iPadOS 13.1 is now available, ready to be installed on a wide variety of iPad models. It brings features Apple tablet users have long been asking for: allowing applications to open multiple windows, support for mice, full access to USB drives, and much more.
This new version was announced in June and has been in beta testing all summer so there are no surprises. But the time for testing is over. Almost everyone with an iOS tablet made in the past five years can install iPadOS.
In iOS 13 and iPadOS, Apple rejigged the text-selection engine and the cut/copy/paste tools. And they’re amazing. For the last 10 years, selecting and manipulating text has been a frustrating nightmare on the iPad. Try to select a couple of words in Safari, for instance — a package delivery tracking number, for instance — and the selection would bounce back and forth between a few characters and the entire page.
It was enough to drive you back to the comfort of the Mac’s mouse pointer.
In iOS 13, though, this all changes. Text selection is accurate and predictable. And the new copy/paste gesture shortcuts become second nature almost immediately.
In the next version of iOS, the iPad will be able to open several “copies” of the same app. You can then switch between them, treating them just like any other individual apps, or you can combine these instances with other apps.
For example: You could have one “space” with your Mail app and your to-do app in a 50:50 Split View. And then you can have another space with a different instance of your Mail app and, for instance, the Notes app. Each version of the Mail app can show a different folder or message.
You can even have two versions of, say, the Maps app, sharing the same screen, showing totally different places. It’s a powerful addition to iPad multitasking. Let’s see it in action.
iOS 13 is pretty great on the iPhone, but the real deal is iPadOS 13. With the new operating system, Apple split its tablet and phone platforms for the first time since the launch of the original iPad, and the tablet went in a whole new direction. iPadOS is still iOS, but now there are contextual menus, multiple windows for apps, a home screen that isn’t just a blown-up iPhone home screen, and a proper web browser. You can even plug in mice and USB hard drives.
Apple managed a fine balancing act here. If you update to iPadOS 13 and don’t really think about it, then everything (mostly) works the same, with just extra speed and polish. But if you want to dig in, you will find a whole new computer just below the surface.
Apple Arcade is now live on Apple TV for users running the iOS 13 beta.
Its arrival comes just under one week after the official launch of Apple Arcade on iOS. Subscribers get access to around 70 games (rising to 100 by the end of the year) for just $4.99 a month.
In all versions of the App Store up until iOS 13, there has been an Update tab — a whole page of the store dedicated to showing you the latest updates to your installed apps. In iOS 13, that’s gone, replaced by Apple Arcade, whether you subscribe to the new gaming service or not.
So, how do you update your apps in iOS 13? And if you have auto-update switched on, then how do you even see which apps have been updated, and read their release notes? Fear not. Manual update is still there. It’s just hidden.
In iOS 13, you can share songs and watch movies with a friend, with each of you using your own AirPods. The new feature is called Audio Sharing, and it lets you instantly — and temporarily — pair a second set of AirPods to your iPhone or iPad. It’s like the olde schoole method of using a headphone splitter to plug two sets of headphones into one jack socket, only way more expensive and fancy.
Here’s how to use it.
Apple’s Reminders app gets a massive update in iPadOS and iOS 13. It’s no longer a joke app that needs a million taps just to set a notification time on your action item. We already know about the new layout, which splits tasks into Today, Scheduled, All and Lists, and we also know about the excellent new natural-language input, which makes typing a reminder as easy as dictating it to Siri.
But the big update also brings some other new features you likely haven’t heard about yet: Today Notifications and Type to Siri (right there in the Spotlight screen).
Look Around is Apple’s answer to Google’s Street View, and it’s about a zillion times better — if your area has coverage, that is. Look Around is just getting started, and covers very few places. Street View, on the other hand, is available for pretty much anywhere, including underwater, up mountains and on hiking trails.
Why is Look Around better? Well, it’s faster, for one. And it just looks nicer. The images are super-high-resolution and full-screen. Using it on a 13-inch iPad Pro feels like taking a virtual street tour of a neighborhood.
In iPadOS and iOS 13, you can edit videos just the same way you’ve always ben able to edit photos. You can crop them, rotate them, add filters and adjust their color. And — finally — you can simply save the edited version instead of spawning a copy every time you make a simple trim. No need for iMovie — the iOS Photos app can now perform radical edits to videos. This isn’t limited to the iPhones 11, either. You can do all this on any iPhone or iPad running iOS 13.
Check out the great new iOS 13 video editing features:
The trouble with modern technology is that anyone can try to reach you, at any time. Your boss can leave a passive aggressive email at the top of your inbox overnight, so you see it when you want to check personal mail. Anyone can send you an SMS or iMessage. And anyone with your phone number can spam you, any time.
