ok I’m a sucker for evaluating the “latest and greatest”
a primary goal of upgrading to iOS14 is so I could deploy Xcode 12 SwiftUI apps to my production iPad Pro { tried this and discovered testData only shows up in Xcode preview }
I couldn’t help but wander around checking out the newly designed Spotlight, the widget and the star of the show, the enhancements they made to Apple Notes which as an Evernote consultant, makes me kind of sad given the new release of the Evernote iOS client today is downright disappointing in my eyes for reasons I won’t get into now. Apple has their way of playing catchup when they think the market is ripe (and they have the hardware to create a refined experience).
It is the @Apple Pencil that makes Apple Notes shine and release after release, it shines brighter and brighter and sets the standard of what a tablet writing/drawing should be. There is no doubt in my mind some of the brightest Apple engineers are on the Apple Pencil and iPadOS team.
Now I do agree with other critics that the inability for widgets to use the screen real estate of an iPad when you can place widgets anywhere on an iPhone just makes you go hmm... I have no idea what they are thinking. I’ve never been a big widgets fan so I’m just not going to worry about it for now.
iOS 14 vs. iPadOS 14: The biggest iPhone features missing on the iPad
The big thing that currently bothers me is losing the widescreen emoji keyboard - emoji are so small that a small picker not only makes me squint, I can barely touch the right emoji. I personally thought there was something quite beautiful about the large 12.9” sized emoji picker!
I made an Apple enhancement request that this be an Accessibility feature for those hard of sight.
I do believe in this team (and quite aware that I gave up on the iPad team around 2015 when I shifted my focus to Weave Your Legacy, Rekindling the Fire and healthcare transformation)