iPad Why does iPadOS not feel like true OS?

[rkuo]

I’m guessing they what files the file manger to have more features?

I'm just going to link to this article everywhere this comes up, it's so on point.

Not an iPad Pro Review: Why iPadOS Still Doesn’t Get the Basics Right

Let me cut to the chase: sadly, I don’t have a new iPad Pro to review today on MacStories. I was able to try one in London last week, and, as I wrote, I came away impressed with the hardware. However, I didn’t get a chance to use a new iPad Pro over the past

www.macstories.net

 

[Kal Madda]

I'm just going to link to this article everywhere this comes up, it's so on point.

Not an iPad Pro Review: Why iPadOS Still Doesn’t Get the Basics Right

Let me cut to the chase: sadly, I don’t have a new iPad Pro to review today on MacStories. I was able to try one in London last week, and, as I wrote, I came away impressed with the hardware. However, I didn’t get a chance to use a new iPad Pro over the past

www.macstories.net

It makes several false claims though. He claims iPadOS doesn’t allow apps to run in the background. This is simply not true. I do this regularly on my iPad. Also, I transfer files in the Files app quite often, and have never had a single issue with Files, his claim that it’s “unreliable” or “less reliable than Finder” may be his personal experience, but isn’t shared by many people who have used the Files app for years and never had an issue. I wonder if people would assume Finder is unreliable if a couple people claimed they had crashes with it, even though thousands of people use it with no issue.

Also, you can choose what app you use to open a file in Files, you just can’t set it an app as the default you want to always use for that file type. Is that a downside, sure, but it isn’t as extreme as what he implies in his article where he claims there’s nothing he can do about the file opening in Delta, when he could simply click the share button and select the app he wants to open that file in.

 

[glhiii]

The filing system on iOS/iPadOS seems to go back to the Newton "Soup." This makes it ungainly and hard to use. Bits of one's files float around in the "soup" like pieces of carrots in vegetable soup and there is no easy way to manipulate them.

 

[Kal Madda]

The filing system on iOS/iPadOS seems to go back to the Newton "Soup." This makes it ungainly and hard to use. Bits of one's files float around in the "soup" like pieces of carrots in vegetable soup and there is no easy way to manipulate them.

How so? Files exist in the folders I put them in, and I just select them and transfer them when I wish to. What’s any more “soup-like” about that then the Finder? It literally has pretty much the same UI.

 

[Bubble99]

The filing system on iOS/iPadOS seems to go back to the Newton "Soup." This makes it ungainly and hard to use. Bits of one's files float around in the "soup" like pieces of carrots in vegetable soup and there is no easy way to manipulate them.

What do you mean it goes back to Newton "Soup?

 

[AppliedMicro]

He claims iPadOS doesn’t allow apps to run in the background. This is simply not true

He doesn’t claim that it can’t at all run background tasks. He’s referring to …

”iPadOS needs to gain support for executing long-running, complex tasks in the background. I’m not referring to Background App Refresh, which is the system that lets apps stay active in short bursts in the background to receive push notifications and other updates”

I do this regularly on my iPad

Which background processe re you running on your iPad in non-system apps?

 

[Kal Madda]

He doesn’t claim that it can’t at all run background tasks. He’s referring to …

”iPadOS needs to gain support for executing long-running, complex tasks in the background. I’m not referring to Background App Refresh, which is the system that lets apps stay active in short bursts in the background to receive push notifications and other updates”


Which background processe re you running on your iPad in non-system apps?

He doesn’t claim that it can’t at all run background tasks. He’s referring to …

”iPadOS needs to gain support for executing long-running, complex tasks in the background. I’m not referring to Background App Refresh, which is the system that lets apps stay active in short bursts in the background to receive push notifications and other updates”


Which background processe re you running on your iPad in non-system apps?

From the article: “Because of a mix of technical limitations and policy decisions, it’s still impossible for an application that wants to perform something in the background to exist on iPadOS.” This is simply not true.

I have run Octane X in the background while going to check on something, and it didn’t crash. The most frequent thing I do in the background on my iPad is file transfers. But I can also leave Spotify in the background playing music while I multitask, and I’ve done that quite often. Claiming apps can’t perform in the background on iPadOS is not true. Besides, how do system apps not count? He made a blanket statement that it’s impossible for such apps to exist on iPadOS. And it’s untrue.

