iOS 15 Thoughts

With the recent announcement of iOS15 and iPadOS15, it has caused me to think some more about how I use my iPad and other iDevices.  As some of you know from previous posts, my daily PC is a 2020 model 12.9" iPad Pro.  As a daily PC, it works very well for me.  Bear in mind that my use case is a little different from some of the folks you see on YouTube doing reviews etc.  

I typically use my iPad for web browsing, research, studying, email, and social medial (Blogger, Wordpress, Twitter and so on).  I have not entered the realm of video yet, but I am considering it.  So I guess you could say I am not a power user and I am definitely not a gamer.  

There have been plenty of reviews of iOS and iPadOS15 out there and I am not going to add to that.  However I am going to discuss some specifics that pertain to my use case.

File Management

I have wanted to see a proper file manager since iPad version 1.  The file manager has of course got a lot better since then but the fundamental problem is that the file management on iPadOS is application based and that makes it tough to change as it would require a dramatic re-write of the operating system. It would also impact a large number of applications.  However the fact is that if like me, you work on projects with a variety of file types, and you want to archive them in one place, thats a tall order when everything is application based.  

I get around this by capturing documents as PDFs and putting all of those in one place.  I just hope that i never have to revisit any of these projects, as part of the archiving process is to delete the originals.  There are also some advantages to this of course.

However, its not all bad news.  We did get the progress bar!  This is something that was sadly lacking - file transfers were quite the guessing game until now.  Glad to see that (basic level of) functionality has finally been included. 

One last comment on file management and that is the new sidebar that is being added to the Apple applications for basic file management in the application.  There are some aspects of the side bar that just irritate the living shit out of me.  And that brings me to an app I spend some time in; the Photos app.

Photos App

Please for the love of all that is holy give me a way to turn off the memories function. It is obnoxious and intrusive. I positively hate it.  Apparently in iPadOS15 we are getting more of this function!

The built in library menu needs to, at a minimum, be minimized but I would prefer to be able to use the edit function and turn it off.  I never use these functions, and frankly the FOR YOU function is completely useless and could be deleted completely.  I have no idea why it is there as it serves no useful function. 

It would also be really useful if I could move My Albums to the top of this menu as that is the function I use the most and it sucks to have to keep scrolling down to the bottom to find it. I never use the Utilities and I never use Media Types. Again, for me these entries serve no purpose.

This begs the question, why is the most useless function in the Photos app getting expanded on?  Am I missing something here?

Something that should have been added is a way to see what pictures are NOT in albums, or at least a view where I can only see pictures not in albums.  I like to organize my photos by events, and the albums allow me to do that. It is my preferred way to work.  The Photos app defaults to all pictures all the time and it makes sorting them really awkward.

iPhone Apps

This has also been a complaint of mine,  I use my iPad on a Magic Keyboard.  It's always in landscape mode.  The problem arises when I need to use an app that only has an iPhone version - like the Instagram app. In the current and previous versions of iPad OS these iPhone apps only work in portrait mode.  This seems like a bit of a short coming and I would refuse to even load these apps on the iPad because that is a jarring surprise every time I click on one of these apps.  Best just not to have them.

Thankfully Apple have finally realized that this is a problem (not the fastest out of the gate are they?) and resolved it in iPadOS15.

So what else is there in iPad OS15 that I am looking forward to getting?  Nothing.  There is nothing else that really impacts me as a user. Most of the 'enhancements' (and I would argue that these are not enhancements but rather bug fixes and completion of software items released before they were truly ready) don't actually impact the way I use my iPad.  The items that would have impact on daily use, have not been implemented.