iPadOS v13 a harbinger of iPads as Laptop Replacement

With Apple’s iPadOS announcement there were many advances demonstrated.

Attached at the bottom of this are a few videos where folks are going over the developer preview of iPadOS 13. So let’s talk about the features.

Mouse Support in iPad OS is a seemingly minor detail. If you’re asking “what’s the big deal”, well, read on to the rest of this. What it means is users can now use a familiar input device, a mouse, with their iPad. Those who shy away from iPads because you’re pointing at the screen with your finger will not need to feel shy no longer.

The Split View and Slide Over features now allow you to split the screen between multiple applications as well as multiple instances of the same application. We do this all the time on desktop computers. Why shouldn’t an iPad do the same?

The Files App is becoming powerful. I hadn’t known about the Files App because my iPad is old enough that it cannot go beyond iOS 9 and this is an iOS 11 feature. With iPadOS 13 users will be able to plug in USB drives, SD cards, and access SMB file servers. All this is commonplace for desktop computers, and it’s shocking that iPad users have been unable to do this. Also there is a new “column view” in the Files App that looks similar to the macOS Finder.

The SMB support could be way more important than it sounds. One of the hugest problems with the iPad user experience is getting files into and out of the iPad to be able to use a file…