I didn’t test out iOS 12 till just a couple weeks before iOS 13 became a mainstream release. I was on iOS 10 since the very last patch in summer of 2017. iOS 11 wasn’t much different from what I could tell, except for the silly “dock” area where the name of the app or group of apps disappeared and it could no longer support 32 bit iOS apps.
iOS 12 really pushes the line of making it a small Mac instead. I own an iPad mini 4, and it’s not big like my iPad 2. To have this experience, one would have to go back to the 9″ because it’s really hard to not move your finger or fingers a millimeter and have some app close out or switch to another app or some other silly gesture that-I can’t-recall-that-caused-that-effect. Not only that but all the AR and AI that is behind the OS, takes a toll on the battery life. Any simple task such as importing high res photos now can go down 10% in a matter of minutes. There is a lot of deep thinking I really don’t want my iPad to do, but I have no choice. I have to opt in, at the price of my power management.
Oh wait, Apple pioneered mobile power management before there was such a thing. With the PowerBook! Where the hell is those great folks?
A couple weeks after iOS 13 was launched, the OS update for my iPad is now iPad OS 13. This is a optimized version of iOS for iPad sized devices.
Bring on the fractured Apple operating systems!
What this means is Apple is now splitting the OSes amongst the portable or mobile devices, and the Mac OS (err “macOS” will become the more “unified” operating system.) Meaning that the “macOS” will be more alike the old iOS in terms of centralized code and compatibility. With the release of Catalina; this is really showing how the macOS is more alike an iPad without the ability to touch; limiting the user experience to app-sized applications; essentially giving users the ability to use a mouse and keyboard while in reality it’s already like using an mobile device.
The issue is not really Apple fragmenting the OSes for the mobile devices, is really the problem that plagued Androids from the beginning – it’s putting a desktop to fit the palm of your hand.
From my knowledge, humans are not programmed to work with heavy duty stuff on a device that is no bigger than 5″ diagonally. If you are using something of that size (or smaller) you are expecting it to not “talk back at you” (Notice the long winded dialog box messages that are really wordy since iOS 8? And no it’s not a badly edited copy of a push notification!) Nor are you expecting the app to have more than five steps to handle a single task, to change a setting, to have to “instruct” the user how to do things. The messages are more cryptic and vague. It seems like there is never a shortage of PC-type of guys trying to get into Apple into standardization by making their own software crap; while it’s well known that their hardware is becoming a joke. If anything, the software – which is what makes a product like this – a product to buy just sane enough to tolerate it. Again what plagues the Android is it’s openness, meaning it’s “open” to many types of problems, it’s “open” to understand how the system works from ether a coder or a user.
Apple has broken their long time policy of the singular-approach, the one way to do anything; the confusion that is of their fractured hardware and software approaches.
Technology is supposed to make our lives easy and less stressful and making complex technology because the nerds like tricky stuff, does not bode well for the professional user who does not have the time to learn about the 200 different changes in a new release of an iOS or macOS that should only be released unless there really is a need.
In short, Apple is really betting users will try to brainwash the past by the least invasive way – to buy a new iPad, one perhaps it will run better, and second a user may be more inclined to learn new things if the device in itself was completely reworked. It may not make much sense to you and me, but it works for so many others. And this is how Apple keeps their people locked into their ecosystem much like how Microsoft has with Windows NT-grade, as well as Cisco and their IOS family of networked operating systems.
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Reblogged this on Clickford Media Group and commented:
Yes, Apple’s long term decimation of the Mac is to port a lot of what the Mac has been onto a tablet. Sadly the history can’t confirm or deny this is a smart idea.