Now, another operating system might see this tension and say: why not have a UI element come up, and ask the user whether they want to share their entire screen or stay on the existing shared window?
Here, I think this hits a fundamental weakness in Apple’s design culture: if you want to make things magical by removing options from users, occasionally you’re going to hit something that’s impossible to do without giving the user control. And if anything, Apple’s culture has been overtuned towards not providing that control, if at all possible.
Nobody wants complexity for complexity’s sake, but this is the type of thing that should have come up in a meeting, and someone didn’t feel empowered to bring it up.
I'm not sure it's so easy. I think you have to compromise on hardware or software and Apple makes a choice.
My whole career in embedded devices, software is always under schedule pressure from hardware. Not because hardware is sloppy or evil, but because doing new things is hard and hardware has deadlines that software doesn't.
Like, I think the lessons are that all the money in the world still can't buy you time and even Apple can't keep a lid on feature creep.
Now, is it possible that Apple's software issues are proximally caused by production pressure? Absolutely. That's almost definitely a major contributor. But the production pressure is not inherent to their device business; it's a choice the organization, collectively, makes.
There must be at least tens of thousands of ipad users globally (on ipads capable of upgrading to 27) who would would find this a critical loss.
To not mention this at all, not even in fine print release notes, while pushing people to upgrade knowing they cant ever downgrade back in the future, is just sabotage one step removed.
Especially as they did not offer any alternative way to access the functionality.
Could not be further from the truth. Let’s stop such nasty hate for the most minor of things; there are lots of choices one makes when designing software / interfaces / hardware and not every edge case is immediately apparent.
Disclosure: I work at Apple. I also had nothing to do with this change.
It effectively makes it useless for anyone where not showing the presenter’s screen content was critically important.
Unless you know of some alternative method?
Apple's org chart now resembles Microsoft's org chart from this classic meme, but with far more groups: https://www.businessinsider.com/big-tech-org-charts-2011-6
I think it would need a big restructuring with strong, smart product leadership. I'm dubious they have that now, despite the image Apple PR is orchestrating in the press with Ternus as the new CEO.
The problem is the internet made post-release patches practical, which made software deadlines more flexible, which then allows management to choose a cheaper and less rigorous QA process.
Hardware is kinda like software in 1994 (just read about console game QA from the 80s/90s): you can't realistically patch defects after release, so you can't be sloppy.
It's an illustration of why technological constraints aren't all bad, and "progress" can cause regressions.
By constantly enforcing their walled garden and making it harder to use alternatives, Apple assumes the responsibility for the quality of their software. If they can't deliver, they should make it easy to pick and choose alternatives.
It was nothing new tho. They broke existing software. This is caught by basic software regression test. That's engineering 101.
For example, perhaps the knowledge that firmware updates are possible for modern consumer devices means that the software teams have a higher risk tolerance when it comes to feature creep. They've been able to fix bugs in the past, and it was no big deal. It certainly wouldn't involve scrapping existing inventory or retooling anything in the production line like you might have to for a hardware defect.
Or, and this reflects my own experience as a software person, perhaps broader changes in software development culture are partially to blame. 15 years ago one of the first lines of defense for the team I was on was the project manager. As the one person whose only job was keeping a more holistic eye on the value chain, she often caught latent quality risks (e.g., the potential for two different in-development features to adversely interact) long before anything made it to QA. Nowadays most companies, in a lovely iteration of the doorman fallacy, have nixed that role because they believe Jira can do the job.
I've got similar feelings about Scrum. I have been on Scrum teams that were great at delivering consistently high quality software. But they were the exception. The more common situation is people rushing to merge a glut of changes on days n and n-1 of an n day sprint, every n days, forever. Which, regardless of what any manager says, is how they're de facto expected to behave. Taking two or three more days to get the job done properly would screw up the metrics on some KPI dashboard.
Their shareholders sure do.
I wonder if Apple simply has too many employees?
It’s unfortunate that new features that no one asked for and that degrade the user experience are added to releases with increased frequency ever year.
No one forces Apple to stick to yearly releases. No one forces Apple to cut down on QA. No one forces Apple to prioritize shiny new poorly designed and half-baked features over system stability.
Why do you think that? With unlimited talent and money on either side it seems possible to do both really well without it hurting profit margin.
https://www.rubenerd.au/the-myth-of-snow-leopard/
> This could be the first time I’ve ever downgraded an Apple OS.
> As we speak I’m downgrading the Snow Leopard partition on my trusty old Core Duo 2006 MacBook Pro back to Leopard (and while I’m at it, I’m finally getting around to upgrading the FreeBSD partition to 8.0!). I kept waiting for updates to fix the severe stability problems in the Finder, my FireWire 800 ExpressCard and my iMovie HD plugins, but I’ve decided to give up for now.
