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whitedragon101

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 11, 2008
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Will we get more desktop features in IOS12 to bring iPad Pro closer to a desktop replacement?
 
What do you mean by "desktop features"?
I rather Apple make iOS12 ultra smooth top to bottom on all supported devices before bringing any new features.
 
I definitely hope to see some refinements of the current features. For instance, it'd be nice if apps can be dragged from the doc to the left side of the screen; currently, they are automatically placed on the right side and you have to drag them to the left.

Also, it's quite limiting only having access to apps on the doc/most recent apps for split view.
 
Will we get more desktop features in IOS12 to bring iPad Pro closer to a desktop replacement?
Doubt it. We will (eventually) see PC features being reimagined for the iPad, but I doubt we will see features such as mouse support being implemented as is.

If the recent iOS 12 leak is to be believed, we won't see many new iPad features this year. Next year will be the major iPad update, with features such as the ability to run the same app side-by-side.
 
Next year will be the major iPad update, with features such as the ability to run the same app side-by-side.

I’m not a developer but I always thought it would be more resource efficient if apps that benefit from running multiple instances built the functionality into the apps themselves, like safari. But I guess if apps haven’t done that by now, they’re never going to.
 
Honestly I just want mouse support. Better when using a keyboard to quickly move a pointer precisely and select sections of text (I hate selecting and moving text using touch on iOS). And would also be great for Remote Desktop sessions (intealise you can use a Citrix mouse with a couple of RDP apps but proper support for Bluetooth mice would be more flexible)
 
they have already been very clear that that will never happen in iOS.

They say a lot of things. Like never supporting a stylus. And I still want it, so I’ll keep saying it. I see it as complementary - not suggesting it’d be a primary input but if you’re using office apps a lot and have a physical keyboard, then it is IMO the best selection tool in many situations
 
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They say a lot of things. Like never supporting a stylus. And I still want it, so I’ll keep saying it. I see it as complementary - not suggesting it’d be a primary input but if you’re using office apps a lot and have a physical keyboard, then it is IMO the best selection tool in many situations
Horrible example. Apple was never anti-stylus. Steve himself said he didn’t like that other products used a stylus as the MAIN method of interacting with your device. Meaning no fingers. In which he was completely right. He never said stylus were horrible for drawing and note taking
 
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Horrible example. Apple was never anti-stylus. Steve himself said he didn’t like that other products used a stylus as the MAIN method of interacting with your device. Meaning no fingers. In which he was completely right. He never said stylus were horrible for drawing and note taking

Ok fair enough. Anyway they still say lots of things and then change their mind. Basic product marketing - just because their product doesn’t have feature A, and they say ‘why would you need feature A?’ - doesn’t mean they won’t bring that later down the line
 
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Ok fair enough. Anyway they still say lots of things and then change their mind. Basic product marketing - just because their product doesn’t have feature A, and they say ‘why would you need feature A?’ - doesn’t mean they won’t bring that later down the line

I can agree with that. A good example would be sizing. Apple made a big deal about the size of the iPhone 5 being perfect and they seemed to really resist going other. Then the 6 and 6 Plus came. Same for the iPad sizing with the mini and larger pro models down the line.

But I think as far as mouse support goes, they’ve been pretty clear about not merge design philosophies when it comes to Mac OS style interfaces and iOS touch style ones. So I think the chances are pretty low for native mouse support on iOS. Especially seeing how well that went for Microsoft and their surface products. They just assumed since touchscreens were a thing a lot of developers would make touch friendly apps. Not so. Most of them are heavy mouse user apps and the same would go for Apple if they confused interfaces. Once the option is even given for mouse, markets for user interfaces would be confused and developers would react by having less focus
 
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I want to see more robust file management in iOS 12. I'm not a big cloud user, and many times, I take my iPad Pro to little taco shops around Dallas to write. Or parks. Or the mall. Or my church. Or in my car on a vacation (wife driving of course.) Nine times out of ten, there's no internet at these places. So if all my words are saved on the cloud, how do I access my documents, so I can, you know, write? Well, I don't. They're on the damn cloud, which is inaccessible at these places I go. Give us an easy way to save files right on to our iPad, Apple. Files in folders, locally. How hard can that be? Maybe there already is a way and I'm just too dumb to figure it out? But it shouldn't have to be that way. Make it easy, Apple. Make it idiot-proof! Make me idiot-proof!
 
