More like a laptop than ever

When I reviewed the third-generation iPad a year and change ago, I half-jokingly wrote this:

“I know there’s zero chance of Apple listening to me, but I have to try. Hey, guys, can you please figure out how to make a trackpad work on this thing? I work in text all day, and it would make my life so much easier.”

Well, about that. After introducing support for mice and trackpads as a somewhat limited accessibility feature last year, Apple embraced them more fully in the new iPadOS 13.4 update. Once that’s installed, every iPad that runs iPadOS — even non-Pro models — can benefit from this expanded flexibility.

That new, $300 Magic Keyboard with its integrated trackpad won’t be available for another month and a half at the least, and in the meantime, there’s nothing else quite like it to use instead. (For the record, Logitech recently showed off cases with keyboards and built-in trackpads, but those aren’t meant for the 11-inch or 12.9-inch iPad Pro.) This means that, to get the most out of this new software, you’ll have to use something like Apple’s Magic Trackpad, and I’m hardly thrilled at the idea of carrying one around for when I need to be productive. Then again, I guess I’m not going anywhere soon: Everyone in New York has compelled by the state government to stay at home to help contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. That means no meetings or briefings where I need to quickly jot down notes, no idle writing sessions at local coffee shops. But I digress.

After using this new version of iPadOS, it’s clear Apple has done something pretty remarkable here: It made trackpad support feel natural. Getting started is easy: Turn on the trackpad, connect to it from the iPad’s settings and, uh, that’s it. It’s not quite Apple Pencil-easy, but it’s close. Once that’s done, you can fiddle in the settings menu with the cursor speed, scroll direction and tap-to-click.

The best thing about the experience is that it works almost exactly the way you’d expect it to. You move your finger around, click things and they respond. That may sound basic, but the sheer efficiency over reaching up to touch the screen is tremendous. And as you whip that tiny, circular cursor around the screen, you’ll see it change shape: It’ll become a classic I-bar when you hover over text, making it much easier to select exactly what you need. And when you get close to one of iPadOS’s interface elements, like the back buttons or the Control Center shortcut, the cursor sort of latches onto it. It’s a simple, elegant solution, as are the gestures.

A three-finger swipe up takes you to the home screen. A three-finger swipe to the left and right cycles you through your open apps. A two-finger tap acts as a right-click. There: You have everything you need to get going. It helps that, despite performing somewhat different tasks, all of these gestures are supported in macOS too, so I didn’t have much trouble getting comfortable. There is one gesture that continues to throw me, though. When your iPad is propped up and you want to unlock it with the trackpad, you move the cursor to the bottom of the screen and continue pushing down. It feels much different than the “Swipe up to unlock” I’m used to, and it’ll take time before my muscle memory adjusts.

I’ve mostly been thrilled with how this feature turned out, and I’m starting to think I might have to carry a Magic Trackpad around full-time after all. That doesn’t mean everything is perfectly peachy here, though. While most apps I’ve tried work fine with a trackpad, I did run into some notable hiccups. When exporting the photos for this review, for instance, I noticed that one of Lightroom’s menu options wouldn’t respond to a tap on the trackpad at all; I had to reach up to the screen instead. Honestly, it wasn’t much of an inconvenience, but I’m sure there are other apps out there with similar issues. More problematic was that Google’s suite of productivity apps — which we lean on extensively for editing around here — didn’t play well with iPadOS’s trackpad text selection.

Unfortunately, mouse support is considerably more limited. I’ve been testing this iPad with a Bluetooth mouse and a Magic Trackpad, and while the basics work much the same way, you lose access to all of those handy multitasking and navigation gestures. (I don’t have one of Apple’s touch-sensitive Magic Mice, but a few tweets suggest they don’t work with those gestures either.) Even though this update makes the iPad more flexible, it’s still a touch-first device. The difference is, now you don’t have to touch it directly.

These changes are a huge deal, if for no other reason than proving that Apple is serious about giving its users more flexibility in how they use their devices. It won’t, however, give you everything you need to give up on your trusty laptop. For that to happen, Apple would have to dramatically reshape the iPadOS experience, from rethinking window management (you can still only run two apps at a time in Split View) to making its arcane multitasking gestures a bit more obvious. Had you asked me when the last big iPad refresh happened if Apple would pour its resources into an endeavor like that, I’d have been pretty pessimistic. Now, it seems all but inevitable — I’m especially curious to see what Apple has to say about iPadOS’s new path at WWDC. Unless it gets canceled like Google I/O, that is.

“More than anything, that 0.5 mm illustrates the sheer unnecessary-ness of the five painful years that Mac fans spent smashing on unresponsive butterfly keyboards,” iFixit writes. “Knowing that Apple’s thinnest-and-lightest notebook accommodates a scissor-switch keyboard so gracefully makes us wonder what it was all for.”

The keys also lack the silicon barrier that iFixit found in a previous MacBook Pro teardown. Apple first claimed that the barrier was meant to make the keys quieter, but internal documents later revealed that they were intended to “prevent debris from entering the butterfly mechanism.” By ditching the butterfly keyboard, it looks like Apple is able to get rid of the silicon barrier, too.