I know the OP was about iPadOS but same rules apply. Give the OS 27s a few minor version bumps and it'll stabilize. I'd argue OS 26's were worse at launch but they've gotten pretty stable in the last few updates (still ugly as sin on macOS though, Golden Gate is a huge improvement visually)
Apple marketing teams are brilliant and can figure out a “quality first” angle to help Ternus announce & defend a slowdown for Apple software teams.
In a paradigm of quality-focused releases every other year, what if they released the betas two years of their new-feature releases ahead of time? & superfunded QA & maybe even responded to every bug report (at least “acknowledged, thank you” & filling out the “Recent Similar Reports:” column). Could even the new-feature releases be just as low-defect as the quality-focused ones?
Slightly too extreme but… If they pretend software’s like their brand new iPhone hardware, that it needs a multi-billion-dollar recall if they make a big enough mistake, maybe that mindset would be a good balance (as I don’t feel hardware innovation’s been stifled by that reality, that it better be dang perfect).
I am sadly not seeing a recovery trend, they get less trigger happy with big changes but the lowered attention to detail and QA is still present. Maybe it takes time to turn the ship, hopefully they'll get there. I moved to linux though.
yesterday i plugged in an extra monitor and found another bug. enable mission control, both screens show the windows, clicking on a window on the main screen focuses that window. clicking on a window on the secondary screen however doesn't focus it, it just passes the click right into the window as if mission control wasn't on.
I updated from iOS 18 a few days ago to 26 because Claude design needs newer web apis. I m shocked how bad the „windows“ experience is on iPads now. I had no idea.
I've found iPads to be fantastic presentation tools.
Having an ipad on a conference/convention booth is amazing - airplay my rotating content to a big screen, and when someone walks up I can grab the ipad to delve into details based on the conversation.
Early on (first gen ipad) I had a whole client team nickname me "the ipad guy" because I showed up and presented across a few ipad apps where I could pinch, zoom, and annotate live instead of showing a vanilla PPT file.
Both the hardware and software market for tablets running a real desktop OS still seem pretty terrible, and it's been over 10 years since the release of the first Apple Pencil. No competition seems to be coming at all. Windows Surface exists, but software is still not great and the stylus not as good as Apple's.
It worked fine. They won their judgment, the lawyers with the desktop PC setup lost the case.
I rented a car from Enterprise recently. They use iPads for everything since you are walking out to the cars. This is a giant company doing most of their business logic on iPads.
In my mind the “iPad isn’t a real computer” crowd are doing a sort of pearl clutching. Has your “real” computer never had a bug or regresssion?
I do believe them to be computers that excel in specialized settings. Like in your two examples.
I really, really, really missed having an actual laptop. I lost the ability to:
* Listen to music while watching a video (iPadOS does not allow multiple audio sources at once; playing a YouTube video while playing a song on Apple Music wasn't allowed)
* Quickly edit photos (I had 400 GB+ photos to cull/cut down; Lightroom for iPad required me to transfer photos to internal storage before culling to upload to cloud storage first, and I didn't have enough room; and specialized software for culling on the iPad equivalent to FastRawViewer that may or may not have worked all had a subscription fee)
* Easily search for files (Files search was far slower and unreliable, especially with files split between OneDrive, iCloud Drive, and Google Drive), and manage files in general
* Edit videos with the features I needed (Premiere Pro lacked features on iPad and other video editor alternatives had no iPad equivalents), or simply easily edit videos due to friction in file management
* Use video-recording software like OBS to record a presentation
* Use all features of flashcard software named Anki; I could not export individual decks or use other features (desktop-only feature; the iOS and browser versions did not have this)
* Easily manage and resize having multiple windows on the screen at once (a two-second window arrangement took 10+ seconds, with constant hold-and-dragging and precise dragging at specific changing corners required)
* Quickly and easily extract text from images for translation elsewhere (which added difficulties for language learning)
* Run certain internet browser extensions
* Compile and edit source code for software
And so on. I'll grant that many users won't need many of these features. But at the very least, the ability to find files and manage windows is essential, yet it's still so cumbersome with iPads versus laptops years after the first iPadOS release.
I fundamentally think that computers should work for you, and you shouldn't need to change your habits and workflow due to OS limitations (losing the ability to simply listen to music while watching a video was the biggest one for me). Yet I ran into so many walls with the iPad.
Enterprise is running what I assume to be a web-based CRUD application and the trial attorneys were displaying PDFs and other documents on a projector.
Besides code compilation I can’t really think of anything an iPad can’t do. Can you list out some examples?
