Bloomberg reports that Apple executives intend for iPadOS/iOS 18 to be an “ambitious and compelling” release. The article implies that there is a bigger software feature push because iPhone 16 won’t be very interesting. I’m not sure those two things are necessarily related, but I’m certainly ready for another big feature release OS. Its not a given that iPad receives all of the same features iPhone does. It doesn’t always make sense and even a company with Apple’s resources has to prioritize its biggest money maker (iPhone).

What kind of features would iPadOS 18 an exciting release?

• More Stage Manager improvements: Last year someone “leaked” a list of supposed Stage Manager improvements for iPadOS 17. The only item from that list that was actually included was External Webcam support, but the rest were good ideas. I’d love to see Apple using Stage Manager as the “pro mode” it was initialy rumored as and adding more advanced features to it without ruining the core iPad experience. The remaining items from that list I’d like to see (along with a couple of my own requests) are:
  • Multiple Audio/Video sources running at once
  • Audio output source settings
  • Closed lid mode
  • The ability to have more than four running apps in a Stage on an external display
  • Individual windows of an app should not count towards the Stage Manager open app limit (i.e. having four Notes windows open in a Stage should count as one app, not four, as it does today)

• Formatting disks: This is something I almost never need to use anymore in MacOS, but I’d love either a Disk Utilty app on iPadOS, or the ability for the Files app to format disks.
• Improved Portrait Multitasking: When invoking split screen in portrait orientation, apps should vertically split, top and bottom. I used to think this would look stupid, but it really makes so much sense.
• XCode for iPad: Not a iPadOS feature, the building blocks are all there, Apple just needs to pull the trigger on this…

Its unlikely we’ll see all of this in iPadOS 18, but I think additional iteration on Stage Manager is an easy win.