With Microsoft officially announcing Windows 11, there's a bit of a buzz in the tech world. People are racing to check out the Insider preview build of the OS and read up on the latest features.
While many are excited, a group of people feels that Windows 11 isn't a big deal. Among those is our news editor, Robert Carnevale, who recently wrote a piece titled "Windows 11: It doesn't matter, and you shouldn't fall for the marketing," which states that Windows 11 is "nothing more than a mild facelift that is being used as an excuse to draft the media into manufacturing consumer interest." While the comment section of that piece is split, I respectfully disagree with Rob and others that hold the same opinion. I believe that Windows 11 does matter and that it's okay to be excited about it.
It's clearly more than a facelift
Source: Microsoft
Even before Windows 11 was officially announced, people around the web incorrectly called the new operating system nothing but a facelift. Our executive editor, Daniel Rubino, already explained how Windows 11 is more than just a new Start menu, but the narrative persists.
Here's a list of just some of the new features that will arrive with Windows 11:
As a quick note, I'm aware that some of these features, like the new Microsoft Store, will also be on Windows 10, but they are shipping with and were made with Windows 11 in mind. Other features, like Dynamic Refresh Rate, are exclusive to Windows 11. There are also some other features that I haven't listed.
These features might not move the needle for everyone that uses Windows 11, but they're clearly not "just a facelift." These features add true value for gaming PCs, productivity, and the everyday use of PCs.
Changes to the Microsoft Store alone are massive
Source: Daniel Rubino / Windows Central
Microsoft showed a major recommitment to the Microsoft Store with the announcement of Windows 11. Changes include a new revenue model that allows developers with their own commerce platform to keep 100% of their revenue, new developer tools to make bringing apps to the store easier, and support for Android apps through the Amazon Store. The company has also announced improvements to Windows 11 on ARM.
Microsoft isn't just marketing Windows 11 to consumers. The company is trying to convince developers to get on board, and it's already working. Within a week of Windows 11 getting announced, Zoom, OBS, Canva, TikTok, WinZip, the CorelDRAW graphics suite, and the Adobe Creative Cloud, are either in the Microsoft Store already or their developers have announced that they're on the way to it.
These aren't small or niche apps. Even if you don't use some of the apps, them coming to the Microsoft Store is a big deal for Windows.
That's not to mention all Android apps that are available through the Amazon Store. If things go to plan, Windows 11 could eventually run apps from the Galaxy Store and Google Play Store as well. Even if that never happens, you'll be able to sideload Android APKs onto Windows 11.
Surely millions of Android apps and some of the biggest programs on Windows coming to Windows 11, and the Microsoft Store is more than a facelift.
Even if it was just a facelift, isn't that nice?
Source: Daniel Rubino / Windows Central
While it's clear that Windows 11 is more than a facelift, for the sake of argument, let's say that the only changes it had compared to Windows 10 were cosmetic. Isn't that still a good thing? People have complained about the inconsistent hodgepodge of Windows 10 UI for years. Even if an update just addressed that, it would still be nice.
When Apple announces an update like macOS Big Sur or Google announces Android 12, many of the highlights are cosmetic. Those updates also have new features, but plenty of people welcome improvements to their user interfaces.
It's a good thing when companies listen to feedback. Modernizing Windows, unifying its look across the OS and apps that run on it, and refreshing its design are good things.
Let people be excited
Source: Windows Central
People get excited about different things. As I write this, England is playing against Germany in the Euros (update: It's Coming Home). I don't follow football (soccer to our American readers), but many of my friends do, and they're loving it. People like cars, gadgets, sports, fashion, and all sorts of other things. If people want to get excited about an operating system, is that any weirder than fawning over the new Ford F-150 Lightning or your favorite sports team?
I've covered Windows for years. I write about it, I follow it, I love it. I watched Zac's build videos back when builds started with a 9. Damn straight I'm excited for Windows 11.
