DECEMBER 2019 MACWORLD 47alternative or replacement. With iPadOS 13,
here are some of the treats you can expect.
DESKTOP-CLASS BROWSING
All the other changes essentially build off
this one. The app’s “user agent” now tells
a website that the iPad’s owner is using
the macOS version of Safari, and so (for
the most part), you’ll see the same thing
you’ll see if you visited a certain webpage
on a Mac. (It also means some interface
options have flipped: Instead of seeing
“Request Desktop Website,” you’ll now
see “Request Mobile Website.”)
Apple optimized all inputs for touch, so
you should be able to interact with screen
elements with your finger as easily as you
might with a
mouse. You can
even use USB or
Bluetooth mice on
iPads now through
an Accessibility
setting called
“Assistive Touch,”
but Apple isn’t
doing much to
advertise the
feature.
Desktop-class
browsing on the
iPad eliminates
many of the core
frustrations of
using the iPad as a “laptop.” The web
interfaces for Gmail, Google Calendar,
Facebook, Squarespace, and YouTube
now work the same way they do on a Mac,
and The Verge (go.macworld.com/sfip)
recently showed how Google Docs now
works so well in Safari that it boasts
features you won’t even find in Google’s
dedicated app.
This is all good news for reasons that
go beyond convenience. Google in
particular always took its sweet time
introducing and updating features such as
Split-View multitasking for its iPad app, to
the point that it was hard to shake the
impression that it was delaying the
updates out of spite. Since the web-basedThousands of freelancers are sighing in relief.