What iOS4.2 means to Apple iPad owners
It has been a seriously long wait for the millions of people who purchased Apple’s tablet computer since it’s introduction, but Friday looks like the day when iPad finally users catch up to iPhone owners.
When iOS4 was introduced many months ago, the iPhone immediately got a lot of new features, especially multi-tasking. The iPad, the darling of the tech media, was left out of many of those new features. One can imagine the feelings of the people that had paid quite a lot of money for a shiny new iPad and then had to watch as iPhone owners could do things that they could not with the very same operating system. That certainly qualifies as an annoyance, and may be well into categories less positive than that for many people.
It now appears that the annoyance of iPad owners will come to an end on Friday, when a CNET story says that Apple will release iOS4.2, a virtual icon in the world of “Better late than never.” Now, all those iPad owners will stop being second-class citizens in the world of Apple and become able to enjoy all of the privileges and benefits of living within Steve Jobs’ walled garden. Plus, they will finally have the device they thought they were paying for much earlier.
Friday, iOS4 will bring multitasking to the iPad, finally ushering the iPad into the era of the modern consumer computing device. It will also add a number of other features to the iPad, such as folders in which to organize apps, access to the Apple Game Center, a new method to control the display brightness of the app users are working with, the newly calibrated signal bars that came to the iPhone as a result of Antenna-gate, and a new use for the slider that currently locks the display in either portrait or landscape mode and will now be a mute button, something that is probably a mixed blessing.
Mixed blessings or not, iPad owners will almost certainly be happy to see the arrival of iOS4.2 and feel the same love that Apple has been giving to iPhone owners for several months. With relative parity achieved between the two devices on the same operating system, all Apple mobile device users can now walk happily into the sunset together.
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November 11th, 2010
Good article. But what about printing?
November 11th, 2010
Oops. Yes, that’s there, too.
November 11th, 2010
i read alot news these days. They said it would be tues, wed, thurs and now is friday? haizzz….
November 12th, 2010
The only thing about iOS 4.2 I will really really hate is that the physical lock switch is now a mute button. Double tapping on the home button, then sliding over and pressing the softkey is just not as convinient as a little switch. I’ll miss the days when I’d lock and unlock my iPad all the time, just because I loved that sound the switch made “click” … well I guess i’ll have tu shut up my iPad now instead of locking its screen but I really hope Apple will change this back.
SAVE THE SCREEN LOCK SWITCH NOW!! xD
November 12th, 2010
Rumours are out that the IOS4.2 release will be delayed for weeks due to a wifi issue
November 12th, 2010
Is it the wifi issue specifically related to the Verizon Actiontec router?
November 16th, 2010
I don’t know why Apple don’t at least allow the function of the side switch to be user configurable in Settings. If you need to mute the device, just hold the down volume button and it mutes, so the change is probably not really necessary, other than to bring it into line with the functionality of the iPhone.
November 19th, 2010
Overall, its a nice update.