The Shroom and Doom Update is one of the biggest releases yet for Grounded's early access, and it's now available to everyone. Highlights of the update include all-new building pieces and crafting recipes, the ability to tame pets, the terrifying Broodmother boss, Achievements, and more.
If your PC somehow does not have trusted platform module (TPM) support through firmware and your UEFI BIOS, we'd recommend checking your motherboard manual for a TPM header. If you have one present, you can try to see if one of these will be compatible to get you ready for Windows 11.
Like so many media companies before it, Instagram is gearing up for a sweeping embrace of video as its content of choice, the platform’s head, Adam Mosseri, announced on Wednesday.
As TikTok and YouTube have seen explosive success with influencer-driven video content, they’ve emerged as serious competitors for Instagram, siphoning away eyeballs with the exact type of content Instagram is already famous for elevating. In response to this, Mosseri said that Instagram is planning to implement several newly-designed initiatives to keep itself relevant, including experimenting with recommending users full-screen videos in their feeds, including those from accounts they do not already follow.
“We’re also going to be experimenting with how do we embrace video more broadly — full screen, immersive, entertaining, mobile-first video,” Mosseri said in a video posted on Wednesday. “You’ll see us do a number of things, or experiment with a number of things in this space over the coming months.”
“We’re no longer a photo-sharing app or a square photo-sharing app,” he added.
Instagram — which is owned by Facebook — has already been eyeing these types of changes for months now. In August 2020, the platform launched the short-form video feature Reels, which allows Instagram users to create content with overlaid audio similar to what’s been happening on TikTok.
G/O Media may get a commission
The announcement about prioritizing video comes just days after Instagram employees hinted at the possibility of a subscribers-only story feature currently being developed by the platform. Known as “Exclusive Stories,” the content would be available only to a given creator’s subscriber base, and would not be available for non-subscribers to view or screenshot.
“People are looking to Instagram to be entertained, there’s stiff competition and there’s more to do,” Mosseri said. “We have to embrace that, and that means change.”
TALLAHASSEE — Floridians won’t have to get new automobile insurance policies after all.
Gov. Ron DeSantis late Tuesday vetoed a bill passed by state lawmakers that would have rewritten the state’s auto insurance laws, doing away with its “no-fault” provision and requiring every motorist to get a new policy next year.
In a brief message, DeSantis wrote that Senate Bill 54 “does not adequately address the current issues facing Florida drivers and may have unintended consequences that would negatively impact both the market and consumers.”
The veto was a rare rebuke of the Republican-controlled Legislature, which passed the bill with bipartisan support — and little debate — in April.
The changes, lawmakers said, would lead to lower premiums in Florida, which consistently ranks in the top five most expensive states for auto insurance.
There was no independent study showing its effects, however, and since the bill’s passage, pressure has mounted for DeSantis to issue a veto.
Insurers warned DeSantis the bill could lead to higher premiums for most drivers, which would take effect next year, during the governor’s reelection campaign.
Medical providers who would lose a steady stream of revenue from the current insurance system were also against it. So were the attorneys who specialize in the type of litigation that would go away if DeSantis allowed the bill to become law; since April, they’ve given at least $265,000 to his reelection campaign.
DeSantis’ veto was praised by the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, an industry trade group.
“We applaud his leadership, his commitment to stand up for the best interests of Floridians, and his actions to protect their pocketbooks,” assistant vice president of state government relations Logan McFaddin said in a statement Wednesday.
In his message, DeSantis acknowledged that the current insurance system “has flaws,” but he did not elaborate.
Lawmakers and insurers agree that the current system is antiquated and riddled with fraud. But the Legislature has tried and failed for a decade to do much about it until this year.
What Republican lawmakers proposed was requiring every motorist in the state to carry a higher minimum amount of auto insurance and holding the drivers who cause accidents responsible for costs.
