{"id":86119,"date":"2023-06-12T19:09:31","date_gmt":"2023-06-13T00:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/?p=86119"},"modified":"2023-06-12T19:09:34","modified_gmt":"2023-06-13T00:09:34","slug":"ipados-17-really-shows-how-the-ipad-is-different-things-to-different-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/86119-ipados-17-really-shows-how-the-ipad-is-different-things-to-different-people\/","title":{"rendered":"iPadOS 17 Really Shows How the iPad is Different Things to Different People"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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With roughly 9 minutes of spotlight dedicated to its coming updates, iPadOS definitely got the short end of the stick when it came to Apple’s WWDC 2023 keynote. That’s partly because the company had a mind-blowing new computing platform\/paradigm to unveil in Vision Pro, and partly because there are only a few coming improvements unique to iPad in iPadOS 17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the release of Final Cut Pro<\/a> and Logic Pro for the iPad<\/a> last month, a lot of pro users were hoping to see big changes or fixes aimed at helping iPad live up to its full potential in iPadOS 17. What Apple delivered during the keynote however, illustrates a very important aspect of the iPad platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the keynote, Apple VP of software engineering Craig Federighi called the iPad “our most versatile device.” He’s right. To a lot of people an iPad is a Netflix screen. To others, it’s how they read and browse the web. To still others, it’s a complete movie-making package, capable of shooting, ingesting, editing, and releasing professional video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And because of that, Apple is having to please a lot of people and use cases with one<\/em> tablet OS. No easy task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless, iPadOS 17 contains tweaks mainly focused on making the iPad a more useful tablet, which is a very different thing than features designed to help it become a better productivity device. In the end, Apple has to balance those two engineering directives in order to advance this multi-faceted device forward for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

iPadOS 17 reflects that balance which, right now, still leans heavily in favor of more tablety use cases like watching movies, reading, home control, and light work tasks like email. But it also contains improvements to Stage Manager, the iPadOS feature most directly tied to showing the iPad’s might as a device for “real work.” So, let’s start there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stage Manager<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Image Source: Apple<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stage Manager was introduced in iOS 16 as a response to iPad users frustrated by the iPadOS UI’s clunky multitasking and terrible support for external displays. The first version of Stage Manager on iPad allowed you to not only open up to four windows on an iPad, but also provided more Mac-like external display support. Now you could connect your iPad to an external display and have that external display not just mirror your iPad, but display four different windows\/apps alongside what you were viewing on the iPad itself. That is, if you had an iPad with at least an M1 processor. If your iPad doesn’t have an M1 chip or better, you can’t use the nifty external display features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the M1 requirement, Stage Manager also exhibited some frustrating restrictions and UI rules. And iPadOS 17 does include some tweaks that should make the experience of using Stage Manager a bit better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First up, Stage Manager now supports more flexible window layouts. One of the limitations of Stage Manager in iPadOS 16 is that it won’t let you size windows or position them any way you like on the screen. Much of that is due to the fact that the apps that you’re running are going to support different viewport sizes to varying degrees of compatibility. So, iPadOS 16 is pretty strict in terms of how much freedom it gives you to resize a window in order to make sure the apps display correctly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plus, Stage Manager in iPadOS 16 also wouldn’t let you place windows wherever you liked. You could move windows around, but they would snap to certain positions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, in iPadOS 17, the system is a lot less restrictive in how you size a window and where you can place it. It’s not 1:1 in terms of how it feels to manage a Mac desktop, but it’s a lot better than it was in iPadOS 16.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With these improvements to Stage Manager, using your iPad as a desktop video editing station<\/a> should be even better than it was before, especially if you’re using a Thunderbolt dock to connect your display, storage, and other devices.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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