iPadOS is the name of the new operating system for current iPads. With this news, Apple surprised the audience of the WWDC keynote tonight. Apple separates with iPadOS the iOS operating system from iPads and goes own ways. It’s still a heavy-based iOS system, only one develops specifically for iPads and not for both devices. A nice decision because this allows the developers to add specific features that don’t work or make sense on iPhones.
The new iPadOS includes many new interesting features that will also appeal to mobile musicians. News that is specific to the music production area (AUv3, MIDI…) will be announced mainly at individual conferences later this week. Nonetheless, also the new functions announced today will have an important impact for iPad musicians.
Support For USB Drives & SD Cards
There are still wonders! With the new iPadOS comes support for USB hard drives and SD cards to iPads. Yes, it will be possible not only to transfer photos (current state) but also to load other files: audio, MIDI…
It will greatly change the mobile musician workflow. Previously you had to transfer files over detours to the iOS operation system. Especially musicians who like to use their own samples will be pleased about this update. It’s an excellent new feature, but I have to say it took a long time. The competition has been this for years. The Apple Cosmos is becoming more open, good to see.
“The Files app is a central place to quickly access and manage documents, and with iPadOS, it gets even better with iCloud Drive support for folder sharing. Anyone with access to a shared folder will see it in iCloud Drive and will always have the ability to access the latest version. iPadOS also supports external drives, allowing users to easily plug in USB drives, SD cards or log into an SMB file server, all from within the Files app. A new Column View with high-resolution previews helps users navigate directories, while support for Quick Actions such as mark up, rotate and create PDF make it easy to be more productive on iPad. iPadOS also introduces local storage, zip and unzip, and new keyboard shortcuts.”
Performance Improvements
Another good news is that the new iPadOS make the entire system more responsive and quicker especially in launching apps. Also, apps and updates are less space consuming. So more available space and better for iPads with less memory.
Download Manager
According to the motto: with small changes, we can already be very satisfied, so I can describe the next new feature. In the new iPadOS there is a Download Manager, which is also very helpful if you want to download files. So far, they had no information on how far the download had progressed. Nice add-on Apple.
Apple Pencil With Less Latency
Although the Apple Pencil is not a very important feature for mobile musicians, it’s good to see that the latency has been reduced in iPadOS to 9 milliseconds. For musicians who use them, the performance will be improved and smoother. I’m curious to hear if this improvement will have an impact on music production apps like DAW’s.
iPad Apps For MacOS
Another feature is not directly in the new OS but in the new macOS Catalina. Apple simplifies the migration of existing iOS apps to macOS. As a result, many new apps will be released in the near future. Certainly, also music apps from iOS will come t0 macOS system. So you can start working on a track on a Mac and later continue working on the iPad. Cross-platform work, we call you!
No Inter-App Audio SDK Support Including AudioBus In Future!
We’re excited about many new features but there are two bad news. There will be no support for Audiobus and Inter-App Audio (IAA) in the new iPadOS in future. That means apps must have AUv3 support if you want to use them in a DAW. Audiobus will still work as AUV3 host but no longer the initial Audiobus technology because it relies on the Inter-App Technology
“Inter-App audio is deprecated. Use Audio Units for this functionality moving forward.”
It will be interesting how app manufacturers will react now. Will we finally see KORG Apps or Animoog as AUv3 App? I hope a lot. When Apple will drop the support for Inter-App Audio is not yet known.
Already an exciting update for iPad musicians in my opinion although we still do not know what is maybe coming in the music production section.
Apple iPadOS Beta is available now through the Apple Developer Program. It will be available this fall as a free software update for iPad Air 2 and later, all iPad Pro models, iPad 5th generation and later and iPad mini 4 and later.
More information here: Apple
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