The plan included repealing Florida’s “no-fault” provision that requires every motorist to carry $10,000 in “personal injury protection” coverage. That coverage pays the insured’s medical and funeral costs regardless of who was at fault in the accident. (Contrary to popular belief, “no-fault” does not mean fault is not assigned in an accident.)
Florida is not unique in requiring “no-fault” coverage, which was adopted in the 1970s. However, it’s now one of just two states that do not also require motorists to carry “bodily injury” coverage, which holds the driver who caused the accident responsible for the other driver’s injuries.
The bill DeSantis vetoed would have scrapped that system and required motorists to carry a minimum of $25,000 in bodily injury coverage for the injury or death of one person and $50,000 in coverage for the injury or death of two people.
Since most insured Floridians already carry bodily injury coverage, their rates would likely go down, lawmakers argued.
The bill they passed wasn’t that simple, however. After hospitals and medical providers objected, lawmakers changed the bill to require insurers also offer up to $10,000 in “medical payments” coverage. Like the current “personal injury protection” coverage, it would pay the insured’s medical costs — and give hospitals and medical providers guaranteed revenue.
Although motorists could choose not to accept the “medical payments” coverage in their policies, a study released by the state two weeks ago showed most would not, driving up costs.
That study estimated that the bill would have caused premiums across the state to increase, on average, by 13.3 percent. One of the exceptions would have been for motorists in Miami-Dade County, who would have seen a potential 6.6 percent decrease on average.
Legislation meant to tide over health care providers impacted by an impending change to how much they’re reimbursed when treating auto-related injuries advanced in the Legislature on Wednesday.
Last week, the Michigan House voted through an amended version of Senate Bill 28 to create a $10 million fund for post-acute brain and spinal injury facilities and attendant care providers seeing structural losses as a result of the pending changes. On Wednesday, the Senate revised that number upward, approving $25 million for the fund.
The amended version of the bill now heads back to the House for further review.
Payments would be provided on a first-come, first-served basis, and providers could only get the funds if they provide information about the charges for their services when treating both auto and non-auto related injuries and can prove that they’re facing a “systematic deficit” caused by changes to the state’s no-fault system.
Come July, reimbursement from insurance companies for health care services provided to auto accident survivors not covered by Medicare will see a 45% cut under the fee schedule laid out in the 2019 law. That change, many current post-acute care providers say, will either put them out of business or require them to stop providing services to auto accident patients. And car accident victims fear they’ll lose access to high-quality care.
Some health care providers treating auto accident victims were critical of the fund proposal, calling it too little and too late to help struggling businesses and survivors. The Michigan Brain Injury Provider Council announced in a Wednesday statement that it opposed the program, urging lawmakers to change the policy instead.
“This program laid out in Senate Bill 28 does not offer enough relief in a timely fashion, or to the degree necessary to give providers the ability to maintain payroll and operations,” said Tom Judd, the council’s president. “The inevitable result is the imminent disruption of care and displacement of vulnerable accident survivors throughout Michigan.”
In 2019, the Republican-led Legislature and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer agreed to an overhaul of Michigan’s no-fault auto insurance system, aimed at lowering the state’s highest-in-the-nation costs, signing into law bills that passed with wide bipartisan support.
Part of that change was giving drivers the option to choose their desired level of personal injury protection (PIP) coverage, which went into effect last summer — but another big piece of the deal was setting up a fee schedule for how much health providers can bill insurance companies when treating auto-related injuries.
Sen. Curtis Hertel, Jr., D-East Lansing, said he doesn’t think $25 million is enough to fix the issue, but thinks it will give providers a “bridge” while the Legislature continues the debate.
“Do I think $25 million is enough? Not even close,” he said. “What I do believe is that that is a bridge to this body and the House trying to find an answer, and those families deserve nothing less than that.”
House Speaker Jason Wentworth, R-Farwell, said last week that the fund could help lawmakers determine any issues with the current policy and what to do moving forward, according to Gongwer News Service.