 

[Bubble99]

iPadOS doesn’t allow apps to run in the background

What apps are you running and how much RAM does it have?

 

[Kal Madda]

What apps are you running and how much RAM does it have?

Exactly what I want to know as well. Of course iPad’s with less RAM likely bin processes more aggressively, but my M1 iPad Pro can run apps in the background fine. So seems more like an app or hardware RAM problem then an OS limitation.

 

[Kal Madda]

Also, full disclosure, I’ve been very disappointed with Federico’s newer “slap the Mac-way of doing things on the iPad” takes since he decided to branch out more a couple years ago. He used to write pleasant content about iPadOS, but anymore, it seems all he does is complain about iPadOS, rather than talking about its benefits and the things it gets right. I think some of his points are valid, I think it would be nice for Files to incorporate Smart Folders and the ability to set a default app for always opening a certain file type, but I don’t think it’s a big deal that it doesn’t have those things yet.

 

[Ludatyk]

Also, full disclosure, I’ve been very disappointed with Federico’s newer “slap the Mac-way of doing things on the iPad” takes since he decided to branch out more a couple years ago. He used to write pleasant content about iPadOS, but anymore, it seems all he does is complain about iPadOS, rather than talking about its benefits and the things it gets right. I think some of his points are valid, I think it would be nice for Files to incorporate Smart Folders and the ability to set a default app for always opening a certain file type, but I don’t think it’s a big deal that it doesn’t have those things yet.

For the iPad in general, it's always been about the marathon... not the sprint. Improvements will certainly be made, but never at the timeline that critics expect.

Critics expect drastic improvements annually, when we should know by now... that's not Apple business approach. Even their hardware is based on minor improvements yearly. Once in a blue moon, we get some crazy big hardware update... but for the most part updates are not as significant to the previous.

And I think Federico biggest issue with iPadOS stems from the multitasking system... I think if Apple simply enhanced SplitView to allow more apps/windows (instead of 2, maybe 3 or 4), then I don't think Federico would be as critical to iPadOS. The fact that Stage Manager is a huge feature and he's not fully on board with it, leads to the negativity on iPadOS.

Because he thoroughly enjoyed the Shelf feature that was introduced for iPadOS 15 and if you enabled Stage Manager, that no longer is available.

 

[AppliedMicro]

The most frequent thing I do in the background on my iPad is file transfers. But I can also leave Spotify in the background playing music while I multitask

Viticci's phrasing may have been a bit muddled but it is quite clear what he means. And he knows just as well as we know that iPads do allow media playback in the background or PiP. Even early iOS versions on iPhone did that, so that's clearly an exception from the "rule".

I have run Octane X in the background while going to check on something, and it didn’t crash

Not crashing doesn’t mean that it is running complex background tasks or rendering.
While I'm admittedly not familiar* with that app, it does not prove the point:

Its developer advertises being a "cloud graphics company"and "content creation and distribution powered by the cloud" and advertises the app* as:

"With Octane X for the iPad, artists can also now access near unlimited decentralized GPUs on the Render Network – providing the ability to scale mobile rendering jobs to in the cloud for next generation creative workflows."

One App Store review also states that "This app will not run at all without an internet connection".

👉 There's no question that iPad apps can send rendering tasks to some cloud server - and receive notifications when they're done. That doesn't mean that they support proper on-device background rendering.

* I'm going by their release PR. Since the online documentation for the iPad version app is basically nonexistent, I'm not going to delve further into this.

 

[JamesMay82]

- uninterrupted operations when switching between apps, such as exporting and importing files.
- audio to continue playing when switching between apps or playing audio on another app.

These are two of the biggest problems for me with iPad OS.

The files issue you mentioned is my biggest issue, mainly when I’m trying to attach files to emails but then also if I want to refer back to another email, I have to close the email I’m writing to then go back in and its a pain.

Writing pages on excel docs doesn’t give me to option to save or save as I‘ve noticed. It’s just automatically saves.

