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

[OtinG]

I already installed iPadOS 15 on my iPad Air 2020. It seems to have gone okay, so far. Not really liking the changes to Safari though as switching between side bar and full screen now requires multiple steps. Apple and their convoluted methods! My home pages came out with widgets all over the place, so that wasn’t what I was expecting. I’ll have to reorganize them now. I wish Apple wouldn’t do stuff like that, but hey it is Apple! They should have left the Home pages the way I had them then let me decide how, or if, to rearrange everything.

I’ll probably install iPadOS 15 on my iPad mini 5 tomorrow. I wanted to keep one iThingie on 14.7.1 until the other devices are verified to be okay with 15.

I’m currently installing iOS 15 on my iPhone XR. It is taking a lot longer to install than the above.

I’m also currently installing tvOS 15 on my ATV 4K 2017, and it is taking a while also.

[OtinG]

Safari interface changes suck.

• Side bar takes multiple steps to open.
• Side bar takes multiple steps to close.

The Home page changes suck.

• Stuck with 6 x 5 icon grid again so fewer icons per page.
• Widgets don’t work like they did in 14. They make Home pages look like poop IMO.

Editing seems less accurate and more wonky than before.

Constant, and über annoying, messages rathen than offering a demo of the changes.

So far I’m not impressed at all. It looks like a bunch of forced changes I don’t care for, more steps to accomplish tasks, and nothing that actually impresses me. Very disappointed.

[ilovejedd]

Yeah, most of the changes are less efficient. I had the 15 beta installed on a backup iPad 7th gen. Not a fan so keeping my primary devices on 14.8.

[AngryD]

Software Engineers need to be beaten with reeds any time they suggest or attempt to implement any alterations to user workflow. Remember the Microsoft "ribbon" fiasco? The same deflated kumquat who suggested that nonsense was also the bright light who thought getting rid of the Start Menu in Win8 was a good idea. (MS then relegated her to "Style Coordination" which is a nice way of saying they locked her in an office and let her only pick colors.)

Safari was already a cast iron b*tch to use because it's totally unintuitive. A box with an arrow coming out of it is where I save my bookmarks? Wouldn't that be a "share" icon? Speaking of that, I saved to the wrong directory, how do I move them? Where are all the menus?

It's so bad that I use Chrome on my iPad and only use Safari for reading webcomics. That's a wonderfully well done browser, there, when the only use to which it can be put is to read comic books online.

Seriously. I am not a developer and don't have a clue what goes into software development, but once you release a user interface, leave it the f*ck alone! Every person using your software has developed a particular workflow that saves them time and energy. Making changes to that does nothing but antagonize them. You are not making anything more efficient. You are only pissing off the people who pay your bills.

Of course, Apple is always more concerned with making unnecessary changes rather than fixing crap that is broken. This allows them to pretend to be innovative when they haven't had a new idea since Jobs died.

Oh, FYI, I have an iPhone, an Apple Watch, and an iPad Mini 4. I'm not an Apple hater just 'because', but because I've had consistent problems with them.

One thing I adore about Calibre is that Kovid hasn't changed the interface at all since the day I started using it, even though I literally have a new update every time I start the software. That's the mark of a great developer. The interface is fine, and he knows it, so he's quashing bugs and adding features people actually ask for instead of ones he thinks we might want.

And that's why I support him on Patreon and won't be buying Apple again.

[OtinG]

Unfortunately Apple has a long history of turning an okay OS into flaming turd. They have really screwed up the Safari interface IMO. It takes a lot longer to surf than it used to. I’m sure they added a lot of goodies too, but adding more steps to complete tasks is just moronic. Yet they have been doing that for the past several OS updates. Apple seems to think that more features is better even if that means they have to introduce more layers of confusion within the OS.