Supporters of the policy set to take effect in July say the law’s changes to reimbursement fees are a key part of the equation when it comes to lowering auto insurance rates. The Insurance Alliance of Michigan estimates Michigan drivers have saved more than $1 billion from reductions to the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association’s per-vehicle fee alone, not counting any individual savings drivers might have seen from choosing different levels of PIP coverage.
Average car insurance rates have declined substantially since the first phase of Michigan’s auto insurance law went into effect, but it’s still one of the most expensive places in the country to insure a car.
Starting in August 2021, Google will require all new Android APKs to land on the Play Store as App Bundles instead.
This will invariably result in smaller file sizes and other boons for the end-user.
However, it will also require app developers to push out APK versions of their apps to other non-Play Store channels, as they won’t support App Bundles.
For as long as Android has been around, Android apps have been launched in the APK format (which stands for Android Package). However, in 2018, Google introduced a new format called Android App Bundles, or AAB (with the filename *.aab). Google touted that this new format would result in smaller app file sizes and easier ways to control various aspects of apps. Of the millions of apps on the Google Play Store, thousands of them already use the AAB system.
Today, Google announced that the AAB format will now officially replace Android APKs. This means that starting in August of this year, all new apps submitted to the Google Play Store must come in the AAB format. Apps that are currently APKs can stay that way — at least for now.
No more Android APKs: Good news or bad news?
In the end, this is good news for the average consumer. Android App Bundles can be up to 15% smaller than Android APKs, for example. Developers will also have more control over how they distribute updates to apps, which will likely result in faster and more efficient app updates.
However, there are two significant issues with AABs. The first is that developers who want their apps to appear in other distribution channels — such as the Amazon App Store or Huawei’s App Gallery — will need to manually export APK versions of their apps. This won’t require much effort on the dev’s part, but it would mean that any developer who wanted their app to only appear on the Play Store would have that power. In those cases, end users would need to export AABs as Android APKs on their own, as *.aab files would not work on alternative stores.
The other issue is that developers will need to give Google their app signing key to export an AAB app as an APK. This gives Google quite a bit of power. The app signing key is basically proof that a specific developer created a specific app. While it’s unlikely Google would ever do so, it is possible that it could sign apps on behalf of a developer. It’s also possible that someone could gain access to this key and then sign apps for themselves. As such, some developers aren’t too keen on the App Bundle format.
The bottom line, though, is that all new Android apps on the Google Play Store will need to be AABs. There’s no way around it. This is a bold new direction away from Android APKs, but we’ll need to wait for the dust to settle before we draw any conclusions.
The auto industry is holding its fire — for now — over the new requirement to report crashes involving vehicles equipped with partially and fully autonomous driving systems. But automakers are also distancing themselves from the company that appears to be the primary target of the new rule: Tesla.
The rule, issued yesterday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, requires companies like Tesla and Alphabet’s Waymo to report incidents involving driver assistance and autonomous systems within one day of learning of a crash, a major change that signals a tougher stance by regulators.
So far, car companies are taking a wait-and-see approach, mostly lauding NHTSA’s commitment to safety and transparency, while objecting to the perceived conflation of driver-assistance systems, like Tesla’s Autopilot, with fully autonomous vehicles like those operated by Waymo. While many autonomous vehicles are deployed in states with regulations on the books, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) like Tesla’s Autopilot fall in a legal gray area that allowed incidents to escape further examination.
Most of the individual companies declined to comment on the ruling, preferring to speak through the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group that represents all of the major automakers and their suppliers — but notably not Tesla. The alliance released a statement that singled out “misuse and abuse” of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).
“As we evaluate NHTSA’s new reporting obligations, it’s critical that consumers know and understand the benefits—and limitations—of these features to build and improve confidence in proven vehicle safety technologies,” said John Bozzella, the group’s president, in a statement. “Misuse and abuse of Level 2 ADAS systems is extremely dangerous and threatens consumer acceptance and confidence in vehicles equipped with potentially life-saving ADAS technologies.”
