When Apple announced iOS 11 on June 5, 2017 at their Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose, California, they made a bold promise through it: iOS 11 will turn all the iPads that support it into miniature laptops. Now that iOS 11 is at its fourth beta version and is almost ready to hit devices across the world, we can finally say whether or not Apple’s promise holds up. Spoiler alert: it totally does. But keeping reading to find out exactly how and why that is.
iOS 11 Feels More Like macOS
If you’ve had an iPad for a while now, there’s a good chance that you’ve already abandoned it in favor of your laptop. However, you might want to whip it out again when iOS 11 launches, because it will totally transform it. At first, running iOS 11 on an iPad can be confusing, because it doesn’t look like what you’re used to. The entire interface is changed up, which means that the way you use your tablet will also be different.
Once you turn your iPad running iOS 11 on, you will be greeted by a familiar sight: the macOS-like app dock at the bottom of the screen. Needless to say, this is something we’ve never seen on iPads before and the key element that makes them feel like Macs more than anything else. And you can use apps on your newly updated iPad in a variety of ways that will help your productivity grow. The iPad running iOS 11 is a multi-tasker’s heaven.
Your iPad will also have a proper Files app with iOS 11, complete with iCloud Drive and Dropbox support. All in all, 2017 is a good year to own an iPad. And if you pair iOS 11 with the new iPad Pro, then you’re in for a complete win.