This is Technology Bytes, episode 18 for July 9th, 2023.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share my brief insights on an interesting technology.
My name is Joel.
Enjoy, and here we go.
For I think what may be the fourth week in a row, I’m still in the midst of the WWDC 2023 news.
And this week I want to cover iPadOS 17.
So as I’ve mentioned before, I put all the developer betas on all of my devices, probably unwisely so, but it hasn’t bit me too much at this point.
And so when I look at iPadOS 17 and I’ll walk through a few points today, there are many areas where iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 mirror each other quite significantly.
And so that leaves less new stuff that only happens on the iPad that doesn’t happen on the iPhone.
But there are some, and I will talk about those in the next few minutes.
So just to get things out of the way off the top, there are a number of apps that have the same treatment throughout Apple’s operating system.
And I talked about those when I talked about the commonality of updates with the new operating systems across all devices.
And those things are like things in messages and maps and stickers and FaceTime.
And, and so you can go back and, and listen to previous microcasts where I’ve talked about those.
So I won’t really be talking about those in general.
There are a couple of other not, I might not, I won’t talk about those things anymore today, but there are a few things that are common throughout the iOS, iPadOS ecosystems that the iPad did not have until iPadOS 17.
And I will talk about those next.
One of the things let’s see one, one of the I guess things, one of the opportunities we had on iOS for at least starting in iOS 16, I believe is to customize our lock screen.
And we are able to put a few widgets on the screen, customize the picture, customize the fonts, do those kinds of things.
And now those items and that capability has come to the iPad.
They’ve added a couple of things where you could take your own live photo.
And they always show one of a beach with a wave crashing against cliffs.
And so when you open your iPad, you see that live photo and then it settles into a still picture and that gets to be your lock screen.
And then you have your widgets on there.
You’ve got your customizable things that you want to see on the lock screen.
And I actually really liked that.
I like it on the phone and it’s nice to have that on the iPad now as well.
A couple other things that have come to iOS and iPadOS the same interactive widgets, and I know I talked about that a few times, probably in the commonality, uh, microcast as well, but nice to have that on the iPad, just like we have on the other devices and then live activities, which is something that came to, um, the iPhone and iOS 16 as well is now available on the iPad.
So when you get your phone into the home screen, if you’re following a sports score or following a news story or whatever, you get those live activities, maybe a flight arrival time, those kinds of things that happen.
And so it’s nice to see that come to the iPad now with iOS, iPadOS 17.
There are a few other things that I like.
One is notes.
Notes continues to get better and better on the iPad.
Um, I really enjoy using notes.
I use my pencil a lot to write things, but I also type out notes.
Um, so one of the things that you can do with notes is send it to pages and maybe that’s more for the Sonoma, um, offering on the Mac itself rather than on the iPad.
But many people use the iPad as their computers per se.
And, and so that is a neat thing.
And then linking notes is common throughout the operating system.
And that’s a neat thing.
But one of the things that jumps out at me, because I like to put PDF and notes.
And when that opportunity came, I really liked to do that to keep those PDFs that I wanted and didn’t want to write out the whole note, just put the PDF in.
But annotation of that PDF was a problem.
And I really use annotation of PDFs quite a bit in my natural workflow, usually through, um, the preview app.
And so not being able to have those necessarily in notes was problematic.
And so, you know, my workflow made it work.
I understood how to use it.
I understood where those PDFs were, but now putting them in a note and being able to annotate those along with whatever other note goes along with that PDF, I think is a great addition.
And I look forward to using that more.
Another thing that Apple did was bring the health app data to the iPad.
So nothing really new in that aspect, except that the health app data is now visible.
So you’ve got more real estate, more screen, um, probably a little better picture from a visual point of view of your health data.
Um, I think it’s just easier looking at that dense amount of data on an iPad versus the phone.
You see the same thing.
You can get to the same information, but I think having that on the iPad, especially if you use it in any relation to visiting doctors and those kinds of things, if you have it on your iPad, my wife just got an iPad mini.
I think she’s really going to enjoy that offering that Apple has put there.
One other thing that they did is, um, looking at health is what they call, um, vision protection.
Um, and so they, they actually look to see how you’re holding your iPad, how close to your eyes, how far away from your eyes, um, maybe the size of text on the screen, those kinds of things, and, and coach you to use the iPad at a proper space so that you’re not messing with your vision.