Bozzella also noted that last April, “automakers representing nearly 99 percent of the new vehicles sold in the US” signed a pledge committing to “effective driver monitoring systems for Level 2 vehicles.” Driver monitoring systems typically rely on in-car cameras to ensure that drivers are watching the road while using driver-assistance systems.
Companies like General Motors and Ford currently sell cars with camera-based eye-tracking systems that are meant to make sure drivers pay attention while using hands-free driving features.
But Tesla, which many observers noted seems to be the primary target of this new NHTSA rule, has historically resisted regulatory pressure to add better driver monitoring in its cars. That may be changing, though. The latest software update release notes imply that Tesla will begin using the camera above the rear-view mirror in the Model 3 and Model Y to help make sure people pay attention to the road while using Autopilot.
But the company hasn’t said anything publicly about this change. And a spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment for this story, which isn’t surprising considering the company has eliminated its public relations department and hasn’t responded to a request for comment in nearly two years.
Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk have long been criticized for overstating the capabilities of the company’s Autopilot system, which in its most basic form can center a Tesla vehicle in a lane and around curves and adjust the car’s speed based on the vehicle ahead. The use of brand names like Autopilot and “Full Self-Driving” has also helped contribute to an environment in which Tesla customers are misled into believing their vehicles can actually drive themselves.
Since Tesla introduced Autopilot in 2015, there have been at least 11 deaths in nine crashes in the US that involved the driver assistance system. Internationally, there have been at least another nine deaths in seven additional crashes.
The company’s silence is especially notable given the company’s shifting relationship with US regulators. NHTSA, which enforces federal motor vehicle safety standards, has been criticized for misrepresenting Autopilot’s safety record and for giving the company a pass on customers who misuse the technology. NHTSA recently disclosed that it has opened 27 investigations into crashes of Tesla vehicles, 23 of which remain active. Despite this, Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently tweeted that “NHTSA is great.”
The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates crashes involving partially and fully autonomous vehicle crashes, has proven more willing to point fingers at Musk’s company. An NTSB investigation into the 2018 death of a Tesla owner in California said Autopilot was partly to blame. Musk has been much more hostile toward the agency, at one point hanging up on the chairman of NTSB.
Another trade group, the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, which represents AV companies including Waymo, Argo, Aurora, Cruise, and others, echoed similar concerns voiced by the legacy auto industry about grouping their vehicles in with Level 2 cars like Tesla.
“Clear national reporting standards can be an important means to increase public understanding of autonomous vehicles,” said Ariel Wolf, general counsel of the group, in a statement. “But there must be a distinction between our members’ autonomous vehicles—which do not require human intervention to operate safely—and driver assistance technology like Tesla’s, which requires an attentive driver.”
In his statement, Wolf implied that the NHTSA rule was issued without consulting industry players about what was being required of it. He said that the coalition hopes to “restart ... constructive conversations” with the agency on the work of improving safety.
Speaking of safety, auto safety groups lauded the new NHTSA rule requiring crash reporting. Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said the rule will provide NHTSA with the necessary data to “determine the safety of the crash avoidance and automated driving systems,” which the government has previously lacked.
Chase noted that the rule is especially timely given that legislation currently pending in Congress barely requires any data collection from the private sector. “History and experience have repeatedly shown that voluntary agreements fail to yield accurate, comprehensive and reliable results,” she said.
Two car companies, Volkswagen and Honda, replied to The Verge’s request for comment on the new rule. VW, which is working with Argo on autonomous vehicle technology, said it looks forward to “working with NHTSA on the principles underlying the standing order announced today.”