As far as repairability, the biggest change iFixit found is that the trackpad cables are no longer wedged beneath the logic board, so you can remove the trackpad without removing the board. The same goes for the battery, which is under those trackpad cables. This should make repairs and battery replacements easier and faster. (The battery still sits on stretchy pull tabs.)

Overall, iFixit gave the new MacBook Air a 4 out of 10 for repairability. While that’s not exactly a winning score, it is one point more than the previous generation received.

There are other substantial improvements. You can finally share iCloud Drive folders (this was announced at WWDC last year), complete with real-time file updates. You can buy iOS and Mac apps in bundles. Third-party navigation apps now work with the CarPlay Dashboard if you’d prefer not to use Apple Maps. Mail has an updated button layout to prevent you from accidentally deleting messages. The TV app now has data saving features to save bandwidth and storage. And yes, there are new Memoji stickers in case you need to add a personal touch to your eyerolls or celebrations.

There are corresponding updates for Apple TV, Mac and Apple Watch users, although the Apple Watch update may be the highlight. It now allows in-app purchases for watch apps, and introduces both ECG support as well as irregular heart rhythm alerts in Chile, New Zealand and Turkey.

There’s no mention of CarKey and other hinted-at iOS 13.4 features, but some of those may depend on partners and hardware announcements, assuming Apple doesn’t wait until a later release. Even so, there’s plenty of substance here to justify an upgrade.

You can detach the keyboard for those times when you just want to use your iPad as a pure tablet, and there’s a holder for your first-generation Pencil if you’re a budding artist. The case doesn’t ‘float’ your iPad like Apple’s does, but there is a Surface-style kickstand to help you get the right viewing angle.

The Combo Touch won’t be available until May. It should, however, cost the same whether you’e buying for the base iPad or the iPad Air. And while $150 isn’t trivial, that’s still half of what Apple is asking — combine that with the savings on the tablet itself and you could spend hundreds less than you would on a comparable iPad Pro configuration.

Apple says it didn’t just replicate the cursor and mouse experience that you get on a Mac. Instead, the cursor is similar to the circular one that has worked as an accessibility feature since iPad OS was released last fall. It sounds like the circle will morph and change shape to highlight different user interface options as you move around the display, highlighting different UI elements as well as text to make it clear what things you can click on and manipulate. While the basic design is similar to that accessibility mouse support, the way the circular cursor transitions to work with other elements is definitely new.

The trackpad will also support plenty of gestures, including access to the control center, dock and multitasking options like Slide Over view. It’ll work with all of Apple’s built-in apps, but the company says most third-party apps will work without any change from their developers.

Naturally, the iPad’s trackpad support works with the new keyboard that Apple released along side the new iPad Pro, but external trackpads and mice will work as well. The company’s Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Trackpad 2 will work, and USB-connected third-party mice and trackpads will work as well. If you want to use a Bluetooth device, it sounds like you’re limited to Apple’s own expensive options.

For the most part, the expanded mouse support would bring the cursor features Mac users are familiar with to iOS. But the pointer may disappear automatically when mouse or trackpad activity stops, 9to5Mac reports. There may also be other Mac gestures, like tapping with two fingers to right-click.

Last month, rumors began circulating that Apple’s keyboard cover for the next-generation iPad may come with a trackpad. Those rumors suggest that iPadOS will be better at supporting mouse-style inputs. These new findings hint that both external mouse compatibility and a new trackpad-equipped iPad cover may be ready in the near future.

With the launch of iPadOS, Apple’s tablet has become more of a conventional computing device than ever. As such, it makes sense that the line between iPad Pro and laptop could become even more blurred. A rumor from The Information claims Apple is gearing up to mass produce a new keyboard accessory for the tablet line that includes a built-in trackpad, with plans to release it at the same time as an updated version of the iPad Pro later this year.

If you just can’t wait, accessory maker Brydge is one of the the third parties promising a solution. It has opened pre-orders for its wireless Pro+ keyboard that includes a a trackpad plus backlit keys and adds a very MacBook-like look to the tablet. They’re supposed to start shipping in late April, with an 11-inch version available for $200 or the 12.9-inch edition for $230. The third-party company also announced a standalone trackpad, but there’s no release date or price listed for that yet.

Don’t worry, Brydge hasn’t forgotten its iPad roots. It’s planning to ship an iPadOS Trackpad (below) that, as they name implies, is a Magic Trackpad-style device that takes advantage of iPadOS’ basic mouse support. It ships in the second quarter. And if you can’t wait that long, the previously hinted-at Brydge Pro+ trackpad-toting keyboard for the iPad Pro will be available for pre-order January 7th starting at $200 for an 11-inch variant and $230 for its 12.9-inch counterpart. The company aims to ship the first 500 pre-orders by the end of February, while everyone else will have to sit tight until the end of March.

There’s also plenty for the Mac crowd. Brydge is releasing a slew of docks in 2020, including vertical docks for the 16-inch MacBook Pro and 13-inch MacBook Air, redesigned versions of its 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro vertical docks and tethered Stone 2 and Stone Light docks for the MacBook. All of these cradles are billed as more “user-friendly” than their predecessors and should arrive in the second quarter.