They went full on backwards with the Home pages and widgets IMO. We are back to having fewer app icons per page like in iPadOS 13, and the widgets won’t allow pre iPadOS 14 widgets to be placed on a Home page anymore. Okay, the developer should update them, but on the other hand I liked using a few of them. Now I have to swipe right on the left side of the screen to see those older widgets. And that cool looking date and time widget was taken away.

I typed a long bit of text a while ago and then accidentally touched the screen with two fingers and the entire page disappeared! I’m also having a lot of issues with selecting text, which I also had in 14, but I was hoping they fixed that. 15 just seems like a really sloppy POS to me at this point. I might have to bite the bullet and go through the process of reinstalling iPadOS 14.8. iOS 15 is okay so far, but they didn’t change as much on the interface with it as far as I can tell, plus they give iOS 15 users the ability to switch off some of the Safari changes. I mostly use my iPhone XR for phone stuff anyway, but my iPads are used mostly for web surfing and similar activity, since they are pretty much useless at powerful computing.

I wish I had dug deeper into the iPadOS changes than I did. I only read about the changes to features and somehow missed the fact that they dinked with the interface too much.

[OtinG]

Apple tvOS 15 seems okay so far. I don’t think they added much, so that might be a good thing. I did have some brief issues with the new 2021 remote right after installing the update. However, I’ve experienced similar issues with the last few tvOS 14 updates too. The remote briefly refused to work until I restarted the ATV 4K 2017, then after a few minutes it started working. I haven’t encountered any issues other than that.

[pwalker8]

Bored engineers making changes just to be making changes is my basic take. Nothing that I've noticed so far that I find terribly useful. There just doesn't seem to be the attention to detail on the UI at Apple that there use to be, lots of little things that don't quite work 100% which they never seem to care enough about to fix. I suspect that they put a lot of focus on things that I simply don't use and I want to do a lot of things that they say "why in the world would you want to do that".

[tomsem]

No complaints from me.

The iPadOS multitasking enhancements are welcome, for me there is no particular regression, and improved efficiency when composing split views.

Widgets, schmidgets. I got rid of all the old style ones, don’t miss em. Always thought it weird how they worked before. Now it is same as iPhone, cool I guess. The new style Kindle widget is a regression from old one (only shows 1 title instead of 3) so now both are gone. Maybe some day I’ll get the Widget and Shortcuts religion.

I am still not sold on the usefulness of App Library, but that was the case when it showed up on iPhone in iOS 14. Perhaps some day I’ll wake up and understand what I have been missing.

I think the tvOS update is mostly about being able to (more persistently) pair HomePods (I wasn’t having any issues with this) and make it easier to connect certain Apple/Beats headphones. I updated both of my AppleTV 4K’s have not had a chance to test this. There’s also some Sharing permission to enable (for SharePlay I think). I couldn’t get it to enable even on device with iOS 15. Will try again later.

WatchOS 8 says ‘5 hours remaining’ to download (it was 18 at first!)

[UPDATE: now it says ‘about 13 hours remaining’. WTF?]

[tomsem]

And for iPadOS 15 there are keyboard shortcuts to ‘completely control’ Split View and Slide Over, e.g.:

https://lifehacker.com/every-ipados-...out-1847713494

[tomsem]

The default AppleTV media player has been rearranged: you can access Caption and Audio and chapter options are now part of the player controls instead of being accessed from the description panel (swipe down). Takes a little getting used to.

[tomsem]

Watch update finished, despite the dire prediction of 13 hours. The ‘Watched pot’ metaphor certainly applied here.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Bored engineers making changes just to be making changes is my basic take. Nothing that I've noticed so far that I find terribly useful. There just doesn't seem to be the attention to detail on the UI at Apple that there use to be, lots of little things that don't quite work 100% which they never seem to care enough about to fix. I suspect that they put a lot of focus on things that I simply don't use and I want to do a lot of things that they say "why in the world would you want to do that".

I totally agree.