Meanwhile, Honda, which has invested in Cruise and helped design the company’s fully driverless shuttle, noted that its current driver-assistance products, AcuraWatch and Honda Sensing, on the sale in the US “are considered Level 1 ADAS. Thus, there is no immediate requirement related to our vehicles.”
iOS 15 and iPad 15 are kicking off their public betas today, and after a few weeks with the developer betas of the new software, Apple’s OS updates feel like more of a grab bag of new features than ever before.
A major rethinking of either platform, this year’s updates are not. The two updates were clearly born in 2020’s norm-shattering pandemic. The feature list at WWDC and on Apple’s website wears last year’s remote-first influences firmly, from the heavy emphasis on FaceTime features to a better system for corralling notifications into “work” and “personal” buckets.
Of course, Apple’s release cadence and insistence on major updates coming just once a year means that some of these features are arriving in what will — hopefully — be a post-pandemic return to life this fall. So it’ll be interesting to see how things like SharePlay, one of the update’s marquee features, actually shake out once people have the option to watch movies and listen to music together in person again.
Other parts of iOS and iPadOS 15, like the overhauled Safari app or the new Maps app, feel like the kinds of more noticeable changes generally associated with Apple’s major software updates, but they’re sporadic.
The result is a software update that feels a lot quieter than Apple’s usual releases, one that — at least for now — looks to improve smaller things behind the scenes than rebuild things from the ground up.
FaceTime and SharePlay
The flashiest feature coming to the fall updates is SharePlay, a new Apple-wide system built on top of FaceTime for sharing TV shows, movies, music, and podcasts with friends and family even when you’re not in the same room. It’s also the most pandemic-inspired feature, an Apple product-based spin on the countless watch party apps and services that sprung up to replace movie nights over the past year.
SharePlay shows off how well Apple’s hardware and software services all work together: watching a TV show or listening to an album over FaceTime is seamless. But it also highlights the height of Apple’s walled garden: developers have to choose to use SharePlay — which is missing big names like Netflix and YouTube right now — and it only works on Apple hardware, despite the expansion of FaceTime and the Apple TV app to other platforms.
And since content is streamed locally, everyone watching or listening has to have access to it, meaning that you can’t share an episode of Ted Lasso with a friend who’s not a TV Plus subscriber, nor can you both watch the same movie if only one of you has purchased it from iTunes.
FaceTime is also getting a wide variety of long-overdue updates that help cement it as a more viable video chatting application: a sorely needed grid view, screen sharing, a portrait mode to blur your messy background, and the ability to FaceTime with Windows and Android users (in web browsers) thanks to sharable links.
These are all badly needed features for FaceTime, but they’re also the sort of thing that remains bewildering to have had to wait until September 2021 for, especially given the reliance on video calling over the past year and a half.
Unlike SharePlay, though, the FaceTime improvements feel like the kind of thing that will remain front and center even as things start to go back to normal, although the Apple product focus and more limited feature set when compared to professional solutions like Zoom or Microsoft Teams mean that FaceTime won’t be making a play for business meetings any time soon.
Focus up
As is traditional for an iOS update, Apple has done some tinkering with notifications on iOS 15. Some of the smaller notifications are bigger now, and feature contact images — which might be the push to get people to actually add photos to their contacts, something that doesn’t generally exist in the real world outside of an Apple presentation in my experience. And apps that you care less about can be filtered to a new summary mode that’s delivered several times a day, instead of pinging you for each notification right away.
But the bigger addition is the new Focus feature, and after only a few weeks of using it, it’s already one of my favorite features on iOS in years. On the surface, Focus is an expansion of Apple’s existing Do Not Disturb feature, but instead of a blanket mute, Focus allows you to select specific apps and contacts to share notifications at specific times or specific triggers.
A “work” Focus, for example, can be set to activate when you’re on the clock and mute all notifications except from your email, Slack, and calendar apps, then automatically switch off when you’re off work. Focus modes can be triggered by specific times, locations (like when you get to your office or home from work) or when opening a specific app.