I can’t bulk back up my photos and I also can’t import music into the music app.

i’m now just using my iPad for consumption and web browsing And very basic emails

 

[ifxf]

I would say the following issues exist

• OS doesn’t permit paging, you are restricted to the physical memory on the device
• Opening a file in multiple apps is a convoluted exercise. You typically end up with multiple copies of the file and you hope all the apps you require support the File app. For example, sharing a file with another person can’t be done with the Files app, you need to go to the email app.

 

[AppliedMicro]

PS:

This post on Apple's developer forums clears things up a bit more:

"There’s no general-purpose mechanism for:
- Running code continuously in the background"

(...)

However, iOS does provide a _wide_ range of special-purpose mechanisms for accomplishing specific user goals. For example:
- If you’re building a music player, use the `audio` [background mode](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/information_property_list/uibackgroundmodes) to continue playing after the user has moved your app to the background.
- If you’re building a timer app, use a [local notification](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications) to notify the user when your timer has expired."

You can also prevent your app from being suspended for "short periods of time" (seconds to a few minutes, maybe ten, from what I can quickly gather as a non-iOS developer).

So Viticci's point still stands: Long-running, complex tasks can't run in the background.

 

[Kal Madda]

Viticci's phrasing may have been a bit muddled but it is quite clear what he means. And he knows just as well as we know that iPads do allow media playback in the background or PiP. Even the earlier iOS versions on iPhone did that, so that's clearly an exception from the "rule".

Not crashing doesn’t mean that it is running complex background tasks or rendering.
While I'm admittedly not familiar* with that app, it does not prove the point:

Its developer advertises being a "cloud graphics company"and "content creation and distribution powered by the cloud" and advertises the app as:

"With Octane X for the iPad, artists can also now access near unlimited decentralized GPUs on the Render Network – providing the ability to scale mobile rendering jobs to in the cloud for next generation creative workflows."

One App Store review also states that "This app will not run at all without an internet connection".

Viticci made an untrue claim. And file transfers in the Files app continue when I leave the Files app in the background, so clearly apps can run processes in the background. Octane X keeps on rendering in the background, it doesn’t simply not crash, that wasn’t the point I was trying to make. It doesn’t crash and stop the render, as one would expect to happen if iPadOS didn’t allow for apps to run in the background. Others report that LumaFusion can continue exports in the background while they do other tasks. These things serve as evidence that Viticci’s claim that the OS doesn’t allow apps to do this is false. Also, as a side note, Octane X does run without an internet connection. I just tested it and it worked with no internet. Also, I believe that the cloud rendering is an optional service, not necessarily the only function of the app. Admittedly, I’m still learning with Octane X, but the fact it can render in the background with no internet connection implies to me it’s doing so natively.

 

[Kal Madda]

I would say the following issues exist

• OS doesn’t permit paging, you are restricted to the physical memory on the device
• Opening a file in multiple apps is a convoluted exercise. You typically end up with multiple copies of the file and you hope all the apps you require support the File app. For example, sharing a file with another person can’t be done with the Files app, you need to go to the email app.

That’s not true. I can Airdrop files from the Files app. Or I can send it via email or Messages from the Files app. It’s very easy, you just use the Share Sheet.

 

[Kal Madda]

PS:

This post on Apple's developer forums clears things up a bit more:

"There’s no general-purpose mechanism for:
- Running code continuously in the background"

(...)

However, iOS does provide a _wide_ range of special-purpose mechanisms for accomplishing specific user goals. For example:
- If you’re building a music player, use the `audio` [background mode](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/information_property_list/uibackgroundmodes) to continue playing after the user has moved your app to the background.
- If you’re building a timer app, use a [local notification](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications) to notify the user when your timer has expired."

You can also prevent your app from being suspended for "short periods of time" (seconds to a few minutes, maybe ten, from what I can quickly gather as a non-iOS developer).

So Viticci's point still stands: Long-running, complex tasks can't run in the background.

No, his point doesn’t stand. He made an untrue claim that doesn’t hold up to real-world scrutiny. He claimed iPadOS doesn’t support background tasks, and that it’s impossible for apps that want to do things in the background to exist, which is simply not true.

 

[rkuo]

No, his point doesn’t stand. He made an untrue claim that doesn’t hold up to real-world scrutiny. He claimed iPadOS doesn’t support background tasks, and that it’s impossible for apps that want to do things in the background to exist, which is simply not true.

