Apple revealed iPadOS at the WWDC keynote today. The iPadOS fork of iOS will allow developers to take advantage of features developed specifically to take advantage of iPad hardware. The most significant part of this is allowing users to maximize the larger screen area of iPad compared to the iPhone.
Some of the changes include a tighter grid on the home screen and the ability to pin widgets on the home screen. There is also going to be multi-window support and improved multitasking to facilitate this. Split-View will also allow multiple windows from the same application. Apps will now take up “spaces,” which can be accessed via the app switcher. This will enable you to have multiple instances of a program open, which allows for full multitasking just like you would expect on a Mac or PC.
The Files app has also been updated to include a new column view which makes browsing into deep file hierarchy a lot more intuitive. SMB file sharing is now included in Files, and perhaps the biggest addition is the ability to use SD cards and USB drives via the charge port.
Safari on the iPad will also come much closer to parity with MacOS. The iPadOS version of Safari will automatically request the desktop version of a website. There will also be a download manager added that will allow you to save files. This is a big step for Apple since this has been a requested feature since the iPhone debuted 11 years ago.
There are tons of other updates and added features across the board. With the creation of iPadOS, the device is closer to a laptop replacement than ever before.
We haven’t got a public release date for MacOS, but more than likely developer builds will start popping up after the keynote has concluded.
