Back in May, I wrote a short list of my wishes for iOS 13. There were only six different things on the list, but seeing as I’ve been using the iOS and iPadOS betas for a while now, I thought I’d revisit it and see how many of them made it.
Dark Mode
This was near-enough guaranteed at the point of me writing my wishes, as we had tons of rumours. But we’ve got it! And it’s everything I expected it to be.
Shortcuts API
I wrote that I wanted apps to have a deeper integration, have the ability to add their own actions into the Shortcuts app, and also support for parameters. We got all of that and more.
Because of the new functionality, I’m adding a much better integration for Text Case. Which means it will be able to provide one single action in Shortcuts, which can accept the text as a parameter, and allow you to select a format from a pre-defined list. It’s a much better solution.
Widgets
I’ll combine two of my aims here. The first being having widgets available on the home screen, and also being able to see more widgets on the iPad.
We didn’t quite get home screen widgets, but at least the iPad can now shrink the app grid and allow for one column of widgets. I would have preferred if you could place these widgets inside the app grid, but I guess it’s a good enough solution.
I also would have preferred if you could see more than one column of widgets on the iPad, especially when you have it in landscape mode, and access them from the lock screen. It just feels like so much wasted space.
Picture-in-Picture on iPhone
I didn’t really expect this to happen, and it didn’t. But I would have liked to be able to have this feature.
Do Not Disturb Improvements
The improvement I wanted to Do Not Disturb was the ability to hide notifications while using a device. This didn’t happen, and I think it’s a sorely missed feature. Whether you’re focussed on work, or wired-in on a movie, getting distracted by a notification is silly.
Overall, I think iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 are impressive updates to a stable foundation in iOS 12.
Splitting the iPadOS away from the main iOS is a good choice in my opinion. Technically this was already happening, as the iPad and iPhone have had slightly different features for quite some time. But this is more of a marketing change, and it signifies that Apple know that they’re truly different devices, and one should not be held back by the other. Hopefully, this means the iPad is freed of the limitations of the iPhone and can advance in even more ways.
There will always be small features that people want, like my desire to have better Do Not Disturb functionality, and Picture-in-Picture on the iPhone. But seeing how many improvements there are in iOS/iPadOS 13, I’m hopeful that they will be addressed to some level in the future.