So far, I’ve mostly just been using a “personal” focus for weekends and evenings to automatically mute any work Slacks and emails until the morning, which has been absolutely delightful. Apple’s machine learning also tries to learn from how you use your phone — for example, it suggested that I add a sports app I use a lot during “personal” time to the whitelist.
And while Focus can be used in conjunction with Apple’s Screen Time feature, it’s not a totally cohesive system: for example, there’s no way to automatically disable work apps like Slack when in a “personal” Focus mode. It just shuts off notifications.
Focus also lets you assign specific homescreen pages to each Focus mode — including widgets — for even more customized experiences. It’s not a perfect system, since iOS won’t let you have duplicate icons for apps (so you can’t have Apple Music visible on both a “personal” and a “work” homescreen, for example). But I’m a big fan of the feature, since it gives me a good reason to actually set up homescreens with widgets, and helps curb the instinct to tap the Slack icon when I’m supposed to be offline.
There’s also a new kind of notification to go with Focus and the morning summary feature, called “Time Sensitive Notifications,” which can override specific notification filtering features, so you don’t miss urgent alerts from your bank, for instance. Apple has specific rules for when developers can use these, but we’ll have to wait to see how they’re actually implemented when apps get updated this fall.
Safari explores a new look
Safari has been entirely redesigned in iOS 15. In terms of material changes to iOS, this is the biggest, and it’s coming to what might be the most essential application on the platform.
For the iPhone in particular, that means an emphasis on a one-handed design that moves the URL bar to the bottom of the screen, adds a swiping gesture interface, and a tab grouping feature (which is also coming to iPadOS and macOS Monterey).
I’m still getting used to it, even with a few days of use under my belt, and of all the additions in the latest software update, I suspect it’ll be the most polarizing. Over a decade of muscle memory has trained my brain to reach up for the menu bar on smartphones. I get Apple’s motivation in moving it to the bottom, making it easier to reach on the increasingly large phones it makes and putting the actual content of devices front and center at the top of the screen, it’s still a change that’ll require an adjustment period.
iPad multitasking: what’s a computer?
Overall, iPadOS 15 gets a lot of the same improvements as the iPhone update. There’s a few iPad-specific features, though, starting with two major features from iOS 14 that were oddly missing last year: widgets on the homescreen and the App Library (which comes with a spiffy animation when you open it). I still can’t explain why Apple didn’t add those features last year, but they’re extremely welcome now.
Widgets, as expected, work even better on the iPad than they do on the iPhone, given the bigger homescreen. It’s not as big of a sacrifice to give up a quarter of your homescreen for widgets when there’s still so much extra space on the screen. Apple has also added even bigger widget sizes, the biggest size of which is roughly the same area as an entire iPhone 12 display when viewed on a 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Despite the massive size, Widgets still have the same functionality as they do on the iPhone, meaning that they’re focused on glanceable information rather than more interactive mini applications.
Apple is also continuing to refine multitasking on the iPad with two new additions: a multitasking icon (three dots at the top of the display) that makes it easier to use the different split-view and slide-over modes it introduced in 2019, and a “shelf” that shows all the open windows for a particular app when you open it or tap the multitasking icon.
The new multitasking setup is better, albeit still slightly confusing. Putting a single app into split view using the new menu punts you back to the homescreen to select a second app (or the same app again) to view in split-screen mode. Apps can be dragged and dropped when you’re in the app switching window to create new split-screen or full-screen combinations. The multitasking dots light up to show which app in split-screen is in focus, which is incrementally better than the bar from before. And swiping down on the multitasking dots is now an almost home-button-like experience, closing that app and letting you select a new one.
There are still a lot of ways to move things around and arrange things and keyboard shortcuts available — so much so that Apple has a new menu when you hold the globe key to view system and multitasking shortcuts.
