At WWDC 2019, Apple’s annual developer conference, the company showed off iPadOS, the company’s first dedicated software experience for iOS. While both iOS and iPadOS share the same foundation, iPadOS features a different home screen with support for widgets and many operations that are not supported on the iPhone.
iPadOS supports Slide Over which allows apps to work over an already app, Split View allows two apps to work side by side at the same time. A desktop class version of Safari is now on the iPad instead of the mobile version of the web browser that has been present on the iPad since its inceptions.
In the future, we expect the iPad to grew even further away from the iOS. By sharing the same foundation between iOS and iPadOS, the company could just focus on changing the UI and work on changing the UX by adding elements to iPadOS without having to interfere with iOS.
An improved home screen
The homescreen on the iPad is stale, it has been the same on the iPhone since 2007, however it makes sense on the iPhone as its better to have a simple screen. However, the iPad can take use of the extra screen real estate to do more things. Apple could essentially allow free flow of app icons and widgets on the home screen for users to be able to organize the home screen according to their needs.
It would also be nice if Apple could add a quick settings toggle somewhere on the screen as swiping to access Control Center on a big screen is not an easy task. The company could also start supporting free flowing of apps on the screen just like apps are allowed to move around on the Mac.
iPadOS offers a very promising future tablet future as humans move from traditional systems to experience based systems.