As I normally do at this time of year, here are a few thoughts about Apple’s new mobile operating system. However, this year has been different in a few ways.

Betas are, well, betas. You don’t use them on devices that you actually need¹. My normal pattern is put them on my iPad around the start of August. This is often the third or forth beta. Most of the worst glitches have been resolved by this point. Then, depending on how it goes on the iPad, I’ll probably put it on my phone towards the end of August, earlier if everything is going well.

As I write this, I still don’t have the beta on either my carry phone or my iPad pro. I’ve had it installed on my iPad mini 4 since the very first beta, but that’s not a device I use every day.

My caution is because of a combination of things. Firstly, I’m not doing this for a living. I need to have a functioning phone for work. But I still want to! The reason I didn’t is because these betas have been rough, especially the first few.

At the start of the beta cycle, there were stories of iCloud Drives getting corrupted and Too Much Stuff being broken.

Even now, on the most recent beta, there are still a few… oddities. One of my apps, when compiled with the latest GM SDK, comes up in lots of weird colours. Through the whole process I assumed that it was a glitch and that it would be fixed in the next seed. It turns out that this was my mistake. It’s a change rather than a bug. Still, in my defence, it’s rather surprising behaviour and it looks like a rendering bug.

Anyway, I mention this for two reasons, on both sides of the stability coin. First, the betas have been such that the idea that there was a serious rendering bug remaining wasn’t entirely implausible. Second, maybe that this affected my own app skewed my perspective and that they’re not as bad as I think. Your milage may vary, etc.

So, in summary, I’ve not been working with the new OS full time for a few weeks. This possibly means that my opinion isn’t quite as well informed as in previous years. If you can call my previous posts informed².

The Good

• Improved use of iPad screen. (Okay, this is technically iPadOS but I think they’re still close enough to not need a second post!) The “multi-app slide over” multitasking is nice, the widgets on the home screen is long overdue, the ability to have multiple windows of the same app open. Apple have been saying that the iPad is the future of the computer, now it’s finally starting to feel it can be used as one.
• Text editing. I’m not sure that it’s perfect yet but it is dramatically improved. There’s a new keyboard, new cut-and-paste gestures, swipe keyboard, cursor navigation and selection, more keyboard shortcuts on iPad. Even with an external keyboard, this has always felt harder in iOS than it should.
• Photos. I’ve not dug into all the improvements, but the design is greatly improved aesthetically.
• Voice Control. I probably won’t use this very much, but I love that it exists. As I wrote on Twitter, it makes me feel like Deckard.

The Bad

• Stability. See above, but, long story short, I’m not sure I can easily recommend that people dash out and install this on the first day. Even the early iOS 12 betas were stable enough that this was an easy choice. This year it’s not so clear. I hope I’m wrong.

The Ugly

• Release schedule. What’s going on this year? iOS 13 is available on 19 September for the iPhone. But not at all for the iPad. For that you have to wait for iOS 13.1 at the end of the month (30 September). For the Watch, which is still closely tied to the iPhone, it’s out the same day as iOS 13. Unless it’s more than a couple of years old, in which case… at some later point. This is greatly preferable to releasing software before it’s ready, but see above about stability. It does seem that Apple bit off more than they could chew this year. Either it’s not been planned well and they’re just reacting or they’re not communicating well. I really hope it’s the latter.

There are some features that I wanted to mention but I’ve not actually used. The Reminders updates look good but I think the handover support from the Music app to the HomePod that I’m most excited by! And some things are probably true but I’ve not actually noticed, like the improved performance or reduced app sizes.

Overall, I think that has the potential to be a great release. There are some nice improvements. I just hope I’m wrong about the glitches.