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.