My iOS 13 Beta 2 observations are here. Quite a few notes of interest.

Upgrade experience and general feeling
- Free space went from 172 GB to 179 then to 168 GB since my upgrade to iOS 13.
- Updating from iOS 12.3.1 took 30 minutes on my 2018 iPad Pro.
- Lots of icons and home screen reorganization is required to take advantage of icon grid density.
- Applications start faster for sure and make the user experience even more enjoyable.
- Long pressing on objects or links invoke actions like 3D touch. This is a welcomed addition on the iPad.
Look and design
- Icon density on the iPad home screen is surprising at first.
- Icons definitely look different because of the use of SF Symbols. They are definitely not as sharp as they would if they were
a simple bitmaps. - On/Off switches have a different look. I like them.
- Multitasking is better but slide over is hard to get rid of. Sliding up the card is the way I do it but this is, in fact, killing the app. Still trying to figure this one out.
- Share sheets are greatly improved but they can be very slow to show up, sometimes as slow as they used to be pre-iOS 12. Not good. Filling report for this one too.
- The dark mode still buggy and third-party apps without support for it makes the experience less than enjoyable.
- I really have to rethink my widgets ordering now that they can sit on the home screen.
If you depend on Notes
- Notes.app still buggy at times, syncing not always working with macOS still on Mojave.
- In Notes.
app , we can share a folder of notes, not only a single one which can be really useful. - Drawings in notes have to be updated to a new format… iOS 12 devices won’t be able to use them after upgrading them. I hate those transition periods.
And the rest
- Google wants to use Bluetooth alert, denied! YouTube wants to use Bluetooth alert, denied. Why on earth do these apps require Bluetooth access?
- Favourites are broken in Files.app, should file a bug report. The first one I guess.
- A few display glitches on the home screen while widgets displayed. That is expected.
- Mail.app definitely feels different, better in general.
- Updating apps is not as direct as before as we lose the Updates tab. I’m not sure we way I prefer.
- The sleeper hit is Mobile Safari with desktop-class browsing experience
- I had to reboot my iPad once in order to fix instabilities.
- Taking a screenshot from the corner of the screen with the Apple Pencil is so nice. Really liking this one as I don’t need to press any buttons.
All in all, iOS 13 beta 2 is a surprisingly stable release. I’m currently updating my iPhone 7 as I’m writing this blog post. Hoping for a similar experience. Stay tuned. I’ll have more to write about the Photos app and Files Apps soon.
Leave a Reply