Um, I think in my, um, use, I don’t know how big a deal that is.
Because I feel like I use it at a proper distance, but I know when my grandkids are on my iPad, they’re often plastered in front of their face so that they kind of drown out the world around them.
And I know that’s not always good.
So having that, I think is a great function of health as well.
Another thing that Apple has done is continuing to work on their free form app.
I wasn’t sure when that came out, if I would use it that much, but I use it all the time.
Um, it’s really taken, taken a place.
It’s replaced my use of the notes app in some of my meetings at work because I have more freedom to draw, more freedom to express, more freedom to spread the information out into, um, a logical pattern in my brain, but not necessarily in a single column of text.
And so I can look at different aspects of my work, different functions in my work and put the notes that go with those functions anywhere I want on that infinite canvas of free form.
So I really enjoy that.
Um, so one of the things that they’ve done is improve the drawing tools and, and given us more options.
I don’t know why Apple took the pencil option away.
Cause I use that a lot in my note taking and in the free form app and they, you know, replaced it with monoline pen of some kind, which I don’t even know what that means.
Um, but with the pencil back and, and if you do drawing and I’m not a good artist at all, but you know, the angle of the pencil means something and how hard you press means something.
So I really like that.
And then they’ve added a follow along mode.
And at this point in my workflow, I don’t use free form as a collaborative tool, mostly because no one else at my work uses Apple products.
And, and so I don’t interact with people in that mode, but I, I think for those who do this follow along mode, let you see without doing a screen sharing the free form picture document, um, whiteboard, however you want to describe it of your collaborator and you get to follow along as they make changes, they may be adding a drawing, they may be putting in text boxes, whatever it is that they’re doing, you see it as it happens.
And then if you are on the phone with them and you can do that on the iPad as well, then you’re having that conversation while one or the other of you is changing something and seeing that happen in what they call, you know, in real time in the collaborative mode, you already get to see that a little bit, but, um, there’s something different about the follow along that makes it more real time and helpful in conversing about what the free form document is supposed to look like.
One other aspect of the iPad that I’ve used since Apple introduced it was stage manager.
And while some people say it’s not for them, I actually enjoy it.
It makes, I got really used to using full screen apps on my iPad and, and just using the gestures to swipe between apps back and forth or, or to slide up and see all the apps that are open at one time and choose the one you want, but using stage manager where the app doesn’t fill the whole screen and you’re able to see the other apps that you have open on the side of the page makes switching between apps very easy and it, it actually makes the iPad easier to use in my opinion.
I watched my granddaughter use my iPad and every time she opens the app, she makes it full screen.
She doesn’t want to be distracted by any other app that she has open.
She wants to play that game, do that drawing, color that picture without seeing anything else, have the whole screen open for what she’s trying to do on the iPad.
And I think that’s kind of interesting, but also something that makes sense in her mind that may not make sense in my mind.
But there are apps that I use full screen.
So when I’m reading the news before I go to bed and the news app, I use that full screen.
I don’t want to see anything else.
I’m not changing apps.
I’m not using any other app when I’m preparing for bed.
I’m only using the news app.
And so in that case, I run it full screen because I am not interested in seeing anything else or being distracted by anything else.
I’m really just doing a little reading before I go to bed, but they’ve made it but they’ve made some changes to it, made it a little more free form adjustable so that you can have a more variety of sizes of windows.
It used to really snap to certain locations and snap to sizes that were whatever Apple chose to give you.
I still think that’s the case, but I think there’s a finer granularity of sizes that you can have.
Um, in reality, that really hasn’t changed how I use the iPad.
I haven’t noticed it as making a huge difference.
Um, maybe I’m missing something, but the fact that they continue to improve the stage manager is important to me because I use that all the time.
I know there are probably things that I’ve missed in the iPadOS 17 review or preview, um, but I’ve covered the ones that I’ve noticed and that I use more often and that are in my most everyday type of workflow.
And so I look forward to reading or hearing back from people.
Um, if you have thoughts on, on this or any of the other topics that I speak about, technologybytesatmerigfamily.com is the email you can reach out to.
You have been listening to the Technology Bytes Microcast.
Until next time, continue enjoying your technology.
