iOS 14 Diary

This piece, my iPadOS 14 review as of public beta 3, changed as I wrote it. What I expected to write as the final part of my iOS 14 Diary is that it’s all a bit underwhelming.

In a sense, I still think that. Apple’s keynote presentation was full of pizzaz, while the reality is much more prosaic. iPadOS 14 is very much an incremental update rather than a revolutionary one, and I still think Apple is a very long way short of taking full advantage of the capabilities of the hardware.

But as I mapped out the changes I like, I realized that though they may be individually rather small, most of them make a surprisingly big difference. Take all of them into account, and I think it’s a solid and welcome update, with five notable upgrades…

Expand
Expanding
Close

I gave my first impressions of iOS 14 on the first day of the public beta on Friday. Having had the weekend to play with it further, my bottom-line remains unchanged: I think it’s a decent update, though it does of course have the bugs you expect in any beta.

A few more of those bugs have come to light, together with five new features I like. I also confirmed that an experiment I wanted to conduct isn’t really going to work as yet …

Expand
Expanding
Close

I wouldn’t have predicted I’d be giving my first impressions of iOS 14 on the first day of the public beta. My previous policy on iOS and macOS betas could be succinctly yet comprehensively summarized in a single word: no.

Where macOS is concerned, that remains my policy. My Mac contains my life. Photos, novels, screenplays, blogs, plans, you name it. And because I live a paperless life, it has scans of everything from boring stuff like bills to sentimental things like cards and letters. Of course, I have multiple backups, but those are for use when something has gone wrong; I don’t want to willfully encourage that to happen.

I have, though, become more relaxed where my iPhone and iPad are concerned…

Expand
Expanding
Close