So the other day I went ahead and installed the current beta on my M1 iPad Pro to try out. I’m currently typed this in Arctic on the iPad right now in a window that doesn’t try to snap to pre-determined lanes! Crazy!
I have generally been using it with Universal Control from my Mac to get the mouse and keyboard over, and that - so far - works pretty well.
But I wanted to open the floor up to see if anyone else has tried it and what their opinions are. Or, if you haven’t and have a question about the windowing stuff, I or others might be able to field them.
For me, other than what I’ll chalk up to beta bugs mostly, I do think this has legs. Obviously not the full macOS everyone has been clamoring for, but it’s certainly usable and more or less works like you assume it works. Hopefully down the line Apple will figure out how to extend the background tasks to include stuff like running local servers/Node and whatnot for project development. But we’ll see.
There is some wonkiness when putting a window to the top of the screen, as it then has to do some battling with the clock/battery area and the new menu bar dropdown. At that point you have to click to get to the stop lights where otherwise you can just hover over them.
So anyway, how has the beta been treating you? Or if you have questions an interaction or whatever, we can all help answer them.
Edit: I’m editing this to share an article from MacStories interviewing Craig Federighi about the iPad:
Just to say I would love for an iPad Pro to replace my MacBook, but without root file system access or a bash/zsh terminal it wouldn’t work.
Does the new multitasking stuff and liquid glass work well on the base iPad that’s a couple of hundred bucks?
Can’t justify having two super powerful four figure devices that have such overlap otherwise (for me).
Running it on a current generation iPad Mini. Runs OK. I would wait to see if the on-device AI support will work on base level machines or not. IMO, that’s the killer feature worth upgrading for. If not, probably not worth upgrading yet.
Liquid Glass is meh. Those of us old enough to remember ‘lickable’ Aqua have seen these UI fads come and go.
I’m really curious about how it performs on the base iPad too. I’m sure the final release will be be better than the betas, so I’m kinda waiting for that.
My next purchase will be a MacBook Air this fall, so I can’t justify an iPad as well, but maybe next time ipad os will have evolved enough.