With iOS 9, Apple’s taken that broken metaphor and embraced it. Your fingers tap the screen down there, on the keyboard, and your text appears up there at the blinking insertion point. Tapping virtual keys is a more efficient way to enter text than having us draw every letter with our fingertips, but it adds a level of remove to the iOS interface.

This metaphor breaks down a bit with keyboards, though. It doesn’t use cursors pushed by pointing devices as its metaphor, but rather direct interaction on objects via your fingers. iOS is not a desktop computer operating system. But having a systemwide approach to shortcuts will make these features much more common across all apps.īut the most surprising iPad announcement is the appearance of an I-beam cursor. Third-party apps can customize the shortcut bar to make it relevant for their own functions.Ī lot of text-editing apps on the iPad have hacked in extra rows of controls above the keyboard, and undoubtedly those apps have implemented some features that just won’t be possible in Apple’s modifications to the Shortcut Bar. Apple has extended the Shortcut Bar (which can optionally appear right above the keyboard and offer typing suggestions) to be a toolbar as well, with icons for cut, copy, and paste, font stylings, and more.

Users of the iPad’s software keyboard-and that’s pretty much all of us-will see even more improvements. Today, switching between apps on the iPad while you’re using a keyboard is unwieldy and distracting. Every time you have to pick your hands up from the keyboard and tap the iPad screen or click the home button, you’ve broken your concentration and slowed down your work. These features might seem small if you’ve never tried to use an external keyboard with an iPad, but they can be huge. And yet, that’s what happened Monday: iOS 9 adds support to help external keyboard users discover keyboard shortcuts, lets keyboard users search in Spotlight, and has built a command-tab keyboard app switcher that’s a dead ringer for the one in OS X into iOS. I don’t know what odds I would’ve given for Apple to focus on external keyboard support for iPad on stage during a keynote, but they would’ve been long. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some people inside Apple would paraphrase Steve Jobs and declare, “If you see an external keyboard, you’ve blown it.” Apple has supported this on the iPad all along-even selling a keyboard dock back in the day!-but I’ve never had the sense that the company considered it a banner feature. Some people use an external keyboard with their iPad when they need to get down to business. But with iOS 9, Apple’s made some serious improvements when it comes to keyboards, and they will greatly benefit people who write on the iPad. Working with text on an iPad is always slower than on my Mac.

I use my iPad a lot, but when I try to use it to write or edit text, I end up getting frustrated. On Monday the iPad got some serious attention during the iOS portion of the keynote, and the news for people who love their iPads was good.

Recently iPad sales have stagnated-it’s a solid business for Apple but sales aren’t growing-and most of Apple’s iOS development choices have been understandably focused on the iPhone, with its enormous sales volumes. I’m one of those it’s-about-the-journey people, though, and in the end our memories of most Apple presentation moments fade away, leaving only the products we use every day. The WWDC 2015 Keynote was like a great book with a weak ending. Note: This story has not been updated for several years. The WWDC 2015 keynote: It’s about the journey

Ios 9 keynote