by Dan Moren
Bloomberg: iPadOS 15 to feature major home screen overhaul
Mark Gurman at Bloomberg reporting on what we’ve all suspected: Apple is poised to show off a big update for the iPad at this year’s WWDC.
The company is planning the most significant update to the device’s Home Screen since first launching the product in 2010. Following a similar feature for the iPhone introduced last year, Apple plans to let users place widgets — miniature apps that can display the weather, upcoming appointments, stock tickers and other data — anywhere on the Home Screen. Users will also be able to replace the entire app grid with only widgets.
Widgets were one of the big hits to iOS 14 last year, which made their limited updates on the iPad that much more frustrating.
That said, I think this report is probably lacking some of the nuance of Apple’s implementation (or is looking only at an early build, as Gurman admits). Simply turning your entire iPad home screen into Widgettown feels more like a blunt hammer approach, though perhaps welcome in places.
It seems like iOS and iPadOS currently exist on something of a leapfrog development path. One year, iPad gets widgets in a column on the home screen; next year, iPhone gets widgets anywhere; following year, iPad gets widgets anywhere and lets you turn your entire screen into widgets.
This does hold out hope that iPadOS 15 will be a bigger update across the board, though the report doesn’t mention anything about one of the biggest areas of interest: multitasking.