Being pedantic is not going to win this argument for you.

 

[FriendlyMackle]

For the iPad in general, it's always been about the marathon... not the sprint. Improvements will certainly be made, but never at the timeline that critics expect.

Critics expect drastic improvements annually, when we should know by now... that's not Apple business approach. Even their hardware is based on minor improvements yearly. Once in a blue moon, we get some crazy big hardware update... but for the most part updates are not as significant to the previous.

And I think Federico biggest issue with iPadOS stems from the multitasking system... I think if Apple simply enhanced SplitView to allow more apps/windows (instead of 2, maybe 3 or 4), then I don't think Federico would be as critical to iPadOS. The fact that Stage Manager is a huge feature and he's not fully on board with it, leads to the negativity on iPadOS.

Because he thoroughly enjoyed the Shelf feature that was introduced for iPadOS 15 and if you enabled Stage Manager, that no longer is available.

But it’s been 14 years (roughly). We should at the least have a better filesystem by now. And not being able to set a ‘default’ application filetype is RIDICULOUS. It is stupid AND lazy. I can’t imagine making this an option would take iPadOS’s software engineers 5 minutes—if they were interested in actually making the iPad a more powerful tool.

Obviously, this disregard and lack of attention to details all comes from the office of the CEO. They will drag out the software development of the iPad for at least another decade, and I don’t think they ever plan to reach true feature parity with traditional macs.

I’m NOT an iPad naysayer or hater — I’ve used iPads since the first model way back when they launched. They HAVE definitely improved in terms of software and capabilities.
But I could not use one for work if I wanted to remain sane… I have tried to use an iPad Pro on vacation without my laptop, and it was maddening the additional steps I had to take just to do some very simple tasks.

Additionally, lately, and I think it is software related, my email app on both my ipad and iphone has slowed down horribly…loading emails one by one (for hundreds of emails). Why? This just isn’t the kind of problem I have on my Macs—ever,

I won’t hold my breath for revolutionary software advances at WWDC. And I will still upgrade this IPP (2020-21 M1 model) when I need to. The new M4 model sounds fantastic, but for me the main benefits would be the OLED screen, M4 chip, and relocated camera, plus weight reduction. All of those are really nice things! But frankly, the mini-LED screen on my M1 iPP and cellular with 5G ultrawide mmwave modem. It really bothers me that they chose to eliminate this capacity in the new model. It is tremendously fast.

 

[Kal Madda]

Being pedantic is not going to win this argument for you.

It’s not being pedantic. He made a claim, and that claim is false.

 

[Ludatyk]

But it’s been 14 years (roughly). We should at the least have a better filesystem by now. And not being able to set a ‘default’ application filetype is RIDICULOUS. It is stupid AND lazy. I can’t imagine making this an option would take iPadOS’s software engineers 5 minutes—if they were interested in actually making the iPad a more powerful tool.

And you know how long Mac has been around? 40 years (roughly)? And guess what? Apple is still improving it.

Obviously, this disregard and lack of attention to details all comes from the office of the CEO. They will drag out the software development of the iPad for at least another decade, and I don’t think they ever plan to reach true feature parity with traditional macs.

It will never reach true feature parity if both OS are still improving...

I’m NOT an iPad naysayer or hater — I’ve used iPads since the first model way back when they launched. They HAVE definitely improved in terms of software and capabilities.
But I could not use one for work if I wanted to remain sane… I have tried to use an iPad Pro on vacation without my laptop, and it was maddening the additional steps I had to take just to do some very simple tasks.

Out of curiosity... what simple tasks are you referring to?

 

[Zazoh]

I like the OS and the device. Rock solid. Intuitive and familiar as it functions like an iPhone.

 

[Arctic Moose]

And you know how long Mac has been around? 40 years (roughly)? And guess what? Apple is still improving it.

The problem is that the iPad still cannot handle tasks that the Mac could in 1998.

 

[Ludatyk]

The problem is that the iPad still cannot handle tasks that the Mac could in 1998.

And what tasks that the iPad cannot handle that you could do in 1998? I suspect you have very specific tasks in mind... tasks that a vast majority has been requesting of it since released.