Tag Archives: IPadOS

Technology

Apple Releases iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2 With Freeform, Apple Music Sing, Advanced Data Protection and More

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Apple today released iOS 16.2, the second major update to the iOS 16 operating system that came out in September. iOS 16.2 comes more than a month after the launch of iOS 16.1, an update that added support for Live Activities, Matter, iCloud Shared Photo Library, and more.

The ‌‌iOS 16‌‌.2 update Apple’s can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update. It can take a few minutes for the updates to propagate to all users due to high demand. Note that Apple has also released iOS 15.7.2 for iPhone users who have older devices, with the update offering security improvements.

Today’s iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2 updates bring several notable features to ‌iOS 16‌ and iPadOS 16, including the Freeform app, which is a sort of digital whiteboard that you can use for anything, while also working collaboratively with friends and colleagues.

It includes the Apple Music karaoke feature called “Sing,” it introduces Advanced Data Protection for end-to-end encryption for more ‌iCloud‌ features, plus more. On the iPad, the update brings support for external displays on M1 and M2 iPads.

Apple’s full release notes for the iOS update are below:

Freeform
– Freeform is a new app for working creatively with friends or colleagues on Mac, iPad and iPhone
– A flexible canvas lets you add files, images, stickies, and more
Drawing tools let you sketch anywhere on the canvas with your finger

Apple Music Sing
– A new way to sing along with millions of your favorite songs in Apple Music
– Fully adjustable vocals let you duet with the original artist, sing solo, or mix it up
– Newly enhanced beat-by-beat lyrics make it even easier to follow along with the music

Advanced Data Protection for iCloud
– New option expands the total number of iCloud data categories protected using end-to-end encryption to 23 — including iCloud Backup, Notes, and Photos — protecting your information even in the case of a data breach in the cloud

Lock Screen
– New settings allow you to hide wallpaper or notifications when Always-On display is enabled on iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max
– Sleep widget lets you view your most recent sleep data
– Medications widget lets you view reminders and quickly access your schedule

Game Center
– SharePlay support in Game Center for multiplayer games so you can play with the people you are on a FaceTime call with
– Activity Widget allows you to see what your friends are playing and achieving in games right from your Home Screen

Apple TV
– Live Activities for Apple TV app let you follow your favorite teams with live scores right on your Lock Screen or in Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max

Home
– Improved reliability and efficiency of communication between your smart home accessories and Apple devices

This update also includes the following improvements and bug fixes:
– Improved search in Messages allows you to find photos based on their content, like a dog, car, person, or text
– Turn Off Hide IP Address setting enables iCloud Private Relay users to temporarily disable the service for a specific site in Safari
– News articles in Weather display information relevant to the weather in that location
– Participant Cursors in Notes allow you to see live indicators as others make updates in a shared note
– AirDrop now automatically reverts to Contacts Only after 10 minutes to prevent unwanted requests to receive content
– Crash Detection optimizations on iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro models
– Fixes an issue that causes some notes not to sync with iCloud after updates are made

Some features may not be available for all regions or on all Apple devices. For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website:
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201222

Apple also has some ‌iPad‌ specific notes:

Stage Manager
– External display support with resolutions up to 6K available on iPad Pro 12.9-inch (5th generation and later), iPad Pro 11-inch (3rd generation and later), and iPad Air (5th generation)
– Drag and drop files and windows from your compatible device to your connected display, and vice versa
– Support for using up to 4 apps on the iPad display and 4 on the external display

iPad Specific Features and Fixes
– Tracking Notifications alert you if an AirTag separated from its owner is nearby and has recently played a chime to indicate it is moving
– Fixes an issue that may cause Multi-Touch gestures to become unresponsive while using the Zoom accessibility feature

Following the launch of iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2, Apple may soon seed out the first betas of iOS 16.3 and iPadOS 16.3, giving us a look at new features that we can expect to see in the new year.

