William Gallagher
A new leak claims that iPadOS apps may become Quick Note-like floating windows, instead of always opening full screen - if a keyboard and trackpad are connected.
Since the debut of the iPad in 2010, every app launches to full screen. There have since been improvements such as Split View, but all window management is down to the user. Now a new claim says this could change.
Apple is developing a smart system for iPadOS. Apps will continue to open full screen but automatically shrink when connected to keyboard and trackpad. Internally it is called Apple Mixer. We don't know if it will be included in iPadOS 16 or not, It should be M1 iPad exclusive. pic.twitter.com/1WfMj5TGue
— Majin Bu (@MajinBuOfficial) March 15, 2022
Leaker Majin Bu offers no further details, other than the feature reportedly being known within Apple as "Apple Mixer." Previously, Majin Bu has been better known for hardware leaks, such as ones to do with the size change for the Apple Watch Series 7.
It's not known whether an already open app would detect the iPad being connected to a keyboard and then change. Nor is it known whether this switch to floating app windows would be meant to work across all iPads.
If the apps also remembered where they were last positioned by the user, this could be a convenience for 12.9-inch iPad Pro users. It's likely to be less so for the 8.3-inch iPad mini.
Andrew O'Hara
Malcolm Owen
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Charles Martin
7 Comments
Hopefully Apple will announce something like this at WWDC!
There are a lot of apps that won't support it. Lots of apps don't support Split View, Slide Over, and some video apps won't support PiP, and it's been 6 years or so. I use a couple of apps that are like this, and they have iPhone apps, so the UI layout work is already done. At this point, I think some developers think it is beneficial for them not to support the current iPadOS multitasking features.
Having overlapping app views is one thing. Having them be able to continue to function forever in the background is another thing. Having the apps be able to access system audio and video functions is another thing. This will likely be done through an entitlement which means apps have to be updated to take advantage of it, which gets us back to the issue of developers actually updating their apps. :/
"Today we want to talk to you about something very special we've added to iPad OS. We're calling it Apple Windowz... XP"
I hope this is wrong as it means post-Jobs Apple has lost all sense of innovation. Diving straight back to the mid-80s GUI is not the way to go with this.
Apple has some serious issues with cross-device cohesion. Hypothetically, Xcode should allow simple all-platform development with multiple device UI targets in one project. All OS’ should allow Apps for smaller devices to run as widgets in some form i.e. watch Apps as widgets on iPhone/iPad/Mac, iPhone Apps as slide-over Apps on iPad & Mac.
Sounds exactly like the way windows tablets/2-in1 works. Can't believe Apple would do that.