iOS 11 preview: The iPad Pro is in for a huge upgrade

iOS 11 preview: The iPad Pro is in for a huge upgrade

Apple's iPad isn't getting the same kind of love from consumers it enjoyed in its early days.

Perhaps that's a why Apple is now lavishing it with so much attention.

iOS 11, which enters public beta today, is a love letter to the tablet, giving it the kind of radical makeover no longer possible (or at least expected) through hardware redesign.

I've owned an iPad since the very first model, used every iteration since, including the more powerful iPad Pros, and run every iOS on them since iOS 5. Nothing, however, prepared me for iOS 11 on an iPad Pro 10.5.

PHOTO: Mashable

On the one hand, iOS 11 unleashes the power too often hidden inside the iPad. On the other, it nudges the tablet platform hard in the direction of macOS.

iOS 11 is by no means the same as that desktop and laptop platform, but it clearly occupies more of the middle ground between a hyper-modal touch-only interface and the mouse-driven, multitasking power of macOS.

Here's what I learned from using iOS 11 on the new iPad Pro. Keep in mind this is still beta software.

It's buggy, and features could take different form or disappear altogether before the official release in the fall.

A moving dock

iOS 11 is also the first time that, in a single upgrade cycle, the mobile platform works differently on Apple's mobile devices.

Apple's new divergence is nowhere more evident than on the redesigned Dock.

The Dock - the row of apps that are "permanently" on the bottom of the screen - is no longer a fixed element that only appears as part of the home screen.

I mean, it's still on that screen, but now it's a wide, app-height floating rectangle, and you can fill it with up to 12 app icons.

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