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Technology

Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak Discuss USB-C on iPhone, iMessage on Android, Lack of iPadOS Calculator App, Pace of Innovation, and More

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At the Wall Street Journal‘s Tech Live event, Apple’s Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak talked about a wide range of topics, including USB-C on iPhone, why iPadOS still lacks a calculator app, iMessage on Android, and more.

The EU is forcing all consumer electronic devices, including the ‌iPhone‌ and AirPods, to move to USB-C by the end of 2024. The new rule will directly impact Apple, which still uses the Lightning connector on the ‌iPhone‌ and AirPods. Speaking today at the event, Joswiak, also known as Joz, said Apple will “have to comply” with the new rule, indirectly confirming the ‌iPhone‌ will switch to USB-C in the future. Reports suggest Apple is testing USB-C on iPhone 15 models, destined for release next fall.

Federighi and Joz spoke about the pace of innovation on the ‌iPhone‌, including whether or not smartphones have become boring and if the ‌iPhone‌ needs an update every year. “People are very excited by the new iPhones,” Joz said, referencing new features on the iPhone 14 Pro, including the new 48MP camera and Dynamic Island. “We always have a ton of stuff that we’ve got to get out,” Federighi said. “We’ve been working on things for years and years, and there are a pipeline of things we believe that will better help our customers.”

Speaking about why iPadOS still lacks a native calculator app, Joz said, “there are a ton of them. Go to the App Store.” “I use third-party apps,” he continued when pressed by the Wall Street Journal‘s Joanna Stern on what the two executives do when they want to calculate something on their iPad.

Federighi and Joz were also asked about the lack of iMessage on Android and Apple’s reasoning behind keeping iMessage exclusive to Apple devices. Federighi was asked about an email he sent in 2013 where he said, “I’m concerned iMessage on Android would simply serve to remove [an] obstacle to ‌iPhone‌ families giving their kids Android phones.”

“I’m not aware of it shipping,” Federighi jokingly said in response to the question. “If we’re going to enter a market and go down the road of building an application, we have to be in it in a way that’s going to make a difference, that we’ll have a lot of customers, and have a great experience,” Federighi said.

“If we just shipped an app that really didn’t get critical mass on other platforms, what it would have accompanied is it would have held us back in innovating in all the ways we want to innovate in messages for our customers and wouldn’t have accomplished much at all in any other way,” Federighi explained. iMessage on Android seemed like a “throwaway” that “was not going to serve the world,” he concluded.

During their interview, Federighi and Joz also spoke about Apple’s transition to Apple silicon on the Mac, Apple’s stance on privacy, and Apple’s return to in-person work and the controversy around it. The full 35-minute interview can be watched through a replay of the live stream on the Wall Street Journal‘s Twitter account.



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Technology

Everything New in iPadOS and iOS 16.2 Beta 1: Freeform App, Stage Manager External Display Support, Accidental Emergency SOS Reports and More

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Apple today provided the first betas of iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2 to developers, introducing even more new features that have been promised for the iOS 16 update.

We’ve outlined all of the changes found in the iOS 16.2 and iPadOS 16.2 betas so far in this guide.

Freeform App

Apple debuted a new cross-platform Freeform app in iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, and macOS Ventura 13.1. Designed for collaboration, Freeform can be used for jotting down notes, sketching, drawing, saving links, and more.


Multiple people can work on the same Freeform document, with updates synced for all participants in real-time. Apple says that Freeform can be used for sketching projects, designing mood boards, and brainstorming ideas, with the app serving as a creative space.

Stage Manager External Display Support

With iPadOS 16.2, Stage Manager on M1 and M2 iPads can be used with external displays once again. This is functionality that Apple removed in the first version of iPadOS 16 in order to expand ‌Stage Manager‌ to A12X and A12Z iPad Pro models.


With external display support, ‌Stage Manager‌ supports up to eight apps for multitasking purposes, rather than four. This functionality is limited to ‌M1‌ and ‌M2‌ iPads.

