i(Pad)OS 18 Beta Fun

Jump to latest Follow Reply
CommanderJameson

CommanderJameson

Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
7,993
Subscriptor
  • #1
    My 11” M1 iPad Pro is now running the developer beta of iPadOS 18. I have held off on my phone, because it’s a life/business/mission-critical device, whereas if I have to reset my iPad, it’s no biggie.

    First impressions are that it looks the same 😁 I might do a factory reset to enjoy the OOBE in all its glory. One for the weekend.

    TBH the first thing I noticed is that Dark Mode now affects the app icons and it’s been done well - very pleasing, and when third-party developers get on board, it’ll look mint. These are just lovely:

    1718175949252.jpeg

    The second thing I noticed is (a) there’s a calculator and (b) it’s shit. I mean, come on - no nerd mode? No conversions? Low effort, Apple. Low effort.

    The third thing I noticed is the passwords thing. Now this is relevant to my interests etc., and I will be exploring this to see if I can turn off my 1Password subscription.

    There’s a splash of colour in Control Centre now, notably for the brightness and volume sliders. I’m also sure I never had those four icons down the right-hand side before, for favourites, music, Home, and connectivity (where a VPN button has appeared).

    Overall it seems performant and stable but that’s pretty much always been my experience of i(Pad)OS developer betas. Even if stuff doesn’t work right, it’s not a sludgy crashfest.

    Anyone got it on a phone yet? How’s that working out?
     
    • Like
    Reactions: cateye and GaitherBill
    CommanderJameson

    CommanderJameson

    Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
    7,993
    Subscriptor
  • #3
    Lee L said:
    I thought they said conversions would be in the calculator app?
    Click to expand...
    Well, now. I installed this yesterday and there was no conversion function. I didn’t touch anything, and now there is.

    No nerd mode though. Definitely. Probably.

    Interestingly, the currency converter is powered by Yahoo! Finance.
     
    • Hug
    Reactions: Jeff3F
    H

    Honeybog

    Ars Scholae Palatinae
    2,075
  • #4
    CommanderJameson said:
    The second thing I noticed is (a) there’s a calculator and (b) it’s shit. I mean, come on - no nerd mode? No conversions? Low effort, Apple. Low effort.
    Click to expand...

    If by nerd mode you mean RPN, you’ve identified why I’ll never give up PCalc.

    I don’t have my iPad in front of me, but there’s a way to get a scientific calculator, it’s just not readily apparent.

    On my aging 7th gen iPad, the animations seem faster and things generally seem to be working well, with the notable exception of hiding/locking apps. I’m guessing this is just buggy right now, but it’s very slow.

    Unless I missed something, one major bummer is that you can only set a single custom color for all apps. It was my understanding that you’d be able to set different colors for different sets of ups (like making all messaging apps green, finance apps blue, etc.)
     
    • Like
    Reactions: CommanderJameson
    CommanderJameson

    CommanderJameson

    Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
    7,993
    Subscriptor
  • #6
    Honeybog said:
    If by nerd mode you mean RPN, you’ve identified why I’ll never give up PCalc.
    Click to expand...
    No, programmer mode. Hex and octal and bitshifts and all that good stuff.

    You know, like Apple knows exactly how to do:
    1718200118355.png

    I too love RPN, and I still regret to this day selling my HP 42S, but I’d never spend money on a calculator app just to get it.
     
    • Like
    Reactions: Honeybog
    H

    Honeybog

    Ars Scholae Palatinae
    2,075
  • #7
    CommanderJameson said:
    No, programmer mode. Hex and octal and bitshifts and all that good stuff.

    You know, like Apple knows exactly how to do:
    View attachment 82967

    I too love RPN, and I still regret to this day selling my HP 42S, but I’d never spend money on a calculator app just to get it.
    Click to expand...

    What's frustrating is that the Mac Calculator does have RPN (press command+R or View>RPN Mode), although if they ever update it to be a universal app, I suspect it will lose it.

    I never thought I'd spend $10 for a calculator, but PCalc is addictive. Just being able to make customized layouts and custom functions makes it worth it for the entertainment value alone.

    60d0be76d5ac8aeccfe7603e_drw_dm42_front_600_on.png


    SwissMicros has a 42S clone, but it's not cheap.
     
    cateye

    cateye

    Ars Legatus Legionis
    11,760
    Moderator
  • #8
    Honeybog said:
    SwissMicros has a 42S clone, but it's not cheap.
    Click to expand...

    I have no understanding of RPN, am hopeless at algebraic math, and am far more likely to use a calculator to spell out 8008135 than to do anything useful. But gol darn I love precision-made, hyper-engineered devices like that. Beautiful.

