Obviously “reinvented” is a bit hyperbolic. But this is an interesting look at the philosophy and work behind implementing the features. With iOS 13.0, they added mouse support as an accessibility...
Obviously “reinvented” is a bit hyperbolic. But this is an interesting look at the philosophy and work behind implementing the features.
With iOS 13.0, they added mouse support as an accessibility feature and it worked okay. I used it quite a bit over the summer and while it got the job done, the refinements they’ve made with 13.4 have made it so much better.
I’ve been using the new keyboard and trackpad with my iPad for two weeks with the trackpad and there are a lot of little things that they’ve done to make using a trackpad feel great. The changing shape of the cursor is a great way to make it clear what you’re interacting with.
I will say that there are still a few apps that I use which don’t make use of standard UI controls, so they have to implement mouse support on their own (TweetBot jumps to mind). You can’t swipe on the trackpad to mimic a swipe on the screen in those apps.
There’s been a lot of argument over whether or not the Apple approach - to slowly add more features to iOS/iPadOS to make it more capable, rather than merging it with MacOS - or the Microsoft approach - trying to make Windows 10 usable in all form factors and screen sizes - is the right one.
Both have their advantages, but I think Apple’s approach is better simply because they have more incentive to consider how each piece of added functionality should work best in the touchscreen-first form factor.
Obviously “reinvented” is a bit hyperbolic. But this is an interesting look at the philosophy and work behind implementing the features.
With iOS 13.0, they added mouse support as an accessibility feature and it worked okay. I used it quite a bit over the summer and while it got the job done, the refinements they’ve made with 13.4 have made it so much better.
I’ve been using the new keyboard and trackpad with my iPad for two weeks with the trackpad and there are a lot of little things that they’ve done to make using a trackpad feel great. The changing shape of the cursor is a great way to make it clear what you’re interacting with.
I will say that there are still a few apps that I use which don’t make use of standard UI controls, so they have to implement mouse support on their own (TweetBot jumps to mind). You can’t swipe on the trackpad to mimic a swipe on the screen in those apps.
There’s been a lot of argument over whether or not the Apple approach - to slowly add more features to iOS/iPadOS to make it more capable, rather than merging it with MacOS - or the Microsoft approach - trying to make Windows 10 usable in all form factors and screen sizes - is the right one.
Both have their advantages, but I think Apple’s approach is better simply because they have more incentive to consider how each piece of added functionality should work best in the touchscreen-first form factor.