 Hey! This is still just an iPad! Yup! Turns out, iPadOS still does not make the iPad Pro a laptop replacement. But, there is some good news, because what it does do is make it both a better iPad and a better computer. So let's talk about what we mean by that, and what it's like to use it. Speaking of using, I'll use this opportunity to tell you about our sponsor, Origin PC. Customize an Origin PC desktop with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics card at the link in the video description. It feels like every time Apple releases a new iPad, they seem to be making the case, yet again, that tablets, or specifically their tablet, are the future of mainstream computing. And, you know what, that might end up being true at some point. But as we said in the conclusion of our iPad Pro review, in order to lead us to that future, Apple needs to make iOS much more robust. Well, I guess Apple watches our videos, because it looks like they listen to us, along with, well, every other tech reviewer. So at WWDC 2019, Apple announced that iPads would get their own specialized version of iOS called iPadOS, with new features that bring the iPad experience closer to the one that you'd expect from a laptop or a desktop, including multitasking improvements, external drive support, **** finally, and even mouse support. But before you guys get too amped up, watch the rest of the video, because it's not quite what you'd expect. Or rather, it might be exactly what you'd expect. I mean, this is still Apple we're talking about. So let's start with the home screen. App icons are now smaller, so you can fit more on one page, that's cool, and you can now slide the Today view with its list of widgets in from the left side. Now let's talk multitasking. Split view and slide over have gotten a big upgrade. You can now place two instances. Apple is calling these spaces, but to simplify our lives, we're gonna refer to them as windows. So two instances of some apps side by side, like here you can see we fired up two file windows, or two notes windows within the notes app. Now, you could already bring up iPhone width apps in slide over mode on iOS 12, but now you can add more apps to slide over, and you can switch between them just like you do with your full screen apps. Now as I mentioned, not every app supports spaces right now. I couldn't open two Word documents side by side for instance, but for the apps that do support it, this better use of the screen real estate on the iPad is an absolute godsend. I mean, I think it's fair to say that it's easier than it has ever been to work on a document, reference a webpage, and message someone at the same time on an iPad. It does take some getting used to, especially once you find out that there's now essentially a multitasking expose menu for each space enabled app, and then that to see it, you've got to open the app, then bring up the dock and tap the app's icon again, but once you get all of that through your thick skull, it's completely intuitive. Now let's move on to external storage support. I was tempted to not even give Apple a point for this because its absence was so dumb to begin with, kind of like copy paste that they shouldn't get praise for implementing it, but that would be petty. So I'll say this, better late than never. Here's how it works. You plug in, fire up the files app, then using the new columns views, you can easily browse and transfer the files on your external storage device. Both of these features were much needed on a device with the ProMoniker, and I couldn't be happier that they're finally here. Another much needed feature is the ability to load the desktop versions of websites by default. So you can access desktop versions on iOS versions prior to 13, but you need to tap and hold the refresh button every time a page loads. So now browsing the web on an iPad does feel more like using a laptop or a desktop, making our writer for this video Riley want to smash the iPad Pro into the wall far less frequently. Next up, we've got some more minor changes that make the iPad easier to use. These include new gestures requiring three fingers, so you can pinch to copy, spread your fingers to paste, and you can also tap three times or swipe to the left to undo. Pinching the on-screen keyboard will shrink it down to phone size, making it even easier to use the new swipe to text feature that Apple finally added, and you can scroll through pages using the scroll bar rather than swiping down endlessly now. The Apple Pencil, where is it? There it is, also gets some major improvements. It has even lower latency, which is impressive considering it was already nigh imperceptible. You can now easily screenshot and annotate in any app by dragging from the bottom corner, and with Pencil Kit, developers can natively integrate the Pencil palette into their apps, so the pencil experience will now be consistently great across iPad apps, not just in Apple Notes. So now, let's address the greatest fear of the elephant in the room. What? Mice! Ugh, come on. Let's talk mouse support. It's finally here, but it is very unconventional and looks like this. So, what they've done here is rather than implement this much-requested feature in a predictable or conventional way, is, well, it appears that Apple has begrudgingly added it in as part of their Assistive Touch accessibility feature. So, from their perspective, it's meant then that Apple has