But there’s still plenty of friction here. iPadOS remains unpredictable: I’m never 100 percent sure what version of an open app or app windows will open when I tap in on my homescreen. Just opening a new window is still an opaque process that involves dragging and dropping things around in split view. Slide-over panels still live in their own, separate confusing world. Split view is still frustratingly rigid, letting you have exactly two apps open with a third visible as a slide-over panel, instead of any other configuration (like one large app on the left and two smaller ones on the right).
Ultimately, the new multitasking and split-screen views are a refinement of the older system, rather than some grand new paradigm for how to use an iPad. Those who like the iPad’s software abilities will likely find the new additions and enhancements to those modes nice. But those who were hoping that iPadOS 15 would offer a wildly overhauled windowing system — especially in the wake of Apple’s M1 upgrade in the latest iPad Pro — are going to be disappointed. Apple may do some additional tweaks or changes before iPadOS 15 launches this fall, but it’s unlikely to do any sweeping design changes for this update. iPadOS is still firmly an iPad operating system with iPad apps, and that seems to be how Apple likes things.
Also new is a Samsung-like “Quick Notes” feature that lets users swipe up from the bottom corner of the display or hit a keyboard shortcut and scribble down a thought, highlight text on a website, or add a link for context. Quick Notes get saved to their own category on the Notes app, and can be accessed from other Apple devices, too. They’re useful, although like many iPadOS 15 features, it’s not something you’d likely figure out how to use without outside prompting.
The best of the rest
As is always the case, there are dozens of bigger and smaller features coming in iOS and iPadOS, too. Here are some of the more notable ones to check out on the public beta:
Live Text might be the most technically impressive part of the updates, letting you point your camera at any handwritten or typed text to grab a phone number or email address, translate it, or pull it directly into a text field. Apple has quietly made this a system-level feature — meaning that it’s available whenever you’re viewing an image, be it in the live camera feed, an image on the web, or directly from the keyboard.
An interesting new addition on both operating systems is a new “Shared with You” feature, which shows photos, Apple Music songs, links, Apple TV Plus content, and podcasts that were shared over iMessage in dedicated rows within those apps. The theory is that if someone texts you a nice photo or their favorite playlist, you’ll be able to see it (and respond to it) in the Photos or Music apps. The feature is unsurprisingly entirely limited to Apple services for now, so sending a Spotify song to someone won’t appear in Spotify. It also might be overestimating how often users send links to TV Plus shows to each other, but showing shared links and photos are admittedly useful (at least, when the feature works properly).
The Weather app has an overhauled design that adds a vertical, Dark Sky-style 10-day forecast and Dark Sky-style maps for temperature and precipitation. It looks nice. Notes and Reminders are both getting hashtags for categorizing and organizing, and the Memories feature in Photos is getting completely overhauled.
Lastly, you can now put your Memoji avatars in outfits. I have no opinion on this.
A lot of the other flashy new features are things we can’t test yet. Apple’s beta is only rolling out new maps to the San Francisco Bay Area to start (although it’ll be in far more locations when the final software is out this fall). IDs and keys in Wallet will also have to wait for broader support from state governments, hotels, and workplaces before we can see how those work.
There are also a lot of features that will have to wait for third-party developers, like Focus statuses or SharePlay in third-party apps, which also have to wait for app updates.
The most notable thing from my time with the betas, though, is how easy it is to miss the newer features. Outside of the most in-your-face updates like the larger notifications or the new Safari design, most of the updates here are quieter, behind-the-scenes features.
They’re things that give you more options and ways to use your devices, but they’re just that — options. Focus modes are great for those who want to use them and integrate them into their workflow, but iOS doesn’t go out of its way to advertise them or push you to use them. It’s a mature way of looking at software, and one that’s nice to see, even if it means that iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 aren’t the most exciting updates ever.
Source: Daniel Rubino / Windows Central
Source: Microsoft
Source: Daniel Rubino / Windows Central
Source: Daniel Rubino / Windows Central
Source: Windows Central
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