次に、の右下隅から上にフリックすると、 Apple Pencilまたは指で画面を表示すると、書き込みまたは描画が可能なクイックノートにアクセスできます。クイックノート自体は、正方形のフローティングウィンドウに存在するだけで、開くとポップアップします。同じウェブサイトまたはアプリをもう一度。
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I didn’t really”get”Quick Notes at first, but then I found my own reason to use them. After the World Health Organization announced new guidance for social distancing and face masks even for those who are vaccinated — based on the Delta variant of Covid-19 — I realized I needed to collect data on everything the experts were saying. So, I pulled up a Quick Note to add in links from articles pertaining to the Delta variant. Adding text to a Quick Note, with attribution, is easy. You just highlight the text on screen, and select Add to Quick Note from the pop-up, next to Share.
You can now sort by hashtags, so every note I have that has #cenaphiles in it can be found in the tags section of the navigation menu, so I can easily organize the show notes I have for my absurd podcast where we review John Cena’s movies. This is one of my favorite features in the aforementioned Bear app, and one I’m happy to see here.
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Lastly, anyone who shares documents in the Notes app now has an Activity View mode. It’s found by tapping the More button and then tapping Show Note Activity. Here, you can see who edited what part of your document when, which can be helpful when you’re trying to figure out who asked for an item on the shopping list or any other question about why your note was edited.
iPadOS 15 review: FaceTime SharePlay is pretty cool
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SharePlay in iPadOS 15, iOS 15, tvOS 15 and macOS 12 is the feature I’ve needed for the entire last year. Instead of having to hand sync remote-viewings by group countdown and talk to each other in a separate app, you’ll be able to share video and audio from select applications all within FaceTime.
When we tested it out with an episode of Ted Lasso, my colleagues watched on iPhones as I hosted the viewing on an iPad. You just start a FaceTime call, then open a supported app such as Apple TV or Disney Plus (which will be working on Day 1 this fall, but seemed to not have that feature yet), and then you’ll just start watching together. People can pause the show or song, and everyone’s stream will pause. It just works.
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Unless, that is, you’re trying to watch something on a service that only some people on your FaceTime call don’t subscribe to (not everyone wants to pay for Apple TV). Or watch a movie that has to be purchased on its own (not everyone owns Goodfellas). Those limitations are to be expected, as a kind of copy protection or digital rights management.
FaceTime now also has Apple’s Spatial Audio, provided you have supported audio equipment. So, on my AirPods Pro I heard Jordan and Phil talking from either side of the screen, which made sense as they were in grid view.
SharePlay will also work on tvOS 15, where you will start the call on your iPhone, iPad or Mac, then add the music or video service you use. Then, go to your Apple TV, open that same app and watch it sync on your TV before you remove the streaming app from your phone screen, so your phone can just do the FaceTime part of your call and you get to watch everything on your TV.
iPadOS 15 review: Figuring out Focuses
So far, I’ve not really found a need for Focuses, the new notification-adjusting statuses introduced in iPadOS 15 and all of Apple’s other OS updates this year.
I’m just used to using the”silence them all”Do Not Disturb setting, the all-or-nothing ban hammer that mutes everything. And that’s partially because of how Focuses requires you to opt-in and not opt-out of notifications from people and apps. For example, when I set up my Work Focus for when I’m trying to be the most productive me I can be, I selected my parents for who could breach the wall of notifications and my calendar and email apps for what could send me notifications.
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You, yourself, can even bypass someone else’s Focus, but you’ll know you’re doing it. When I texted my friend Caitlin, the Messages app showed her status”Caitlin has notifications silenced with Focus,”and then showed me my text was”Delivered Quietly”— while giving me an option to Notify Anyway. I did, and she told me it worked later on in the day.
Personally, I’d rather the Focus settings let you hide specific people and applications, as I don’t need Twitch alerts during the work day, but I do want to make sure people can reach me, even if they don’t always have an important reason to call.
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Apple includes an option for time sensitive notifications to come through, so you don’t miss anything super-critical. iPadOS explains this option as something to”allow apps to deliver important notifications immediately, even when you have a Focus turned on,”and it’s likely using its own AI smarts to deduce what merits interruption and what does not. I haven’t found this to make a mistake yet.
iPadOS 15 review: Privacy
One thing that’s always nice to have in the Apple ecosystem is an apparently stronger set of privacy controls than you get elsewhere. In iPadOS 15 (as well as the other platforms) you get a few new tricks to stop snoopers.
The biggest feature here is Mail Privacy Protection, which has already sent shivers up the world of newsletter makers — for its attempts to stop senders from learning if you opened messages or not. It also seeks to stop them from finding out your IP address, in case you’re worried that could be used to find your location.
Then, for those with iCloud subscriptions, you get iCloud+. No, it’s not another subscription service. It’s a set of privacy and online tools that you may or may not find great. The headlining feature is iCloud Private Relay, Apple’s online privacy tool that may sound like a VPN — but is not a VPN. This tech”relays”your data in Safari through two separate internet relays, to obscure your online activity from your ISP. It’s not a VPN because it doesn’t work with all of the data in your iPad (just Safari), and you can’t specify the region you want to appear to be connecting from — a top feature for those who want a VPN to access geo-restricted streaming services.
iPadOS 15 review: shared 2021 Apple features
As it always does, Apple’s giving iPadOS 15 a lot of features you’ll also find in macOS Monterey and iOS 15. That includes a much more detailed Apple Maps, including globe-views and the ability to pin nearby transit lines as a favorite.
The Photos app, under For You, has a section called Shared With You, that pulls in photos you’ve been sent by people in other apps over the years. It proved to be a welcome stroll down memory lane for friends’weddings and birthdays and my regrettable facial hair. Also, Live Text, that ability to select text seen in photos and copy and paste it out into other apps, is really cool.
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As seen above, you can easily grab all the ingredients out of a product and then use them however you need to. Google’s offered a similar text recognition feature in the past, in Google Lens.
Home screen notifications are also getting improved, showing the photos of people texting you and giving you the option for digests of the recently received messages — so you’re not always interrupted.
The Reminders app is getting tagging, to help you better organize your to do lists, Apple’s also adding new Memoji options, including clothing, headwear and glasses.
iPadOS 15 review: Outlook
I am pretty happy overall with iPadOS 15, and recommend that those ready to take a little risk download it today. That said, the true power of the new multitasking features will be great in the fall when everyday users get them and learn how to better split their screen. Power users probably know how to split the screen already, though they will likely enjoy some of the other new features. Plus, more apps will support SharePlay by then, which is great.
Also, between the new Keyboard Shortcuts window and the floating Quick Note window, iPadOS 15 gives hope to those who want iPadOS to grow to be more like macOS. Yes, the new iPad Pro has the M1 chip so Apple could do more on it, but the folks at Cupertino seem to be happier with gradual improvements year over year, rather than shaking everything up too fast. And I don’t hate it.
Heck, I’ve got my own wish for the iPad that didn’t come true this year. I just want some apps like voice memos to work with other apps like Skype, for podcasting on the go. Maybe, someday, that could happen. Heck, folks who want to use more than three apps at once (picture-in-picture makes four) have reason to be optimistic, as Quick Notes could open a whole new dynamic for windowed iPad apps. For now, though, I’ll say it again: iPadOS 15 looks like one of the most important iPad updates ever.