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Prior to yesterday’s purchase, my brief iPad/external keyboard experience was years ago with an iPad 2 running iOS 4 or 5, so I’m very appreciative of the advancements in iOS 11. Using my trusty 2007 Apple BT keyboard and learning the keyboard shortcuts.

I’m hoping that everyone who enjoys desktop features is choosing to share their analytics so Apple will see that we’re using them and give us more.
 
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I want to see more robust file management in iOS 12. I'm not a big cloud user, and many times, I take my iPad Pro to little taco shops around Dallas to write. Or parks. Or the mall. Or my church. Or in my car on a vacation (wife driving of course.) Nine times out of ten, there's no internet at these places. So if all my words are saved on the cloud, how do I access my documents, so I can, you know, write? Well, I don't. They're on the damn cloud, which is inaccessible at these places I go. Give us an easy way to save files right on to our iPad, Apple. Files in folders, locally. How hard can that be? Maybe there already is a way and I'm just too dumb to figure it out? But it shouldn't have to be that way. Make it easy, Apple. Make it idiot-proof! Make me idiot-proof!

A lot of people would quickly connect to the hotspot that most mobile phones these days can provide, download their documents and continue with their task.
 
A lot of people would quickly connect to the hotspot that most mobile phones these days can provide, download their documents and continue with their task.

It’s always good where possible to have a locally cached copy that syncs automatically to stay up to date. Dropbox on windows/osx is great for that, and i’d love something similar for iOS so I always have documents etc available no matter whether I have internet access or not.
 
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Personally I don’t think the file system access model is going to be high on the agenda for iOS. If you look at how apps can share with others, for example how LightRoom can send to other Adobe apps, I think that may be more the model iOS goes for.

As another example, I use OmniGraffle on my IPP and the way to get drawings into Pages is to export to Photos and then in Pages, import from Photos. In this case Photos is standing in for the file system on OS X. But why not have an option in OmniGraffle to send the exported image to Pages and have Pages either insert at the current edit point or become active and allow me to place it where I want? In some cases, not all, the could, and probably should, be hidden from the user.

P.S. I’m not talking about a return to OLE, that would be horrid, so no in-place editing stuff, just that there may be better ways of doing a lot of stuff that you would currently do with a file system and access to it from all apps.
 
A few things I'd like to see:
  • I'm coming around on mouse support. I was against it for a while, but I am so comfortable using my MacBook on a big screen with a keyboard and mouse that I want to do that on an iPad.
  • External drive support. Still would be nice to share files on USB drives
  • True full desktop web experience. Even "Request Desktop Site" isn't always pulling the non-mobile site.
 
It’s always good where possible to have a locally cached copy that syncs automatically to stay up to date. Dropbox on windows/osx is great for that, and i’d love something similar for iOS so I always have documents etc available no matter whether I have internet access or not.

Dropbox has the make available offline feature on iOS too. I currently use it in addition to using the same feature on MS OneDrive. I wish Google Drive had the same functionality on iOS.
 
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Dropbox has the make available offline feature on iOS too. I currently use it in addition to using the same feature on MS OneDrive. I wish Google Drive had the same functionality on iOS.

Unfortunately you have to pay DropBox a subscription to sync folders. I’d like an offline version of that and just sync over local network and avoid cloud syncing altogether.
 
Personally I don’t want mouse support in the traditional sense, but I’d love it if text-entry apps could make use of trackpads—whether embedded in the ASK or similar, or in a Bluetooth keyboard. I don’t see that as impossible as it’s simply taking the soft keyboard’s ‘trackpad’ to the next logical level and would have no further implications for the OS as a whole.

That is literally ALL I want. I’ve got to the point where the only thing I use my rMBP for is Pubcoder book authoring work. Everything else I do on my iPP and enjoy doing on my iPP. Although a true desktop style browser would be nice, but for me the only time it’s ever an issue is Amazon Seller, so from my perspective this is more Amazon’s problem than Apple’s!
 
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