Sure, but the question is how limited you are in what you can do about it. iDevices are incredibly locked down. On my laptop I would just use the package manager to downgrade a package until it is fixed, or restore a backup. Or you could just fix the code yourself (or ask an AI for help to do so these days).
Even Windows has system restore to roll back to a previous OS version iirc (though it has been many years since I used windows last, going to all Linux has been so good). Not sure if that is possible on an iPad? I know Android doesn't really let you downgrade either the OS or an individual app, I would assume it is similar on iOS.
You can’t do it if the application is a web application.
You can’t do it if the vendor doesn’t provide the old version and you didn’t save a copy.
You can’t do it if there’s a security issue that required the update in the first place.
You can’t do it if you consume the app via the Microsoft store or Mac App Store.
You can’t do it if the application automatically manages its version.
Windows is probably the only OS that even gives you a realistic OS downgrade option that a non-technical user could utilize. On macOS you’re looking at a full disk wipe to downgrade. On Linux, well, let’s just say I don’t think the small law firm that won the trial I served on is going to be able to operate Linux in the first place.
Fix the code yourself, again I don’t think a small law firm is going to do that. Even if they were going to it wouldn’t be worth their hourly rate to try. They depend on their software vendors to fix issues.
In a corporate environment, a company like Enterprise can tightly test and control what versions of iPadOS and their own in-house apps run on their iPads. In that respect it’s just like a regular computer.
However, you can downgrade to any previous iOS version if a bootrom exploit is found for your device.
For example you can use https://github.com/pwnerblu/surrealra1n to downgrade A12/A13 chip devices using this bootrom exploit: https://github.com/ahmadkamal09999-tech/usbliter8
Apple used to put a lot of money into user experience to get the behavior correct for the users. Presentations are an important niche that that group wouldn't have ignored. What is correct presentations is probably wrong for everything else - but you still need to make that group work correctly since it is important.
I'm not sure what happened to user experience groups everywhere. They seem to have lost and the world is worse for it. Though at least they did set some good patterns that remain to this day - but only because the people in charge haven't changed it.
On her phone.
Without her computer logged into her email.
Without her phone.
"I can do this for you, but I will need to use your computer to do it, and I will need you to read me off a bunch of 2FA codes in all likelihood, so you can either give me your phone or you can sit next to me while I do it. Oh, and they're your emails, so you may as well pull up a chair or I'm just going to have to guess whether you care or not."
My time is valuable too. You want me to do it, you help.
Keyword: buy, own, control
Any "autoupdating", or otherwise controlled device by the manufacturer is more an indefinite rental with horrific terms that basically amount to "lol screw you".
The device supports installing software, but only THEIR approved (cr)app store? Thats just a rental.
Device doesnt provide you root or administrator, but retains it for the company? Thats just a rental.
Features are sold one day, but an update removes them without your permission? Thats just a rental.
Cant revert an update that damaged your usability, cause the company prevents downgrades? Thats just a rental.
Thankfully, we already have laws on the books to cover this. There's plenty enough proof that these devices may be physically in the hands of someone who paid money to a retailer, and have proof of first sale. But it's demonstrable that these are indefinite rentals *masquerading* as sales. In other words, they are lying about a "sale". This should trigger Federal Trade Commission, under mass fraudulent rentals.
(And no, im looking at the capability and ownership of the whole device. Its obvious that a dumb device that just does the features its claimed to do is not a rental. But devices that have underlying inaccessible parts to the purchaser, BUT retain company control is the scope of this complaint. Nobody's arguing for a dumb coffee maker to have a web browser.)
It's almost unusable I can't believe it passed QA _and_ is still not fixed.
Basically it's anything but "just works". It's still an extremely nice general purpose machine.
Oh, forgot. Spotlight takes over a second to autocomplete sometimes. Everything but apps is disabled from the settings menu for it, and I exclusively use it to launch (or bring back in focus, cause... "alt-tab") applications. Super annoying.
> Essentially, you had to swipe up as though going to the home screen, then tap on the app you wanted in the dock, and that app would take over the external display if it had a presentation mode. This was weird and hard to understand, but Apple’s solution is to just make it so that whatever is the most recently tapped app takes over, which is much, much worse.
Some apps, like PowerPoint and Google Slides, only enter "presenter mode" and take over the external AirPlay screen on explicit user action.
Other apps, like Notability, will automatically enter "presenter mode" and take over the external display if they detect a secondary display without explicit user action, even when it is not the only app on screen. You can then turn off this mode if you would like by going into the menus.
