's also the spacial metaphor of,
you know, the Slide Over apps over here,
and the Split Screens are set up this way
and understanding how time and space are relative to
each other and relate is great for Einstein
but for us regular slugs, you can get a little bit lost.
I can't tell you the number of times I've tapped an icon
and expected it to show up in a certain way
and shows up in a completely different way.
And, what I've learned, and what I'm telling you to do
is not try and figure it out because
the iPad is so good at apps keeping their state
and opening them up quickly
that if your set up isn't exactly what you want it to be,
you can just make it what you want right then.
Don't assume that your set up is going to stick around.
Think of it like a Buddhist sand mandala
where it's a beautiful thing but it's going to go away.
Everything is ephemeral, everything disappears.
Nothing is permanent, but it's still beautiful.
So you can tell that this is a processor video
I made by myself because by the end,
we got to the impermanence of all things
and Buddhism as a metaphor for user interfaces,
so you're welcome internet.
If you're looking for a classic review
that goes over every single feature of iPad OS, don't worry.
We've got your covered.
It's over at theverge.com,
link to it down in the show notes.
But here for this review, what do I think of iPad OS?
Well, you can read between the lines.
I think it's really good, it's really powerful
but that it has a steep learning curve
if you wanna use it for professional things
as your main computer.
I'm weirdly proud of Apple for that.
It was so worried that people would get confused
and put off by complication
that it use to treat this thing like a big iPhone,
but now it's not afraid to make it a little bit complicated
and just trust that people who need it will figure it out,
and you know what?
That sure sounds like a computer to me.
Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching.
I know this was a little bit different kind of a video,
but it let me get my thoughts out there,
so I appreciate doing that.
And I'm gonna plug something else
that lets me get my thoughts out there.
It's our newsletter.
It's at theverge.com/newsletter
and I write one every day
and it often has a big, long essay
about what I think of the tech news of the day.
So you know, please go subscribe to that.