With its 11th mobile operating system, Apple continues to add desktop functionality to the tablet version of iOS.
But instead of actually merging it with macOS, iOS 11 (now at version 11.3) builds on an already-mature foundation, with an emphasis on adding new ways to get work done on a tablet.
The phone version doesn't get quite as many new, shiny features a previous major updates, but it does get new augmented reality capabilities, a redesigned Control Center, Camera and Photos app improvements, a revamped App Store, Apple Pay in Messenger, an enhanced Siri, and the new Files app, to name a few.
iOS 11 has been honed to a fine edge, and it's never been sharper for the iPhone.
On the iPad, it feels almost experimental in the best way, with intriguing possibilities for the future.
The Seeds of Apple
Apple has been using the phrase "it just works" since the days of Steve Jobs, and that's a generally accurate description of the company's sleekly designed products.
The phrase "this is how it works" may be more accurate, though.
Instead of iOS magically meeting your needs before you have them ("it just works"), iOS presents a few basic principles that dictate the entire iPhone and iPad experience ("this is how it works").
Swipe from the middle to search, swipe from the top for notifications.
Tap to on the app to open it.
Change your Wi-Fi network from the Settings app.
Some of these fundamentals date back to the release of the first iPhone, having been iterated and added to in the intervening decade.
Apple has always been methodical with its software releases, introducing gradual changes and no doubt following some hidden map of the future.
This is particularly true of iOS, whose last major visual upgrade happened all the way back in 2013, when Apple ditched skeuomorphism in favor of a flattened, bolder look for the operating system.
iOS 11 is very much in line with that tradition, adding a few visual tweaks and a handful of new features.
It's familiar, and most people will know where everything is.
One of those gradual changes has been the slow evolution of iOS for iPad as a separate but related species to iOS for iPhone (and the iPod Touch, sort of).
Previous versions of iOS began including a few additional features that took advantage of the iPad's increased screen real estate, like picture-in-picture and split-screen dual apps.
Although many of the new features in iOS 11 are coming to Apple screens of all sizes, many seem intended to bring the iPad and, specifically, the iPad Pro ( at Amazon) , closer to the level of a full-fledged laptop replacement.
But after spending time using iOS 11 on the largest, most powerful iPad currently available, our verdict is that it delivers an experience unlike either a laptop or mobile device.
And maybe that's okay.
Apple certainly likes game-changing, courageous moments, like doing away with physical media or the headphone jack.
What's happening on iPad seems more experimental, and we're curious to see how it shakes out as more people try out this new experience.
Can Your Device Run iOS 11?
An over-the-air update to iOS 11 (and its updates) is available for most current iOS devices, and many older ones, too.
If you're looking to get iOS 11, you'll need a 6th generation iPod Touch, an iPhone 5s or newer, or an iPhone SE if you're not into big phones.
As of this writing, all sizes and versions of the iPad Pro can run iOS 11, along with the iPad Air and Air 2.
iPad Minis as far back as the Mini 2 and fifth-generation iPads are also getting the new OS.
We tested iOS 11 on both a 12.9-inch iPad Pro and an iPhone 7 Plus.
Apple has always done a great job with quickly getting its latest mobile operating systems to the masses—far better than Android, with its fragmentation woes.
While this accommodation of past hardware is commendable, there's a hitch when it comes to compatibility for older iPhone apps and iPad apps.
With the move to 64-bit only support, iOS 11 rings the death knell for many older apps.
If you're concerned that you'll lose functionality of an app, you can go to SettingsGeneralApplications before performing the upgrade to see which won't work.
If you check there after upgrading, you'll see the list of defunct, useless apps; those with new versions on the App Store appear first.
As for the rest, you're encouraged to contact the developers to convince them into updating their apps.
After upgrading to iOS, Michael found a dozen defunct apps on his iPhone, to which he had to sadly bid adieu.
Among those is the once-sensational Flappy Bird, which will reportedly not be upgraded to iOS.
Fly away, sweet friend.
In general, we found that iOS 11 felt smoother than previous versions.
Apps spring open.
Objects slide naturally across the screen with a flick.
