Author, designer, developer, and editor of Switch to iPad, among other things.
Post updated August 25, 2022. The members area has launched!
I hope you’ve had a good summer. I’ve spent mine resting, mostly, but also setting up the move from Substack, as per your (and my) wishes from the #100 survey. I’ve chosen Memberful as the service for this. It was easy to integrate into the Switch to iPad site, and it’s also a great user experience, in my opinion, in the sense that it’s easy to both login and cancel accounts.
So, this is what happens now.
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It’s almost as if these things are scheduled, isn’t it? Anyway, the sixth iPadOS 16 developer beta is out, alongside various other betas for Apple platforms, as usual. Expect the fourth public beta to arrive shortly, too.
This is possibly the shortest post on Switch to iPad thus far. Don’t worry, I’m not turning it into a habit.
One of the benefits of the new Stage Manager feature is that iPhone apps makes a lot more sense on an iPad. You can even use them properly in landscape now, which is a pretty decent experience, as it turns out. The iPhone apps are resizable too, although not as freely as iPad apps.
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The fifth iPadOS 16 developer beta has started to roll out (release notes), and it does look like there are some improvements to Stage Manager, among other fixes. I’ve yet to play with this one as I’m deep in Switch to iPad fixes as a result of that 100 issue survey I did a while back, but I’m looking forward to it. There are quite a few quirky things with Stage Manager, especially related to following links that open external apps, which then might not happen in the logical view, as well as plenty of render bugs. I stopped using an external monitor with beta 3 as I found it unreliable, but having a go at that is long overdue.
Stage Manager is, presumably, the reason Apple seems to be pushing the iPadOS 16 launch to October. Meanwhile, iOS 16 is still due in September, if the Apple Rumor Mill™️ is to be expected. In the end, only Apple knows for sure.
Update: The third public beta was released shortly after the fifth developer beta.
Fifteen games are leaving the Apple Arcade subscription service, which is something that has annoyed quite a few people online. It’s to be expected, this is how game subscriptions work, Xbox Game Pass does the same thing. But here’s the deal: You might still be able to play the games that left Apple Arcade, assuming you’ve downloaded them to your iPad. Not forever, but at lest you’ll get at least two weeks to finish them. Apple made this clear in a new support document, where we also learn that games that’ll end up as paid (or free, I presume) releases on the App Store after the Apple Arcade exclusivity, will support any old save files you might have.
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It sounds like Apple wants some additional time to get work done on iPadOS 16, something that might not come as such a surprise if you’re running the beta. There’s still work to be done, and traditionally, iPadOS version has launched alongside iOS versions. The latter, being iOS 16, is likely in September, but iPadOS 16 might have to wait until October.
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I’m back, briefly, from my vacation/rebuilding phase to tell you that the fourth iPadOS 16 developer beta, and the second public beta, is now available. Looking at the list of updates on Apple’s developer site, it sure looks like plenty of fixes. Betas are always like this, obviously, but Apple have a tendency to postpone features for later versions during this phase. This has already happened with the smart live updates for iOS 16, so it could come to iPadOS specific features as well. I’m excited to dig into the fourth developer beta, and see how Stage Manager – the premier feature for iPadOS 16 – is improving.
In other news, Apple’s fiscals are out. I’ll leave the number-crunching to Jason Snell over at Six Colors.
Oh, and don’t worry too much about that iTunes Connect email about missing banking details, if you’re a new developer without any published apps. It seems to have been sent to anyone not having set up an account for receiving payments, which, obviously, could be premature if you’re just starting out. That said, do check your settings, just to be safe.
Apple has released iPadOS 15.6. It’s a bug fix and security release, so make sure to update. This is what you get.
TV app adds the option to restart a live sports game and pause, rewind, or fast-forward.
Fixes an issue where Settings may continue to display that device storage is full even if it is available.
Fixes an issue that may cause braille devices to slow down or stop responding when navigating text in Mail.
Fixes an issue in Safari where a tab may revert back to a previous page.
Fixes an issue where iPad mini (sixth generation) may not detect a charger or other USB-C accessory.
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Hi!
I hope this letter finds you well. Me, I’m getting ready to check out from a hotel, take a taxi to my car (!), and then leave Stockholm for a couple of weeks. We’re moving the base to the countryside, which is about time, and also later than usual. It’s been a busy couple weeks, err, months, and I’m glad to have put that behind me, for now. I’m sure we’ll have an errand or two in the city during the summer, and plants in the apartment need watering, but that aside, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to finally have something of a break.
Which also means I’m going to take a break from these newsletters, until mid-August is the idea. There’ll be updates on the site, and I might send recaps of those since the site and Substack (the service used for this newsletter) aren’t connected whatsoever, just don’t expect any 1,000+ word newsletters in July.
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As expected, the third iPadOS 16 developer beta hit yesterday, and the public beta followed swiftly. This means that anyone with an Apple ID, and a sense of adventure, can download the iPadOS 16 beta and help test it out.
Now, I’ve been running iPadOS 16 since the first developer beta, and while things are improving with each release, please keep in mind that this is unfinished software. You’ll get sudden reboots, especially if you’re pushing Stage Manager and using an external monitor, and things will get wonky for you. Some apps just won’t work as intended, and expect the onscreen keyboard to misbehave. It’s not recommended to run the public beta, or any beta really, on your primary device. Some of you will anyway, obviously, but fair warning.