been able to add a touch-to-touch feature to their touch-to-touch feature, so from their perspective, it's meant then for folks who have difficulty touching the screen or who require an adaptive accessory, also known as a mouse. So, okay then, once Assistive Touch is enabled, you connect your adaptive accessory via Bluetooth or a dongle, just like you would any other device, but the thing is, is that it's meant to emulate a touch-to-touch feature, so you can touch the screen and it's not going to behave like a traditional mouse, and that becomes clear the first time you try to use the scroll wheel in certain apps or right-click for a context menu. Now, Assistive Touch has quite a few customization options available, which would seem to be very useful to people who are actually using it as an accessibility feature, but they're just honestly not going to be able to use it as an accessibility feature. So, what's the point of using an iPad? To be clear, the experience wasn't horrible. It definitely saved Riley some arm strain from reaching up and tapping when he could just move the mouse an inch and click, but it definitely does not suddenly make the iPad Pro as a laptop would be. In fact, adding a mouse almost made it more apparent that trying to treat iOS as a desktop operating system is a bit of a masochistic endeavor. Apple is plainly making it clear that using a mouse on iPad is just not part of their vision for the platform, which got me thinking. You know, when I heard that Apple was adding things like mouse support, external storage, but great, the iPad is going to be more like a normal computer. But I was wrong, because Apple isn't trying to make the iPad Pro more like a computer. They're trying to help the iPad, which is still very much an iPad, be more useful as a computer. Now, that might seem like I'm saying the same thing, but let me explain here. I, as a power user, expect to have certain features on my computers, a high-precision mouse or trackpad. I expect a desktop, which I can populate with Windows that I can move or resize at will. I expect a file manager that lets me see all of the contents of my machine and anything that I've attached to it the way I want to see it. So to me, the computer experience is about giving the user the tools and the freedom to use the machine the way that they want to use it. But the cold hard truth is that is not what the iPad is about, and that's clearer than ever with the iPadOS update. While iPadOS certainly gives users more freedom than iOS 12, the iPad experience is still very much about embracing the machine's identity as a handheld, touch-powered, or, excuse me, pencil-powered, as it were, device. But here's the thing. Maybe, just maybe, that's the right decision. Okay, okay, wait. Hear me out, guys. I think up until now, we've been actually going about this video entirely the wrong way. Like, we always go through the same song and dance. Apple calls the iPad a computer. What's a computer? We laugh, review it against a laptop, and scoff at its lack of mouse support and pitiful file management, etc., etc., etc. But while Microsoft's dream was having one operating system across phones, tablets, and PCs, and Samsung is meanwhile trying to get their users to use their phone as a desktop machine, Apple isn't trying to make the iPad into a laptop. They already sell laptops, and they've been just as resistant to adding touch support to MacBooks as they've been to adding desktop features to iPads. They clearly have no desire to unify the experience of what it's like to use an iPhone, an iPad, and a Mac. So someone who keeps comparing iPads to laptops is never really going to be satisfied until Apple releases an iPad that's basically a MacBook with a touchscreen, which is a great idea, and they should do that. But instead of doing that, Apple has chosen to add a new category of productivity machines, tablets that aren't just giant phones that you use for watching Netflix, playing mobile games, and Skyping, sorry, excuse me, FaceTiming, Gramma, and that aren't just a harder to use and less capable laptop. So iPadOS is a vision of a future where an artist or a business owner or a family buy an iPad as their sole computer because while it is certainly less efficient for some tasks, a lot of tasks, if you only use your computer once in a while, why would you buy a bulky, awkward laptop instead? I mean, it does say something that once Riley started thinking of the iPad Pro as less of a bad laptop and more of a better iPad, he went and finished writing this review sitting on a bean bag using the mini swipe to text keyboard with Word, Safari, and Notes open on screen at the same time. And it wasn't bad. Like, at least it was more ergonomic. So in conclusion then, we think that with iPadOS, the iPad can be someone's next computer. But what Apple needs to do between now and then is to clarify their messaging because it's been kind of a confusing mess so far. They'll say things like, the iPad Pro can be your next computer. So like, wait, it's a computer? But then they'll say, it's like a computer, but unlike any computer. So wait, it's not a computer. Then they had this other campaign describing the iPad as a new way to take notes or make music or create a presentation, which I think is actually the most accurate. The iPad is, especially with iPadOS, a new way to use a computer. 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