During its opening keynote at the 2019 Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple has finally unveiled its iPadOS, the company’s fifth operating system (OS) that is tailor-made for Apple's tablets. Presenting a number of new features, which includes support for USB thumb drives and SD cards, the announcement marks the company’s exit from iOS and entrance to a new era.
According to a report from TechSpot, the new OS will bring native USB support to iPads, allowing users to plug USB-C flash drives directly into the gadget’s USB-C port. This will enable them to import photos into an app, such as Lightroom, without the need to use a Siri Shortcut.
Aside from getting support for USB sticks, Safari will now be able to display the desktop layout of websites instead of their mobile versions. This will grant users a better experience in browsing the net, especially when visiting complicated sites, such as Google Docs. The feature also includes a download manager and has support for 30 keyboard shortcuts.
Apple has also explained that the iPadOS will include an improved Files app, which includes support for zip and unzip files and will enable users to share files from their iCloud drive.
Compared to the previous iOS, the company’s newest product will also be displaying more app icons by deploying a tighter icon grid and will allow users to open more than one iteration of an app. Aside from this, the gadget will also include a desktop swipe over feature that will reveal widgets you’ve pinned to the home screen. Once released, this will serve as the first Apple mobile device that will allow widgets to appear on the main home screen. In addition to this, iPadOS will also reduce the previous 20ms Apple Pencil latency to 9ms.
These improvements are believed to be Apple’s way of bringing the desktop operating system to iPad users, which could even indicate the company’s effort for making a tablet become a laptop replacement.
“iPad transforms how people work and express their creativity, and with iPadOS, we’re taking it even further by delivering exciting capabilities that take advantage of its large canvas and versatility,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.
At the moment, iPadOS is still under beta testing. Although the multinational technology giant still hasn’t announced the release date for iOS 13 or iPadOS 13, many expect that both operating systems will be hitting the market this September.
