iLoungeiLounge
  • News
    • Apple
      • AirPods Pro
      • AirPlay
      • Apps
        • Apple Music
      • iCloud
      • iTunes
      • HealthKit
      • HomeKit
      • HomePod
      • iOS 13
      • Apple Pay
      • Apple TV
      • Siri
    • Rumors
    • Humor
    • Technology
      • CES
    • Daily Deals
    • Articles
    • Web Stories
  • iPhone
    • iPhone Accessories
  • iPad
  • iPod
    • iPod Accessories
  • Apple Watch
    • Apple Watch Accessories
  • Mac
    • MacBook Air
    • MacBook Pro
  • Reviews
    • App Reviews
  • How-to
    • Ask iLounge
Font ResizerAa
iLoungeiLounge
Font ResizerAa
Search
  • News
    • Apple
    • Rumors
    • Humor
    • Technology
    • Daily Deals
    • Articles
    • Web Stories
  • iPhone
    • iPhone Accessories
  • iPad
  • iPod
    • iPod Accessories
  • Apple Watch
    • Apple Watch Accessories
  • Mac
    • MacBook Air
    • MacBook Pro
  • Reviews
    • App Reviews
  • How-to
    • Ask iLounge
Follow US

Articles

Articles

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Last updated: May 15, 2021 8:17 am UTC
By Jeremy Horwitz
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Of tremendous interest to iPad users in particular, Apple debuted the beta version of iOS 4.2 today after a teaser revelation of the update at a media event in San Francisco earlier this month. Based on photos and details submitted by an anonymous source, we’ve compiled a collection of changes and improvements that have been made to the iPad version of iOS. Here’s what’s new and notable.

Advertisements

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Home Screen and Game Center. Game Center has been added to the iPad home screen for multiplayer game matchmaking and tracking of achievements within supported iOS 4.1 and later games. No other icons have been added to the Home Screen.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

The Game Center application preserves the general look and feel of the iPhone/iPod touch app that was in testing with iOS 4.0 and released to the public in iOS 4.1, with the same four tabs at the bottom of the screen.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Multitasking and Folders. iOS 4.0 features have been brought over to the iPad for the first time, with a double-click on the Home Button calling up a scrollable dock at the bottom of the screen for multitasking—now up to seven icons at once rather than four (iPhone/iPod touch)—and with play/track controls, whatever music application you’re using, and screen orientation lock buttons found off to the left of the multitasking dock. What looks like a volume slider is actually a brightness adjustment tool for the screen, now accessible without going all the way back into the device’s settings.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Notably, at least in this version of the iOS 4.2 beta, the iPad’s side orientation lock switch has regressed to the feature Apple originally said it would have: turning the audio on and off. The orientation lock button in the multitasking dock works to lock the iPad in either landscape or portrait orientation, whereas the iPhone and iPod touch can only be locked into portrait orientation. It’s odd that Apple shows the repurposed icon, which has been freshly redrawn for the iPad, as a crossed out bell—the same “turn off the ringer” icon used for the iPhone, rather than a muted speaker. Why the switch was changed to this purpose at this point, and the concept of the ringer, may point to disabling ringing within VoIP or future FaceTime-capable iPads.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Folder support works almost exactly as it does on the iPhone and iPod touch running iOS 4.0; drag one icon atop another to create a folder, then tap on the folder to open it, splitting the screen into panes to reveal its contents. Folder names are automatically generated and easy to change with the on-screen keyboard as you prefer. One surprise: you can have up to 20 icons in a folder on the iPad, up from 12 on the iPhone and iPod touch.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

AirPlay and iTunes. Apple’s new wireless audio/video/photo streaming and driverless printing features are just beginning to see the light of day in the iOS 4.2 release.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

AirPlay lets you stream audio from your iPad to AirPlay-capable devices, including the AirPort Express and new Apple TVs. Support for old Apple TVs is apparently not included, at least in this version of the beta, and possibly not forthcoming. Accessing AirPlay is handled through the iPod application using the new AirPlay button at the top of the screen.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

The icon remains regardless of whether you’re in the Now Playing screen or within the browsing screen of the iPod app.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Notably, the iPad version of iTunes does not yet support Ping, Apple’s music social network, but the feature could easily be pushed into the application at any time as it was with the iPhone and iPod touch.

