Last night, my iPad was updated with the latest iOS X beta. I couldn’t help myself from trying the new features:
“All iPhone apps are now running in Slide Over¹.”
It just worked, period. I opened Spotify for iPhone to enjoy music.
“All iPad apps support both Slide Over and Split View.”
No more fullscreen-only iPad app. So I started working on my next opinion article, with iA Writer on the left side, and Evernote as reference source on the right side.
My editor called me, and it showed as Picture in Picture. We discussed about the draft. She reminded me that:
“iPad is now open to download app from the Web.”
She would like to know what I would comment on this.
“It’s huge! There will be Google Play for iOS soon!” I searched on the web, and really, “Google Play for iPad (beta) is Here.”
Why just “for iPad”, I wondered, and soon realized that iPhone apps were still limited to App Store. It felt weird to me as a software engineer, since both iPhone and iPad run on the same iOS. But iPad with cellular model couldn’t even make phone calls, and no one complained anymore. So I got used to it.
I downloaded the “real²” Chrome browser from Google Play, and an alert showed up, asking to trust Google as Enterprise Developer on my device. Fair enough, but no thanks.
I checked what happened to App Store. It turned out there were no longer iPhone apps on the storefront or search results, only in purchase history. Okay, Apple’s product style, again.
App Store front page recommended me to download Twitterrific for iPad at bundle price³, since I had purchased iPhone version. That sounded reasonable to me, so I went for it.
“Terminal. Now on iOS X.”
With just a check in system developer settings, Terminal was there on the iOS X! Within the terminal, I could download any free software that has been serving as developer tools for tens of years, and got access to iCloud Drive. So I started writing some code with Vim, and used Git on the terminal. Frictionless.
Time to Wake Up
It felt so revolutionary until I woke up. Now I’m coding on Coda for iOS, using Git with Working Copy, and Ergo Web Tools, the best Web inspector on iOS I know so far, but, you know. Don’t get me wrong, they are great software if you are new to web development. But we have much better alternatives on traditional computers.
[1]: Why should we put up with full-screen iPhone app on the iPad? https://bendodson.com/weblog/2018/06/20/iphone-only-apps-on-ipad/
[2]: Why should we put up with fake Chrome that is actually Safari inside? https://twitter.com/nickjshearer/status/1133774963159248896
[3]: No, no universal apps. “…Universal apps were the worst thing to ever happen for the iPad ecosystem. There’s no way for a developer to recoup the costs for new interactions and the extra work needed for more sophisticated apps. Apple makes it easier for a customer up front by offering a single download, but at the same time they make things worse because a Universal version of the user’s favorite app isn’t financially viable.“ https://blog.iconfactory.com/2019/05/what-to-expect-from-marzipan/
