Apple today announced the latest version of its iPad operating system, iPadOS 14. The new tablet platform cribs a lot of features from the just announced iOS 14 such as improved widgets, a redesigned Siri, and stripped down versions of apps known as App Clips, but has more than a few changes of its own.
The most significant is better support for handwriting, with the goal of making it as "powerful as typed text". Any text you've written with an Apple Pencil can be moved around in a document in the same way something typed on a keyboard, and phone numbers and addresses will work as links. Handwritten notes can be copied and pasted to convert them to text.
You'll also be able to hand-write in any text field - such as the search field in Safari or the Reminders app - and have your scribbles automatically converted to typed text. I'm definitely keen to see how this handles my chicken scratch.
Looking more broadly, Apple has redesigned a number of its apps to take utilise the iPad's larger display better. Apps like Photos, Files, and Notes feature a new sidebar for improved navigation, and apps like Calendar have more controls at the top of the screen. They're small changes, but it makes the apps look a bit more PC-like, which seems to fit with Apple's goal of pitching the iPad as a computer replacement.
iPadOS 14's big other unique feature is an all new Universal Search engine. This can be used as an app launcher, to find documents or contacts, to search the web, and to look within apps that support the feature. A lot of these features already existed in iPadOS, but the redesign makes it seem a lot more like Spotlight on Mac, again, making the iPad just a little more like a traditional PC.
Based on previous years, we're expecting to see iPadOS 14 available in September, but anything goes in 2020. A developer beta is now available, ahead of a public beta in July.
iPadOS 14 will be compatible with every iPad already running iPadOS 13. This includes all 12.9-inch iPad Pro models, all 11-inch iPad Pro models, the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, the 5th, 6th, and 7th generation iPad, the 5th generation iPad mini, iPad mini 4, the third generation iPad Air, and the iPad Air 2.
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