I don’t mind the lack of new features that would be of interest, but I do mind the lack of attention to squashing long existing bugs, some I’m sure are from the dinosaur age, and the constant meddling with a decent, but underpowered, OS that typically gives us a few new features but increases the number of steps to accomplish tasks. iPadOS 15 is total rubbish. Going back to a wasted space Home page from iPadOS 13 with widgets that float all over the place and aren’t very good, and no longer being able to view older widgets or the day screen on the Home page really messes things up. And the new Safari interface that makes using multiple levels of bookmark folders nearly impossible due to the number of steps now required, well that is unforgivable. And I don’t know when Apple took away the ability to view local HTML files, but seriously, what the hell or those morons thinking. Laptop killer my backside! After 40 frigging years of buying their devices, I’m about to the point of abandoning their ecosystem lock, stock, and barrel. All they seem to care about is churning out expensive toys for entertainment.

[OtinG]

I just discovered (in another forum) that the Safari sidebar operates differently in portrait mode than in landscape mode. I immediately verified this is true.

Landscape mode sidebar

1. Press Sidebar button to open the sidebar.
2. Select Bookmarks option.
3. Select the bookmark to open (might require several presses to get through the folders to locate it).
4. Press < Back button at upper-left until the < Safari button displays (might require several presses).
5. Press < Safari button at upper-left of sidebar to return to sidebar options window.
6. Press Sidebar button at upper-left of sidebar to close sidebar.

You have to manually close the sidebar when it is opened. Once sidebar is closed in Landscape mode, you will have to drill back down to the specific bookmarks to see them again.

Portrait mode sidebar

1. Press Sidebar button to open the sidebar.
2. Select Bookmarks option.
3. Select the bookmark to open (might require several presses to get through the folders to find it.

Once you select the bookmark to display a web page, the sidebar automatically closes. If you press the Sidebar button to reopen it, it opens to your most recent location (folder) within bookmarks.

Not sure why the Apple morons didn’t use similar methods for both Portrait and Landscape modes. On small screens like iPads, even the 12”+ model, closing the sidebar is a good option since otherwise the web page might be too narrow. Looks like a simple fix, but doubt the morons will do it. Many posts state that people have complained since the beta began, but Apple totally ignored them, as usual.

[tomsem]

The difference from iOS 14, of course, is that the sidebar toggle button never went away, and now, it does as soon as you select a category. Even in Portrait, the toggle disappears so you have to either retrace breadcrumbs or rotate to landscape and back to get it to go away when you decide not to choose anything.

I would say it is pretty consistent for sidebar to remain in Landscape after selecting something, rather than hiding. Same is true of News, Music, Notes etc. They think with so much horizontal space you might want to have quick access to navigate, I guess.

This is not an issue with Keyboard, where shift+command+L toggles. You might think that should work with other apps (or at least Apple apps) with sidebars. You would be wrong. Control+Command+s is the one that works with News and Music. But it looks like they (reasonably) wanted to match macOS Safari hotkeys.

I barely use Bookmarks (or Safari sidebar generally) at all, so I would never have noticed this.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tomsem

The difference from iOS 14, of course, is that the sidebar toggle button never went away, and now, it does as soon as you select a category. Even in Portrait, the toggle disappears so you have to either retrace breadcrumbs or rotate to landscape and back to get it to go away when you decide not to choose anything.

I would say it is pretty consistent for sidebar to remain in Landscape after selecting something, rather than hiding. Same is true of News, Music, Notes etc. They think with so much horizontal space you might want to have quick access to navigate, I guess.

This is not an issue with Keyboard, where shift+command+L toggles. You might think that should work with other apps (or at least Apple apps) with sidebars. You would be wrong. Control+Command+s is the one that works with News and Music. But it looks like they (reasonably) wanted to match macOS Safari hotkeys.

I barely use Bookmarks (or Safari sidebar generally) at all, so I would never have noticed this.

It is an incredibly irritating update to more steps. Plain and simple.