AirPlay calls itself "screen mirroring" in the Apple menus, and I can say with confidence from talking to the average teacher in the building that they expect it to mirror their screen. Well-behaved apps like PowerPoint that only take over the AirPlay session when prompted by the user will match the naïve user's expectations.
Apps like Notability that take over the entire AirPlay session without explicit interaction and without being the only app on screen break the naïve user's expectations of display mirroring. Multiple teachers have asked me why their calculator app (for example) does not show up on the Airplay display when they're using Notability.
> As for what the behavior should be, I’m not a developer, but here’s a proposal: if you’re using an app that is in presenter mode (e.g., PowerPoint playing a presentation, or a GoodNotes document open), it should always get precedence on the external display, until that presentation gets stopped, the document is closed, or the app is quit. Period.
I understand and even share the author's concerns, but I think the new compromise—only the active app can take over external displays—makes sense as a default because it matches the average user's expectations of AirPlay. The old method had major benefits and some annoyances, and in my opinion it should still be an option for a background app to control the external display if the user explicitly wants it or has enabled some toggle.
Apple did not handle the 26-27 transition well at all, and this really threw me the first time it came up. (I did not have the option to not update my employer's iPad, so I've been on 27 since release.) There should be a way to have a second app (secretly) open and focused while you present only from app #1, but I think the new default is better.
MacOS 27 has made adding an AirPlay display a chore, it's gone from the setting panel and now in the quick settings on the top right. Took me forever to figure that one out.
My iPad with a faster chip than my MacBook Pro can't do the most basic computer things even though the form factor is what I want from a modern computer.
We've had GUI OSes and softwares running fine on 100Mhz CPUs once. One would think todays softwares would be blazing on the multi-core, multi-Ghz cpus, and multi-GB RAM and SSD hardwares. But the computing experience today still feels like the 90s experience (except for the increased stability, and less crashes).
Nobody wants to make software better because it isn't in their business interest to do so.
> I rely heavily on writing on handouts from my iPad, projected via AirPlay to an external screen that my students can see. When I’m doing this, my iPad is also doing many other things: controlling a PowerPoint presentation on my Mac, showing me notes that I’ve taken on points I want to mention and students I want to call on, and showing me the results of polls before I reveal them to the class.
That's not a crippled OS. And he's using it professionally so "Pro" doesn't seem inappropriate. The way the author describes what they're doing, it's difficult to see a laptop replacing it.
And I think the broader question is “is this functionality worth $1000 to the person using it”, the answer is yes and the specific grade of CPU inside the machine doesn’t have a ton of bearing on that.
Just this past weekend, just for fun and for recreational programming purposes, I tinkered with Termux on my Samsung S9 FE tablet until I got a full-fledged XFCE window environment running. It uses Termux:X11, which is a stand-alone APK that functions as an X server client, and the Termux app running an X server. So I can seamlessly use apps installed on the tablet as Android apps (such as Brave browser) with terminal sessions in Termux (essentially the "TTY" layer) and other in a full-fat terminal emulator within XFCE (in my case I really like Alacritty) to do web development (serving stuff to http://localhost:8000) or desktop graphics/game programming that's easily transferrable to my other machines because it's written in a portable scripting language like Lua and Love2D.
I got it all working the way I like over the course of a single weekend of not-particularly-focused or effortful hobby-grade tinkering.
And not a single part of this would even be possible if I was trying to do it on an iPad, despite the iPad having like 10x the compute power of my Android tablet.
Apple spends a huge amount of effort maintaining two different operating systems for what is pretty much the same machine under the hood. Don’t be naive and try to rationalize their bad behavior. They clearly just want to maintain their lucrative software distribution monopoly.
Gaming? It's complicated for them as well and I have the impression they also hate gamers.
Video editing? Maybe, but what does the latest CPU brings on the table for that compared to the other ones?
Office tools? The situation looks as miserable as programmers.
3D modeling? Maya3d/Blender/... aren't available and even if it would be, Apple would likely ban plugins, making it useless.
AI tools? Too locked down to work.
Even for photo/video editing, why not use a Mac mini with the same (!) CPU and proper cooling? An iPad doesn't even have a fan, so surely the CPU will throttle.
"A glorified $1000 YouTube machine" is a pretty accurate description of an iPad LMAO
It certainly lets you spawn threads. What it doesn't let you do is spawn processes (which blocks what a typical IDE would like to do, as well as things like the Chrome sandboxing model)
You wouldn’t use a Web TV and then get frustrated when you lose your magnum opus that you’d been working on the last three years.
What is serious computing? There are some things where I expect to have to be at my desk for hours to get them done and then a phone/tablet is worse. However there are also a lot of things better done when not at a desk and a laptop/desktop is worse.