iPadOS 15 upgrade on iPad Pro 1st Gen 9.7-inch... how is it?

[idaru]

I'm considering upgrading to the latest iPad, but for the most part my Pro is fine; I'm having some glitchiness which I think has to do with memory (RAM) limitations now (I keep my apps auto-updated), and upgrading to iPadOS 15 may fix everything or may cause new problems or may not fix anything.

The bigger question is: with 15's changes, is it worth it? Can you tell me how your experience has improved or gotten worse with it?

I saw some tweet thread about how Apple changed iPad's home screen orientation app layout, where portrait mode wouldn't change, but landscape would basically disorder the app icons, causing frustration. I'm not sure this is a big issue, but I do use both orientations. Are there any other issues that you've had with it?

 

[giradman]

I'm considering upgrading to the latest iPad, but for the most part my Pro is fine; I'm having some glitchiness which I think has to do with memory (RAM) limitations now (I keep my apps auto-updated), and upgrading to iPadOS 15 may fix everything or may cause new problems or may not fix anything.

The bigger question is: with 15's changes, is it worth it? Can you tell me how your experience has improved or gotten worse with it?

I saw some tweet thread about how Apple changed iPad's home screen orientation app layout, where portrait mode wouldn't change, but landscape would basically disorder the app icons, causing frustration. I'm not sure this is a big issue, but I do use both orientations. Are there any other issues that you've had with it?

Hello Idaru - welcome to the forum! Wife and I have different iPads (Mini 5 for her & 11" Pro for me) and both are on iPadOS 15.1 (your iPad should take the upgrade fine - List HERE) - take a look at this Apple Support Article which lists the 'new features' in this release. Now, I've used only a few of these updated/added features but have not experienced any major issues updating. Good luck and others will likely 'chime in' with positive and/or negative comments. Dave

 

[LannyC]

I'm sorry I updated from 14.8, which was essentially perfect. There are so many arbitrary changes in 15 that add nothing and aren't optional. Home page icons are now on a 6x5 grid, very crowded and harder to find the app you want. Wifi sometimes drops with sleep and requires reselection in Options. The text "loupe" doesn't magnify, it just gets in the way and makes cursor movement clumsy and unpredictable. Safari text is smaller and harder to read. Worst of all, 15 broke Weblock, a wonderful proxy-based ad blocker. The only possible upside to 15 is slightly easier multitasking.

I like my Pro 9.7 so much that I paid $120 to have a new battery installed. For me, it's the perfect size, and still plenty fast.

 

[idaru]

your iPad should take the upgrade fine

So far I'm reading that it doesn't improve memory handling, so it's probably not going to fix the glitches I'm having with it; also, upgrades typically cause things to use more memory, so it'll probably add glitches.

Home page icons are now on a 6x5 grid

My current homepages are already 6x5 grids, in portrait and landscape, and it keeps the apps in place on that grid either way. The issue I read about this with v15 is that the grid aspect ratio changes between orientations, so that apps don't remain in the same spots across orientations. I think this is another reason to not upgrade.

Wifi sometimes drops with sleep and requires reselection in Options

That sounds like a bug... and another reason not to upgrade.

The text "loupe" doesn't magnify

I'm not sure what you mean here, but I actually liked the magnifying glass before (it's gone on my v14 currently), and it worked intuitively. Thankfully text editing isn't too bad right now, as it seems to work more like Android, which is more intuitive to me. If the "loupe" (magnifying glass?) is back, but doesn't magnify, then I don't see the point of it. I suppose this is another reason to not upgrade.

So, I'll probably end up selling this one and buying the latest iPad, just to not have to deal with out-of-memory glitches and crashes. At least the current version's annoyances are less bad.

 

[twerppoet]

While the grid can get rather messed up when you switch between landscape and portrait, it is not as bad as it sounds. If you arrange the homescreen icons and widgets the way you like in one view, say landscape, then switch to portrait and arrange it again, the iPad remembers both views/layouts.

The grid layout is adjustable to an extent. If you choose Use Large App Icons in the Home Screen and Dock settings things work more like iPadOS 14. However, you lose consderably more screen realestate if you also use Widgets on the same screen.

The downside of Widgets is they make laying out your home screens more complicated. The upside is the information they provide, and the abiltiy to have more customized home screens.

For the most part I like the new abilities in iPadOS 15. The new multitask abilities are a big plus for me. My iPad is my primary computer. While I don’t work these days, I do a fair amount of stuff for my club and hobbies. It’s easier in 15.

The glitches, it hasn’t been the smoothest transition this year, but no show stoppers for me. Well, except how terrible the Shortcuts app was for the first few updates. It’s mostly working again, and now that it is those updates are also powerful and appriciated.

 

[idaru]

@twerppoet Thanks for the detailed info.

I'm flummoxed that Apple hasn't figured out how to keep the layout even with widgets in both orientations, especially considering the amount of screen space between each grid point sprite (icon or widget, they still line up border-wise) in either orientation.

It seems nice to be able to customize the layout in each orientation, but by default it shouldn't rearrange them upon orientation change. This just seems like low-cognizance implementation from their design team. If they could make it work with icons sensibly before, I don't know how widgets threw them off. A widget is basically an icon made up of a grid of sprites; no matter where it is, orientation shouldn't change sprite order, only the spacing needs to change. This seems like a drawing board problem.

Oh well, 90% of problems are from bad design. Maybe Apple will come to their senses. Hopefully somebody who thinks they're smart won't try to tell me why icons should re-order by default upon orientation change.

 

[scifan57]

If the home screen icons kept the same arrangement when changing from landscape to portrait orientation is would mean that in portrait orientation the arrangement of apps and widgets would only fill the top half of the screen.

 

[idaru]

If the home screen icons kept the same arrangement when changing from landscape to portrait orientation is would mean that in portrait orientation the arrangement of apps and widgets would only fill the top half of the screen.

They already keep the same arrangement on v14... what you're saying doesn't make sense.

All Apple had to do was keep doing this even with widgets.

Widgets are like icons except that their sprite can take up more than 1 icon space.

When you rotate screen, you shrink icon spacing across one axis and expand it across another. You can see how it works on a v14 iPad if it's hard to visualize.

Since widgets are merely giant icons that can take up more than 1 icon space, arrangement doesn't need to be shifted either upon orientation change; all icons including widgets remain in their arrangement, and merely axis spacing is shrunk/expanded... I've seen Android do it for icons+widgets for almost a decade. I don't know why this is so hard to visualize for some people, especially Apple.

 

[scifan57]

That’s not what happens when I rotate my iPad from landscape to portrait. Icon spacing does not change when rotating from portrait to landscape modes and it’s never happened that way on any iPad I’ve ever owned on any version of iPadOS from 4 to 15.
It may happen that way on Android devices but I don’t see such a system coming to the iPad anytime soon.

 

[scifan57]

 

[idaru]

That’s not what happens when I rotate my iPad from landscape to portrait

That's odd because it does keep my arrangement upon rotation of my iPad Pro 1st Gen iOS (iPadOS?) 14.

Thankfully Android has always been smart about it, and Apple previously was at some point smart about it.

Unfortunately Apple now and some of its fanboys don't understand how it could be smart.