But it's not all buttery smoothness.
There are many anecdotal reports of phones and apps crashing more often after upgrading to iOS 11.
That said, we didn't have those experiences in our testing.
The Latest Upgrades
Apple has a well-deserved reputation for fast adoption and frequent operating system updates.
The first major release for this version, iOS 11.1, for example, included a fix for the much-discussed KRACK problem.
This is a series of vulnerabilities that could have allowed an attacker to breach the encryption on Wi-Fi networks.
The security component of iOS 11.1 was important, but more people probably noticed the 70-plus new emoji.
These include a genie, a giraffe, and a vomiting face.
But none of that matters because two dinosaurs have joined the veritable Noah's Ark of animal emoji.
Truly, a great day for iPhone users.
Meanwhile, 11.2 saw the introduction of a new system for sending money between individuals.
Called Apple Pay Cash, it's built directly into in Apple's excellent Messages app.
We cover this, and other updates, in greater depth later.
The most recent major release is iOS 11.3, which brings a series of across-the-board tweaks to Apple's mobile operating system.
More Animoji are great, and the improvements to ARKit demonstrate how fast Apple is working to improve this technology, but the biggest change to 11.3 is all about batteries.
With this release, owners of iPhone 6 and later devices get more information about battery performance and alerts when it's time for their battery to be serviced.
Users can also toggle off a feature Apple introduced in iOS 10.2.1 that, in the company's words, "dynamically manages maximum performance to prevent unexpected shutdowns." In practical experience, this feature has been blamed for making it seem as if older phones ran down their batteries much faster than newer ones.
We had no trouble finding the new information about our battery's health, but struggled to find the settings that would disable Apple's performance controls.
Your mileage while fiddling with this specific setting may vary.
Apple has continued to push out system updates at a steady tempo.
If you're keen to get in on the leading edge of Apple's releases, signing up for the iOS Beta program is a snap.
Best of all, your Beta updates are delivered over-the-air, without any confusing fiddling with settings.
Productivity Prowess
Perhaps the biggest visual change iOS 11 brings to the iPad is the improved Dock, which is also key to the tablet's new productivity powers.
A Dock-like thing has always existed in iOS, and it harkens back to the very early days of OS X and even earlier with the Apple Launcher in OS 7, and the venerable Control Strip.
In the iPad version of iOS 11, the Dock not only stores your favorite apps, but it also shortcuts to apps that are currently in use.
This is similar to the Taskbar in Windows 10.
Most importantly, you can swipe up from anywhere in the OS to summon the Dock.
As in macOS, the iPad's Dock resizes as you add or remove apps from it.
It also displays opportunities to interact with apps on other Apple devices, via Continuity.
The company recently introduced split-screen multitasking to the iPad, which lets you run two apps side by side.
With iOS 11, you can still run apps side-by-side, but a new feature called Slide Over lets you drag an app out of the Dock to place it over another app in a sidebar, which you can then snap to a resizable side-by-side window.
Unlike split screen apps, Slide Over apps share the focus.
Both are still in use and accessible, making it a breeze to move back and forth.
Tap the top to slide the app to the left or right side of the screen, and flick it up to move it out of the way.
You can also tap and drag the Slide Over app to the edge and move it into a split-screen view, similar to Windows 10's Snap Assist feature.
Slide Over takes some getting used to, but it makes some remarkable workflows possible using this combination of Slide Over and split-screen.
It felt similar to working on a laptop in our testing, but with the focused feeling that comes with using mobile apps.
And iOS 11 keeps Slide Over apps always within easy reach, thanks to the Dock.
Drag-and-Drop Functionality
You can easily move text and files from one app to another with the new drag-and-drop functionality in iOS 11.
This might not sound like a stop-the-presses type of feature since Apple popularized the concept in its early desktop GUIs, but it's a rarity on mobile devices.
Even on Android, Google has only implemented a kind of drag-and-drop to select multiple items in its Google Photos app and nowhere else.
Drag-and-drop works as you'd expect in iOS 11.
Tap and hold a file or text, and it will stick to your finger.
