iPadOS 15, iOS 15, tvOS 15, and others are available now

[OtinG]

This morning I did what I’ve never needed to do in the past, I downgraded an iThingy to the previous OS. It was a PITA and it will be a while before everything gets re-downloaded and back to the way they were pre-15. But worth the effort. I’m lucky in that I also have an iPad mini 5 which I kept nearly identical to my iPad Air 2020, and I had left the iPad mini 5 on iPadOS 14.8, so I was able to Restore from an iCloud Backup from the iPad mini 5. Unfortunately the iPad Air 2020 had already automatically created two backups after it was using iPadOS 15, so restoring from those would have meant going right back to iPadOS 15. I know this because I tried and had to restart the iPad setup routine, then selected to restore from an iPad mini 5 recent iCloud backup. If I had already updated the iPad mini 5 to iPadOS 15, I would have had to reinstall everything from scratch. So dodged a huge bullet there.

Immediately after the downgrade/restore I turned Updates to OFF. No more of those, at least until/if Apple listens to the complaints and fixes a lot of crap they put into iPadOS 15.

At any rate, the whole process went fairly smooth and only took about an hour, at most. It will take a bit longer to get everything rearranged and to download all the apps and data from iCloud. Worth the effort though.

I want to reiterate that I’m only upset with iPadOS 15. It is a buggy, crappy mess. iOS 15 seems perfectly okay on my iPhone XR and I’m happy with it. tvOS 15 seems perfectly fine on my ATV 4K 2017 and I’m happy with it. Those are the only other 15 level OSes I have installed.

[OtinG]

BTW, if you want to downgrade iOS 15 or iPadOS 15 you better do so soon. Apple is still signing 14.8, but they stopped signing 14.7.1 a day or so ago. Traditionally they stop signing the previous update about a week after the release of the newest one. So they will likely stop signing 14.8 early next week.

I read on MacRumors that only about 58% as many users have upgrade to 15 as did for the same time period after the release of 14. Of course 14 brought a lot more goodies to the table than does 15, plus there is a lot of complaints against 15, especially the iPad version.

[JSWolf]

I'm holding off updating my iPhone to iOS 15 in case there are some gotchas. iOS 14 was a disaster at first because it caused my Apple watch to run out of battery much sooner then it should. Once that got fixed, I was OK with iOS 14.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm holding off updating my iPhone to iOS 15 in case there are some gotchas. iOS 14 was a disaster at first because it caused my Apple watch to run out of battery much sooner then it should. Once that got fixed, I was OK with iOS 14.

Smart move. So far my iPhone XR is doing okay on iOS 15, but it does seem to be draining the battery a bit faster. But that could just be paranoia on my part. At any rate, it isn't draining it fast by any means. I tend to see a bit of increase in battery drain with every new major update though, and after a while it settles down. Possibly it is just updating apps in the background.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Smart move. So far my iPhone XR is doing okay on iOS 15, but it does seem to be draining the battery a bit faster. But that could just be paranoia on my part. At any rate, it isn't draining it fast by any means. I tend to see a bit of increase in battery drain with every new major update though, and after a while it settles down. Possibly it is just updating apps in the background.

If Apple comes out with an iOS 15.0.1 or 15.1 before I've upgraded, I'll do so then for sure.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If Apple comes out with an iOS 15.0.1 or 15.1 before I've upgraded, I'll do so then for sure.

iOS 15.1 is currently in public beta, so they definitely will have an update in the near future.

ETA: Actually both iOS 15.1 and iPadOS 15.1 or now in public beta. Yep, that is 15.1, not 15.0.1. So Apple must realize they have some significant fixing to do.

[tomsem]

The latest macOS update updates Safari with new look and feel of macOS Monterey version (tab groups, new look and feel etc.). And no, they didn’t break Sidebar.

As for iOS 15 Safari, it now supports extensions, and thus Dark Mode. This was maybe my biggest annoyance with iOS Safari (and continues to be with other iOS apps that don’t support DM).

[OtinG]

I no longer have a Mac that can be upgraded beyond Big Sur. My MacBook Pro 2014 and Mac mini 2012 are too old to be supported, which is understandable.

There of course is a huge difference between Safari on a larger screen like a MacBook Pro or a monitor (which is even bigger) versus a small screen of an iPad. Even the largest iPad Pro still has a fairly small screen compared to Macs, and quite honestly only a small percentage of iPad owners even have the larger iPads. So with the greater amount of screen space, the sidebar isn't much of a problem, if any. On my MacBook Pro 15" I leave the Safari sidebar visible almost always, unless I decrease the over all size of the Safari screen to have two apps visible at once, which is rare. On the smaller iPad screens though the sidebar can make reading web pages more difficult, so it is often better to close it. Hopefully they will fix the issue of having to press multiple times to get it open and close and to re-navigate to the bookmark place you were previously. That, and the new tab layout, are getting a lot of pushback from users.

One thing that frustrates me the most about iPadOS is there isn't a true file system. On a computer or Android tablet you can copy files and move them around and the apps can read those files and locate them. That is a standard feature on every computer system and OS going back to way before I was even born, and I’m 63! But on iPadOS apps cannot usually read the locations where some files are stored. For example, create a stand-alone HTML file and place it in Files. Try to open that in Safari and it opens only in stripped down viewer. You can’t even bookmark the location in the Safari app. A few coding apps like Koder can find and open your HTML file, and display it, but FireFox and Chrome can’t see files in Files. WTF Apple, this is the simplest thing but they can’t make it work. Files is almost as useless as teats on a boar hog! There is no excuse for Apple making it nearly impossible to store PDFs, HTML, TXT, JPEG, PNG, and other commonly used types of files in a location that can be easily accessed and read by apps. Apple is purposely hamstringing iPadOS. And Apple has absolutely no concept of photos and file types. Their photo organizer app is total crap. And since you cannot actually manage it yourself via a useable file system, it too is hamstringed.

If you want entertainment then the iPadOS is great. If you want to work with standard file types within a useable file system that can work with other devices like almost all other OSes in the computer industry do, then you are basically screwed. Hell, it is difficult to even tell what the file name or type is, whether it is a JPEG or PNG, etc. What a mess...

[tomsem]

There have been some notable improvements to the Files app in iOS 15:

https://www.sidmartinbio.org/files-a...s-to-ipados-15

* progress indicator
* marque tool
* groups (like on Finder)
* NTFS support
* drag and drop

[tomsem]

BTW, I don’t have any issue with Safari sidebar on my iPad mini. The sidebar toggle remains visible in landscape, and in portrait, tapping anywhere in the browser window hides the sidebar (without activating whatever you tap on).