Rob PegoraroIt says something about the incremental nature of mobile operating-system updates these days that my immediate payoff for installing Apple’s iPadOS 18 on my iPad mini 6–a 37-minute process Saturday afternoon, during which I couldn’t use the tablet for five minutes–was the addition of a calculator app.
Yes, the basic math application that shipped with the original Mac as a “Desk Accessory” applet, and which has remained absent from Apple’s iPad software since I watched Steve Jobs introduce the first one in 2010. Fourteen years later, it’s nice to know that iPad buyers won’t have to make installing PCalc one of their first tablet-setup tasks.
There’s more to iPadOS 18 than that, even setting aside the not-yet-shipped AI features that lead off Apple’s pitch for this release: a new standalone Passwords app (not relevant to me because I use 1Password), a new Privacy & Security category in the Settings app, the ability to require Touch ID authentication to open an app (and then hide that app’s presence behind Touch ID). But none of this stuff struck me as a reason to reach for my tablet when Apple shipped this release a month ago so I could install it right then.
I’m not writing that to knock Apple, because I have about the same reaction to Google’s Android 15 after installing it on a Pixel 8a right after I put iPadOS 18 on the iPad.
The standout features in this update are privacy and security tools that you hope you won’t need–a set of Theft Protection defenses designed to make your phone useless to a thief even if you weren’t able to lock it in time (but which you need to enable from their default state of off), plus a Private Space feature to hide apps behind biometric security that resembles the one I mentioned in iOS 18.
There’s more there–see my PCMag writeup for a breakdown–but this, too, is not an OS update that I’d be able to recognize on your device if I glanced at it from across a table. Which is okay! Technology could stand to have a little less drama.
That said, there is one mobile OS update that I do want to see get fast and widespread uptake: Apple’s iOS 18, which finally brings support for RCS messaging to the iPhone. That feature has yielded an immediate upgrade to my text chats with friends on iPhones running iOS 18, in the obvious form of typing indicators and higher-resolution multimedia and in the less-obvious form of our conversations being encrypted in transit instead of being sent in the clear. Those friends seem to find their end of the banter improved as well.
So if you have an iPhone that can run iOS 18, please ignore everything I wrote before the previous paragraph and rush to install this update. Thank you.
10/20/2024: Updated with a reminder to activate the anti-theft features in Android 15.
#Android15 #AndroidPrivateSpace #greenBubbles #iOS18 #iPad #iPadCalculator #iPadOS18 #iphone #Pixel8a #RCS