You can then drag the item elsewhere: to another app, a text field, or an app icon in the Dock.
Lift your finger to release it and open it in the app or see it pasted in the text field.
There are some unique twists to drag and drop in iOS 11.
For one thing, you can add multiple items by tapping them with another finger without lifting your first finger.
It's a subtle but very smart and unique-feeling way of using multi-touch that works with either one or two hands.
You might expect drag-and-drop to work with text and photos, but you can also tap an iMessage balloon and move it onto the Maps app to start a search, for instance.
Another example: Layers of a mobile Photoshop project can be grouped and moved in the Photoshop Mix iOS app.
Though drag-and-drop is implemented throughout iOS, not everything can be dragged and not every place accepts a drop.
The onus seems to be on the developers to make their apps accept dropped images, text, and so on.
The challenge to the user is going to be recognizing the new places to try this feature and finding out where it works.
Windows 10 tablets, such as the Surface Pro, offer a full desktop or laptop experience and have had this functionality for a while, for any file type.
The New Files App
One of the most critical productivity improvements in iOS 11 is the new Files app.
As the name implies, it's a file-picker app for iOS, and it graces both iPhone and iPad.
This is the first time that iOS has given users access to files on their devices in this manner, and it's a watershed moment for that reason alone.
You can move files, create folders, and even create nested folder structures.
Alternatively, you can use color-coded tags and rely on the integrated search function to find your files.
Files has sections down the side for Favorite folders, Tags (like those in macOS), and Locations, including local device storage and iCloud Drive.
Keep in mind that, by default, macOS includes iCloud Drive as a top-level folder location.
This effectively bridges your iOS and macOS devices through Apple's syncing services.
If you're not down with iCloud Drive, the Files app also supports third-party cloud storage services, including Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Adobe Creative Cloud, among others.
Note that Files doesn't let you see every file on your device—the app or cloud service needs to enable viewing of appropriate files.
So forget about looking at system or program code, for example.
With Slide Over, drag-and-drop, an enhanced Dock, and the Files app, the iPad iOS 11 work experience is dramatically improved.
Finding and accessing assets for, say, an illustration, is easy, and moving them into an editing app is a breeze.
The iPad Pro was already a remarkable creativity device with the Apple Pencil, and iOS 11 brings a familiar, yet novel, experience that meshes the experience of a drawing tablet, a laptop, and a mobile tablet.
Whether that experience justifies the comparably high price of Apple's Pro tablets is another issue, especially with the burgeoning market for convertible and 2-in-1 devices.
Worth a Thousand Words
In the Photos app, Live Photos (which are really just 3-second videos) get some nifty new effect possibilities—Loop, Bounce, and Long Exposure.
The first repeats the short, 90-frame video endlessly in a Vine-like fashion.
Bounce may be the most fun effect, repeatedly reversing and forwarding the motion.
And Long Exposure is great for things like fireworks, waterfalls, or moving traffic.
You can now scrub through the mini-video to choose which frame appears as the still version of a Live Photo, and you can trim the beginning and end off the short videos.
The Camera app also sees some subtle improvements to picture taking, but the surprise addition of automatic QR code identification is most welcome.
Behind the scenes is iOS 11's adoption of the more efficient HEIF and HEVC formats for photos and videos.
These can save you storage space to the tune of 50 percent, but note that only the iPhone 7 and later or 2017 iPad Pros can record in these formats.
There isn't yet much of a software and service ecosystem to support HEIF, but we expect the clout of Apple will push it forward.
The new Portrait Lighting options in iOS 11 only work with the iPhone 8 Plus ($294.99 at Amazon) and the iPhone X models, and at launch, they're still designated as "beta." They join an improved standard Portrait Mode, which uses those phones' "telephoto" lens and software magic to create a bokeh effect.
There are two of these examples of computational photography wizardry in addition to the basic Natural Lighting setting: Stage Lighting and Contour Lighting.
The first is most impressive, removing the background and replacing it with black.
The other two identify facial features and switch up lighting for more evenness in the case of Natural, and more vignette around the face in the case of Contour.
Apple has made the quality...