AirPrint, Mail and Safari. Mail has gained the unified mailbox and threaded view features found in iOS 4.0 for iPhone and iPod touch.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

It has also gained a print feature, which Apple now refers to as “AirPrint,” though the word Print is used within iOS 4.2 for the time being.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

The options are dead simple: select a printer and the number of copies, then hit print. You’ll need an AirPlay compatible printer or a printer on an existing wireless network to make it work.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Safari gets the print feature, too, along with an updated icon that lets you know how many Safari pages are open (or, at least, being semi-cached) at once.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Print jobs are managed through “Print Center,” an application that runs in the background to provide status on each queued printing task, a delete option, and a small preview of what’s being printed.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Safari also includes a new “On This Page” search feature, which is initially implemented using the top-of-screen Google search bar, providing both Google search results and in-page search results. If you bring up the keyboard, you can hit a “next” button to move through the yellow-highlighted search terms, and enter a new search term.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Notes. Hate Marker Felt? So do we. So we were excited when the screenshots arrived showing support for two more fonts: Helvetica and Chalkboard. Apple sure seems set on making the selection of fonts look weak here by comparison with Pages, but Helvetica will do nicely for the time being.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

You choose the font under Settings, not within the Notes application itself.

Settings. There are lots and lots of subtle changes here. We’ll just briefly mention what the screenshots show.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Events have been added as another option for Picture Frame. You can also set the number of seconds before photos change.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

There’s now a way to disable 3G in favor of EDGE, reducing battery drain and data speeds.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

A proper location services menu now provides iOS 4-standard control over notifications and permissions for the location hardware in iPads.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Large text has been added to the Accessibility settings to make the iPad’s screen easier for visually disabled users to read.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

A bunch of new keyboards have been added.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

The new spellchecker has been added to the iPad.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots
New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Parental restrictions have been expanded to add controls over deleting applications and changes to e-mail accounts, as well as disabling multiplayer games over Game Center.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Content ratings have been added for additional countries.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

Controls over the types of content searched by Spotlight have been added.

 

New in iOS 4.2: The Full Breakdown With Screenshots

And calendar display options to use either the Buddhist or Japanese (imperial) date systems have been added to the prior Gregorian calendar as options, as well.

iPhone/iPod touch Games on iPad. At least for now, games with high-definition Retina Display support do not appear to be capable of running in Retina Display mode on the iPad. They still display with 1X/2X buttons at lower 480×320 resolution.

Advertisements

Latest News
The Anker Nano II 65W Compact Charger is $25 Off
The Anker Nano II 65W Compact Charger is $25 Off
1 Min Read
New ‘Shot on iPhone’ Short Film Debuts
New ‘Shot on iPhone’ Short Film Debuts
1 Min Read
Apple Camp for Kids Program Starts in June
Apple Camp for Kids Program Starts in June
1 Min Read
Apple to Start iPhone Foldable Production This Year
Apple to Start iPhone Foldable Production This Year
1 Min Read
The Apple Watch Series 10 is $100 Off
The Apple Watch Series 10 is $100 Off
1 Min Read
AirPods Pro 3 May Debut in 2026
AirPods Pro 3 May Debut in 2026
1 Min Read
Oakley Smart Glasses Announced
Oakley Smart Glasses Announced
1 Min Read
The Apple Watch Series 10 is $100 Off
Apple Watch Ultra 3 Might Arrive Soon
1 Min Read
AirPods Pro 3 May Debut in 2026
The AirPods Pro 2 is $80 Off
1 Min Read
tvOS 26 Apple Music Sing Adds iPhone Karaoke Feature
tvOS 26 Apple Music Sing Adds iPhone Karaoke Feature
1 Min Read
Photos Tabs to Make a Comeback in iOS 26
Photos Tabs to Make a Comeback in iOS 26
1 Min Read
tvOS 26 Users to Have Automatic Sign-In for Apps
tvOS 26 Users to Have Automatic Sign-In for Apps
1 Min Read

iLounge logo

iLounge is an independent resource for all things iPod, iPhone, iPad, and beyond. iPod, iPhone, iPad, iTunes, Apple TV, and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Inc.

This website is not affiliated with Apple Inc.
iLounge © 2001 - 2025. All Rights Reserved.
  • Contact Us
  • Submit News
  • About Us
  • Forums
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Lost your password?