 All right, it's here, iPad OS. Well, okay, iPad OS 13.1.2. And maybe by the time you watch this, it's gonna be iPad OS 13.2. whatever. There've been a lot of bugs is what I'm saying. And there's been a lot of updates to fix those bugs. But look here, it's here, iPad OS. And after a year or two of me talking on this channel about the future of computers and what's a computer, it's go time. Apple finally shipped the thing with multiple windows and the ability to use USB-C drives and all the rest. So here's a question, did Apple do it? Can this be your main computer? I mean, look, with computer interfaces, it's more about the journey than it is about the destination. Have you ever heard of Zeno's paradox where to go from zero to 100, at first you gotta get halfway and then you gotta get halfway again. And you always have to get those halfway marks and then you never actually get there? Yeah, that's kind of how I feel about iPad OS. So for this review, I wanna do something just a little bit different. Look, I mean, you've already installed this, right? You've got an iPad, I'm sure you're already using iPad OS. So what I wanna do is talk about the things that I think you should definitely check out to make iPad OS and the iPad in general, more useful to you, whether you're a pro or you just wanna use the dang thing on your couch. Also, have you noticed that the video quality is like, here, I'm doing this myself, the actual professionals are out there, busy editing more professional videos. So sorry about that, I'm gonna do my best. And you could tell I'm screwing this up and I'm doing it on my own because I forgot the intro graphic. Intro graphic. All right, the first thing that you should check out on iPad OS is Apple Arcade. It is this thing in the iOS store that lets you pay five bucks a month for complete full access to a whole bunch of iPad and iPhone and even eventually Mac games that you just play for free, there's no in-app purchases, there's no garbage or whatever. And five bucks a month seems cheap, but technically that's 60 bucks a year. And I am sure that you have never spent 60 bucks a year on mobile games. So it seems like a weird thing for me to recommend you do here. But these games are great. They're just, they're beautiful, they're really good, they're really fun, they're really high quality. And if nothing else, more people subscribing to Apple Arcade could mean that we get more games like this. And it's totally worth it. You will feel way differently about your iPad than you did before. Plus, if you have a controller sitting around, like for an Xbox or a PS4, it'll work with your iPad and makes those games even more fun. The second thing is kind of a bonus thing, it's sidecar, which is technically a feature of Mac OS Catalina, which is coming out pretty soon. What it does is it turns your iPad into a second monitor for your Mac. You can either do it wirelessly, but I prefer to do it over USB. Also, if you have a lightning iPad, you should definitely just go spend 10 bucks on a USB-C to lightning cable. This one's from Anker, makes it way more convenient. Anyway, the sidecar thing, you can have the touch bar right on it if you want, you can get little option things. It doesn't make the touch screen work for interacting with your Mac, but you can use a pencil on certain things if you wanna do that. Oh, that's fine. The bottom line is having a second monitor for your Mac is really convenient and be able to do that when you're on the go is great. You should definitely check it out. Next, I want you to try the new floating keyboard. Now, a lot of people have been making fun of this thing and saying it's dumb, and I don't get it, because I think it's great. When you have the onscreen keyboard, you can pinch on it, and then the keyboard turns into a little iPhone-sized keyboard that you can then move around anywhere on the screen, and then on that iPhone-sized keyboard, you can use swipe typing to type really fast. I love this thing because if you're using the iPad in your hands, it's way easier than trying to reach your thumbs across to type. You can just use your right thumb or left thumb over on the side of the screen. I also love it because it doesn't take up the whole damn screen. It's just a little box that floats over what you're actually doing, so you have a much easier time doing stuff when you need to enter just a little bit of text on your iPad. The next thing I'm gonna recommend is that you play around with the new Files app. The new Files app is pretty great. I think it works better with cloud services. It supports USB drives now, which is awesome, and you can also just set up local folders wherever you want on the iPad instead of only depending on iCloud, which means you can just download stuff from Safari, which it's all great. I love it, but it's not exactly like Finder on the Mac or Explorer on Windows. It still is a little bit iPad-y, and that's not necessarily bad, but it is different. And so if you are planning on having a workflow that really matters to you, you should play around with it at home or at the office or whatever until you know exactly how it's going to work and make sure that it works for you. In a previous video, I talked about not going into battle with an unproven raffle, and that's true with the Files app. You need to make sure you understand how it works before you work with it. So just poke at it, a little poke. My last piece of advice for getting the most out of iPadOS is a little bit counterintuitive, and that's don't think about it too much. And I'm talking specifically about the windowing system because it is literally counterintuitive. iPadOS can do a bunch of new stuff with Windows. A single app can have multiple windows. A single app can have multiple windows and split screen. You can have two different apps in split screen. You can have a bunch of apps sitting in slide over. You can take icons and turn them into windows. You can take links and drag them and turn them into windows. You can do all sorts of stuff to make all sorts of windows and they like come out of nowhere and they fly around and you forget where they are. And it's just, it's a little bit confusing. And I've been thinking about this ever since I made that video where I talked about the grammar of user interfaces, and I figured it out. The iPad mixes metaphors now. So on your phone, you use a time metaphor. You've got your current app and then your most recent app. And then when you go to multitasking, it just kind of goes back in time. On your desktop, you use a spatial metaphor. So one window is here, one window is here, one window is here, and you move them around in space. The iPad literally has both. So the multitasking view goes back in time of all your most recent apps and split screens. But then there's also the spatial metaphor of, you know, the slide over apps over here and the split screens are set up this way. And understanding how time and space are relative to each other and relate is great for Einstein, but for us regular slubs, you can get a little bit lost. I can't tell you the number of times I've tapped an icon and expected it to show up in a certain way and it shows up in a completely different way. And what I've learned and what I'm telling you to do is not try and figure it out because the iPad is so good at apps keeping their state and opening them up quickly that if your setup isn't exactly what you want it to be, you can just make it what you want right then. Don't assume that your setup is gonna stick around. Think of it like a Buddhist sand bandana where it's like, it's a beautiful thing, but it's going to go away. Everything is ephemeral, everything disappears. Nothing is permanent, but it's still beautiful. So you could tell that this is a processor video I made by myself because by the end, we got to the impermanence of all things and Buddhism is a metaphor for user interfaces. So you're welcome internet. If you're looking for a classic review that goes over every single feature of iPadOS, don't worry, we've got you covered. It's over at theverge.com, link to it down in the show notes. But here for this review, what do I think of iPadOS? Well, you can read between the lines. I think it's really good, it's really powerful, but that it has a steep learning curve if you wanna use it for professional things as your main computer. And I'm weirdly proud of Apple for that. It was so worried that people will get confused and like put off by complication that it used to treat this thing like a big iPhone, but now it's not afraid to make it a little bit complicated and just trust that people who need it will figure it out. And you know what, that sure sounds like a computer to me. Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching. I know this is a little bit different kind of a video, but let me get my thoughts out there. So I appreciate doing that. And I'm gonna plug something else that lets me get my thoughts out there. It's our newsletter, it's at theverge.com slash newsletter. And I write one every day and it often has like a big long essay about what I think of the tech news of the day. So, you know, please go subscribe to that.