New Home App Architecture

Paired with HomePod 16.2 software, iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, and ‌macOS Ventura‌ 13.1 add support for an updated Home app architecture that comes following the addition of the Matter smart home standard.


Apple says that the new Home app architecture will bring faster, more reliable performance in homes with many smart accessories, but it requires every device that accesses the home to be running the iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, ‌macOS Ventura‌ 13.1, tvOS 16.2, and watchOS 9.2 betas, along with the HomePod 16.2 beta software.

On devices that support ProMotion, Apple says that SwiftUI animated layout changes will support a 120Hz refresh rate, functionality that was previously missing.

Unintentional SOS Calls

Apple appears to be collecting data on accidental SOS calls with the update, and one user has reported an Apple inquiry about the call that collects system data.

Software Updates

Apple has made a small tweak to the Software Updates section of the Settings app, which is available under General. The text of the software version that’s installed is now bolder, making it more apparent.

Other New Features

Know of a new feature in iOS 16.2 that we left out? Let us know in the comments below.

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Technology

iPadOS 16 review: Stage Manager is not the future of multitasking

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There is really only one big idea inside of iPadOS 16. The new operating system comes with plenty of improvements and upgrades, of course — editable messages, a Weather app (finally), improvements to most of Apple’s built-in apps, and some extremely clever new Live Text features — but most of that is already available on the iPhone through iOS 16. There’s nothing wrong with an iterative update, of course, and by the time you hit version 16 of anything, you’re not likely to be breaking much new ground.

Stage Manager, though, is an almost entirely new thing. It’s the one feature in iPadOS 16 that has the actual potential to change the way you use your iPad (provided you have a compatible model — third-gen iPad Pro or newer, fifth-gen iPad Air or newer) and the things you can do with it. It also appears to be the reason iPadOS 16 took so long to be released: Apple’s been tweaking Stage Manager all summer, and even now, its much-touted support for external displays isn’t in the new software. It’s still coming, just… later.

After testing the first public beta in July, I wrote that I hated Stage Manager. It didn’t solve any of the iPad’s multitasking problems for me and actually managed to create some new ones. Since then, I’ve been following along as Apple has tinkered with the feature over the last few months through the company’s public beta process for iPadOS 16. And now, as version 16.1 makes its way to iPads everywhere, I regret to inform you that Stage Manager still doesn’t work. This is not the iPad multitasking you’re looking for.

a:hover]:text-black [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black text-gray-63″>Image: Apple / David Pierce

The best way to understand Stage Manager is as a remix of the Mac’s Spaces concept. Once you enable it in the “Home Screen & Multitasking” menu in the Settings app (it’s off by default), Stage Manager puts the app you’re using in the center of the screen, which Apple calls the “stage.” Your four most recent apps sit off to the left, organized into what Apple calls “piles,” with thumbnails representing what’s in each. You can add more apps to the stage by dragging them from the dock or tapping on the three-dot window at the top of the screen and selecting “Add Another Window.” You can resize the windows in the stage by dragging the bottom corner, as long as the apps support being shrunk and expanded to certain sizes. You can even have windows overlapping one another. If you tap on one of the thumbnails on the left, it’ll bring that app or apps to the stage and move all the other ones off to the side.

a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin [&>a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&>a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&>a]:shadow-underline-white md:text-30″>The upgrade path

Which iPads are getting iPadOS 16? This year, it’s more complicated than most. Here’s the breakdown:

These iPads are compatible with iPadOS 16:

  • iPad, fifth generation and newer
  • iPad mini, fifth generation and newer
  • iPad Air, third generation and newer
  • iPad Pro, all generations

And these are the ones getting iPadOS 16 and Stage Manager:

  • 11-inch iPad Pro, all generations
  • 12.9-inch iPad Pro, third generation and newer
  • iPad Air, fifth generation

There’s also the question of which iPads will get Stage Manager on external displays… but we’ll worry about that when that feature ships.