    CommanderJameson said:
    TBH the first thing I noticed is that Dark Mode now affects the app icons and it’s been done well - very pleasing, and when third-party developers get on board, it’ll look mint. These are just lovely
    Click to expand...

    Speaking of beautiful. Thank you for sharing, those look great. Dark mode will feel far more unified now. I can only imagine how good that will look on the OLED iPads with their "real" level of black.
     
    • Like
    • Haha
    Reactions: mklein, un and Honeybog
    cateye

    cateye

    Ars Legatus Legionis
    11,760
    Moderator
  • #11
    Saw this mentioned on reddit, that font management on iOS/iPadOS got a bit of an overhaul. It's unclear to me just how much has changed, but the current system is a mess and not worth using, so even incremental improvements are great. As mentioned in the thread, however, being able to directly install fonts from Files.app would be the biggest win and it sounds like that's still not possible.

    While most of the fonts I use in client projects these days come from AdobeFonts which sync automatically to any Adobe app whether on MacOS or iPadOS, I still have a massive library of collected/purchased OTF fonts and anything that would allow me to better sync my Mac and iPad work environments would help me use the iPad more.
     
    Captain Riker

    Captain Riker

    Ars Praefectus
    5,805
    Subscriptor
  • #12
    I have 18 running on my iPad. Placing widgets and icons anywhere was a welcome update. Widgets now go where I want them. :judge:

    I used the math features in Notes during a study session with my teen. It works... OK. It would struggle if the equation wasn't the only thing on a line, and it would take a few seconds before it would offer an answer, but it usually got what we were doing (geometry.).

    I was really trying to see if the updates to Notes were there but I really didn't see any. I use Notability regularly and I'm not sure any of the updates in Notes are worth losing its note organization features. The folder model in Notes just seems really janky to me.
     
    CommanderJameson

    CommanderJameson

    Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
    7,993
    Subscriptor
  • #15
    Honeybog said:
    What's frustrating is that the Mac Calculator does have RPN (press command+R or View>RPN Mode), although if they ever update it to be a universal app, I suspect it will lose it.

    I never thought I'd spend $10 for a calculator, but PCalc is addictive. Just being able to make customized layouts and custom functions makes it worth it for the entertainment value alone.

    60d0be76d5ac8aeccfe7603e_drw_dm42_front_600_on.png


    SwissMicros has a 42S clone, but it's not cheap.
    Click to expand...
    It’s OT for this thread, but I maaaaaaaay have a bid in on a good-condition 42S on eBay.
     
    • Love
    Reactions: Honeybog
    japtor

    japtor

    Ars Legatus Legionis
    13,043
  • #19
    ant1pathy said:
    While I respect and support the developer of PCalc... I use Soulver myself. The feature set / style far more closely aligns to what I need a calculator for than a "traditional" one, even with all the fancy functions.
    Click to expand...
    Not too familiar with PCalc myself, but while watching the keynote I was thinking they sherlocked Soulver more than anything with the whole calculator notes workflow. Hell the tagline on the Soulver app website is "Notepad, meet calculator".

    ...not that I've used it much lately, forgot about it and for simple calculator needs I've been using Calcbot for years. I think I just tend to do stuff in Numbers on my Mac if I need to work with more numbers/organization. We'll see if the calc/note stuff gets more usage for me. Maybe for splitting dinner bills at least.
     
    Jonathon

    Jonathon

    Ars Legatus Legionis
    16,541
    Subscriptor
  • #20
    japtor said:
    Not too familiar with PCalc myself, but while watching the keynote I was thinking they sherlocked Soulver more than anything with the whole calculator notes workflow. Hell the tagline on the Soulver app website is "Notepad, meet calculator".

    ...not that I've used it much lately, forgot about it and for simple calculator needs I've been using Calcbot for years. I think I just tend to do stuff in Numbers on my Mac if I need to work with more numbers/organization. We'll see if the calc/note stuff gets more usage for me. Maybe for splitting dinner bills at least.
    Click to expand...
    Yeah; I reach for Excel for anything multi-step these days. Math Notes (or Soulver, which I don't own and therefore don't use) might handle that kind of use case quite nicely for me, especially if it works with typed notes in addition to the handwritten stuff (can't use Pencil on iPhone, and I don't always want to use Pencil on iPad).

    I think I'm going to throw the beta on my old M2 iPad Pro. Might have to wait until I have time to wipe it and get it detached from iCloud, though-- iOS betas have had bugs causing (production) iCloud data loss before (I think iOS 13 was the last time it happened, and it might've happened once or twice before that). Testing something that might be unstable on a dedicated device is one thing, but you can't really keep things isolated to the test device with iCloud enabled and doing its thing.
     
    You must log in or register to reply here.
    Jump to latest Follow Reply
    Jump to latest Follow Reply