However, reassuringly, even if you haven’t
bought or don’t plan to buy a new iPad soon,
you could soon be tapping – quite literally –
into a hugely enriched vein of professional
practicality on your tablet. iPadOS is available
for a long line of iPads going right back to the
iPad Air 2 released in 2014 – and many of the
software’s features highlighted at the WWDC
2019 keynote are present and correct even on
that ageing slate. Speed-wise, too, the iPad Air
2 holds up well on iPadOS.
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT TO SEE FIRST
WITH iPadOS
Whether your first experience of iPadOS comes
from using the software on a freshly-bought
iPad or installing the operating system on an
existing device, the first thing that might strike
you about iPadOS is the Home screen. The icons
on it now look a lot smaller and tighter, doing
away with the excess of wasted space that
notoriously blighted several iPad Pro models of
years past. However, fear not – if you preferred
the old size of the icons, you can switch back to
that in Settings.
As Federighi demonstrated at the keynote, it
takes just a swipe from the left-hand side of the
screen to bring up the Today View and its widgets.
You can even pin the Today View permanently to
the Home screen, if you would like. All you have
to do is scroll to the bottom of that panel, tap Edit
and then, on the menu that appears, toggle on
“Keep on Home Screen”. Here, as MacRumors
shows, you can also pin your favorite widgets
to prevent them from disappearing.
You might notice further changes even when
you start browsing websites on Safari. That’s