In theory, this makes some sense. If you’re the type of person to spend all day switching between a handful of apps, this is, in fact, a faster way to do so than Apple’s traditional swipe-and-hold multitasking system. But as soon as you really dig into Stage Manager, it falls apart. At best, it feels totally disconnected from everything else about the iPad; at worst, it’s just broken. Way too often, it’s both. 

The broken stuff is mostly what I’d call “beta stuff,” and there is plenty of it. I’ve had the on-screen keyboard randomly appear when I resized an app; I’ve had apps crash as soon as I touched the bottom corner to resize them. Apple’s Camera app switches from landscape to portrait aspect ratios as soon as you shrink the window. If you switch your iPad from landscape to portrait mode and then back, it resizes all your windows for some reason.

Some apps snap neatly from their full-size view to their split-screen view to their iPhone-sized view as you resize them, but plenty of apps don’t have all those views, so the windows either don’t change at all or just awkwardly shrink their full-sized apps. A bunch of Apple’s own apps do this, including Settings and iTunes. 

I could keep going, but you get the point. Stage Manager might be shipping, and it has gotten better since its first nonsensical beta, but it’s definitely not done.

a:hover]:text-black [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black text-gray-63″>Image: Apple / David Pierce

The bigger issue with Stage Manager is that I still don’t know why it exists. It’s almost like a nifty on-stage demo turned into a feature: for the person who is constantly dragging a photo out of their email, into their whiteboarding app, annotating it with a Pencil, sharing the whiteboard link through iMessage, jumping on a FaceTime to discuss, moving the photo into one of those wildly powerful 3D-rendering tools Apple loves to demo but only six people actually use in their day-to-day life, then making an iMovie film about the whole thing, before dragging it all back into an email attachment, Stage Manager works great. But I’d wager that nobody outside of Apple Park — and maybe nobody besides Apple’s software chief Craig Federighi — actually uses their iPad like that.

Trying to figure out how Stage Manager works turns into a wild puzzle requiring a wall of Polaroids and a ball of yarn

Here in the real world, trying to figure out how Stage Manager works turns into a wild puzzle requiring a wall of Polaroids and a ball of yarn. Okay, so you open an app, and it opens into Stage Manager. That kicks the fifth-most recent pile… out of Stage Manager. But then, if you reopen an app from that old pile, it comes back into Stage Manager, along with the rest of its pile! So it wasn’t gone — it was just hidden. If you have an app open in two piles, there’s no way to know which will open if you click a link to that app. You can’t rename or pin a pile, and you can’t put one in your dock. You can’t see piles by CMD-tabbing between them, either. They just kind of come and go. 

The exception is the app switcher, which interacts with Stage Manager in a way that actually makes sense. You swipe up and hold to open the view of all your windows, which includes both full-screen apps and whatever piles you’ve created. This works! But that view doesn’t match what’s on the left side of the Stage Manager, and it should. 

a:hover]:text-black [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black text-gray-63″>Image: Apple / David Pierce

Say you decide you want to full-screen a window, so you tap on the three-dot button at the top and select Zoom. Sometimes, nothing happens — which is weird. But even when the app does snap to full size, it still stays in the pile. The only way to get it out of the pile is to tap on the three dots and hit Minimize — which effectively hides the app. Then you go open the app again, and it’s now separate. But! If you minimize a non-full-screen window, it sends that app to its own pile but leaves in Stage Manager. But only if there are other apps in the pile. Does that make sense to you? Me neither.

There’s really no discernible mental model to help you understand how Stage Manager works, and it often doesn’t seem like anyone at Apple has used this thing for very long. Why does every app, including Netflix and games and other obviously full-screen apps, open into Stage Manager? If I only have one app open, is that a pile? What if I want to have one app in two piles? If I open a link in my Slack / Safari pile, why does that link take me to a whole different pile?