Currently in iOS, you can block iMessage senders. But in iOS 13, you gain two new ways to keep stalkers, weird friends and over-sharing co-workers out of your digital life. Now you can block unknown phone callers and email senders.
iPadOS 13 brings some real game-changing new features, plus a lot of excellent comfort tweaks that make using it much easier. And iOS 13 is no slouch.
Today I’ll list my favorite new features in iOS 13 and iPadOS, along with a few changes I’d be happy to live without.
The Photos app in iOS 13 is now good enough that you may never need another app to edit your photos, for regular edits at least. Somehow Apple made the app even easier to use, and added some new features, while making existing features far easier to find.
For instance, Portrait Mode now gets its own tab; the automatic magic wand tool can now be fine-tuned (as can the built-in filters); and the crop tool now fixes perspective, and mirror-flips your photos.
Safari’s new “desktop-class” features are getting all the press in iPadOS, but the new download folder, and better website support aren’t everything. There’s also a new in-app settings panels with a ton of options — per-site text size, for example — and even a new font in the Safari Reader View. Let’s check it out.
It wasn’t until I installed iPadOS on my regular iPad that I realized how great iOS 13 is. It’s one thing to run it on an old, battered test unit, but a whole other thing to use it day to day. And, surprisingly, it’s the small features that make the biggest difference. The per-page view setting in Safari, for example. Or the new multi-app Slide Over panel. And, more than anything else, the new text-editing gestures, which are finally good enough to replace a mouse and a Mac.
Let’s take a look at how to use iPadOS 13’s new copy, paste, undo and redo gestures, plus text selection in general.
iOS 13, which launches today, is less about a grand, orchestrated new direction, and more about lots of really, really useful little features and tweaks. For instance, one of the best changes is that Safari on iPad is now a proper desktop browser, just like you have on you Mac. And then there’s the new top row of the share sheet, which gives one-tap buttons to share to friends via iMessage.
Or, in iPadOS 13, which ships at the end of the month, you can plug in pretty much any USB device and it will work. Hard drives, SD cards full of movies, anything.
So, while you’re waiting for the new version of iOS to install on your device(s), check out all the new iOS 13 features right here.
I love 3D Touch. I use it all the time. It’s one of the handiest shortcuts on the iPhone. And now, with the iPhone 11, it’s gone. But I don’t care. Why? Because Haptic Touch is almost as good. Even better, thanks to Apple’s switch to Haptic Touch, you can use all those 3D Touch features on the iPad.
iOS 13 will debut next week, but tablet users will have to wait a bit longer for the iPad equivalent. Apple says iPadOS 13 won’t debut until the end of this month.
That launch date suggests that the company will go straight to iOS 13.1.
Are you running the iOS 13.1 beta? Right now, it’s pretty pretty much ready to use, for most people. But with the official release coming up soon, how do you switch from the beta to the official, regular version? The good news is that it’s easy. Here’s how.
Apple today surprised us with a brand new entry-level iPad. It’s even bigger, with a 10.2-inch screen, and it now boasts a Smart Connector like iPad Pro. But it’s still nicely priced.
Here’s everything you need to know about the new iPad.
After the release of iOS 13.1 beta 2, iOS 13 is probably good enough for you to install and use. I’ve been running the new iPadOS on an old test iPad since the very first version, and it has been glitchy all the way. But as of the latest developer beta, almost all of the problems have been ironed out.
So, is the iOS 13 beta really stable enough to install?
The beta process for iOS 13.1 continues, with the second developer-only beta just going out now.
But there hasn’t been a new iOS 13 beta in two weeks. Apple really seems to have finished work on it, even though it hasn’t been released and isn’t even expected until later this month.
One of the handiest features in iOS 13 appears to have been pushed back to at least iOS 13.2. iCloud Folder Sharing, which would have let many people ditch Dropbox entirely, has disappeared from the current iOS 13 betas. And that’s not all. Also gone is the ability to pin a file to save it offline. What’s going on?
For some of you, one of the main reasons to jump on iOS 13 right away is mouse support. You can connect any Bluetooth or USB mouse to your iPad, and use it pretty much like you’d use a mouse on the Mac.
You can even use a multi-button mouse. And guess what? You can assign all of those buttons to mouse functions. I’ve been using a mouse with my iPad on and off throughout the beta period. During that time, I’ve come up with a shortlist of the most useful mouse button features in iPadOS 13.
Surprisingly, iOS 13.1 is already in beta. It looks like Apple’s release strategy this year is to freeze the current beta version of iOS 13.0 in order to get it ready for the new iPhones expected on September 10. Meanwhile, Apple continues to test the next version, adding back some features removed during the beta period — Shortcuts automations, for example.
So, what other new (or revived) features will you find in iOS 13.1 beta 1?