Ultimately, there is exactly one thing I love Stage Manager for: opening three iPhone-sized apps side by side simultaneously. I have a pile that includes Messages, Slack, and my email, and it’s now my iPad’s communication hub. It’s great. But the thing about that feature, and the thing about all of Stage Manager’s features, is that they’d be much better if the iPad just allowed you to do free-form, multiwindow multitasking, the way you can open and freely manipulate app windows on a Mac or a PC.

a:hover]:text-black [&>a]:shadow-underline-gray-63 [&>a:hover]:shadow-underline-black text-gray-63″>Image: Apple / David Pierce

Users have been clamoring for free-form windowing on their iPads for years, and Apple has steadfastly refused to give it to them. For a while, Apple cited performance and battery life as the primary concerns when it came to multitasking, which is presumably why Stage Manager isn’t supported on the new base-model iPad or older versions of the Air and Pro. But the new iPad Pro runs the same chip as the new MacBook Air, and that thing will happily take all your windows and tabs any way you want to configure them — there’s clearly plenty of power to go around here. 

More recently, Federighi’s explanation for not offering free-form multitasking is essentially that it’s too easy to make a mess. “You open one thing, and you go get the next thing, and it piles on top of that,” he told Daring Fireball’s John Gruber on The Talk Show podcast right after WWDC. “So you’re constantly either living in the mess, or you’re cleaning up after yourself constantly as you go.” He then said the iPad team arrived at Stage Manager from the opposite direction: “You had what was a clean experience by default, a single window at a time, but where you wanted to bring in more.” 

When the first iPad launched in 2010, it was all about full-screen focus

Federighi’s explanation points to the iPad’s biggest problem: Apple isn’t sure how it’s supposed to work. When the first iPad launched in 2010, it was all about full-screen focus. During the launch event, Steve Jobs sat comfortably in an armchair and scrolled through websites and email, frequently using words like “focus” and “immersive.” He kept talking about how big everything was on the iPad’s screen. Jobs talked about iPhone apps, but not putting three of them on the screen at once — he talked about blowing them up to see them on the larger display (which, to be fair, was a bad idea in its own right). Multitasking, as we’ve come to know it on laptops and desktops, was simply never part of the idea.

The company has a complicated history with multitasking in general. Jobs was famously and loudly against the entire concept — he believed in helping people focus on one thing at a time, not in helping them overwhelm themselves with windows. In Jobs’ mind, the best thing to do for users was to make it easy to switch between tasks rather than do several tasks at once. 

For years, what Apple meant by “multitasking” on mobile devices was making it easy to switch between apps and making sure those apps were up to date. When Jobs showed off iOS 4 in 2010, for instance, the “multitasking” he demoed was the new switcher — double tap to bring up a row of icons showing your most recent apps. Even when Apple launched features for the iPad like Split View and Slide Over, it always framed them as quick interrupters. Add something to your shopping list; drag a photo from Files to your email. It was always about switching, not multitasking.

The iPad was always much more iPhone than Mac, too. It had a closed ecosystem, offered less access for developers and accessories, and tightly controlled how everything worked. More recently, though, as the iPad has become more powerful and as Apple has come to see its tablet as a capital-p Productivity device, it has tried to embrace some more openness and keep that sense of full-screen focus that Jobs loved so much about the tablet. And that’s just not possible. Yes, users make a mess with all the windows and tabs on their computer; that freedom also lets them work however they like, which helps them get more done. 

This tension is only becoming more acute, too. Apple is now all-in on keyboard attachments for iPads — it even moved the camera on the new 10th-gen iPad to the center in landscape mode, which is as clear a sign as you’ll ever see that most people use their iPads horizontally on a desk. Apple’s also trying to break down barriers between Mac and iPad so that you can do all your work on all your devices.

Stage Manager, as a concept, makes sense on a Mac because it adds some structure to the free-form system, letting you quickly collect your mess. In that way, it reminds me of the Mac’s desktop Stacks feature, which automatically creates folders for different file types on your desktop. It’s a simple way to rein in the chaos. On the iPad, though, Stage Manager is just more and different structure on top of all the existing structure. And all that structure just turns back into chaos.