People are using iPad OS features on their iPhones

https://idevicecentral.com/ios-customization/how-to-enable-ipad-features-like-multitasking-stage-manager-on-iphone-via-mobilegestalt/

by K0IN • 8 months ago

180 174 8 months ago

idevicecentral.com

tekacs• 8 months ago

This is kinda wonderful to see - a peek into a world where we get to see the 'other side' of what would have been possible had Apple not locked our devices down beyond belief.

Jailbreak stores have never felt like a particularly strong illustration of what's possible due to their tiny user market - I'd love to see what developers would do if even for a period we could use these devices to anything remotely like their potential.

frfl8• 8 months ago

There was a comment few weeks ago - I forget the topic, maybe it was the new M-series release or something - that was talking about how freaking fast these things are. And the comment was pointing out how locked down everything is and most of that power is pretty useless - I mean sure on device "AI" and faster apps...OK I guess. I'm not the target demographic for these things anyway, so my opinions are whatever.

But really, imagine how much power these things have and if you could actually run a free (as in freedom, in the GNU sense) OS on them and really get access to all that power in a handheld device. Only if.

I have an M1, which is like N-times faster than the laptop I write this on. Yet it collects dust because I'd rather continue to use this old dinosaur laptop because that M1 macbook is a locked down, very fast, shiny Ferrari, but I just want a Honda Civic I can do whatever I want with.

LeoPanthera2• 8 months ago

But really, imagine how much power these things have and if you could actually run a free (as in freedom, in the GNU sense) OS on them and really get access to all that power in a handheld device. Only if.

Could you elaborate? What specifically would you do? Because I'm finding it hard to imagine what I'd do with an "open" iPhone that I can't do now, but it's extremely easy to imagine all the horrific security risks that would emerge in what today is most people's primary computing device, storing data about literally their entire lives.

miki123211• 8 months ago

In practice, none of the free OSes are ready for 21st century, battery-powered, energy-saving devices, especially of the kind Apple makes.

I'm pretty sure battery performance would drop significantly if root was too easy to achieve. The temptation to run "that one more background service" would be far too much for most apps, both free and otherwise.

To get good battery perf out of a device, you need to be extremely good at saying "no", even if that "no" comes at the expense of user freedom and features. Free software is usually extremely bad at this by design, although there are exceptions (Graphene OS comes to mind).

On Apple devices, core system services are written by Apple itself. That puts pressure on the software development side to care about battery perf, as that is what users want (and what increases sales). If software is written by 3rd parties with their own business goals unrelated to device sales, I'm afraid "featuritis" and lower development costs would win out over efficiency, as it usually does in such circumstances.

Nursie4• 8 months ago

M1 macbook is a locked down

Sure, iOS is certainly restrictive, fully locked-down, app store only etc etc, and I'd love a full-fat firefox with its plugin system available on my phone. But what are you doing on a non-Mac laptop that you can't do on an M1 mac?

I'm a big fan of linux and have used it as a main machine for many years, but use an M4 macbook as my daily driver at the moment (everyone else I work with does too, it's just easier). I haven't felt limited at all. I can build and install whatever I like, I have brew for my tooling needs...

Yeah I don't see it with Mac. Unless you're actually needing linux and dockerisation won't cut the mustard I guess.

maccard3• 8 months ago

But really, imagine how much power these things have and if you could actually run a free (as in freedom, in the GNU sense) OS on them and really get access to all that power in a handheld device. Only if.

Skipping the "handheld" bit of this just for a second. You can run an (almost entirely) open stack on your hardware, and do so on an i9/9800X3D with 256GB RAM, 5080, and MultiTB of NVMe storage.

But it doesn't realy matter for 95% of users, because the hardware is already way faster than they need and the bottlenecks are on the server side and on shitty software architecture. I have an i9 with 128GB RAM for work, and Excel still takes 30+ seconds to load, Teams manages to grind the entire thing to a halt on startup, slack uses enough memory to power a spaceship... Running those apps on my desktop is pretty much the same experience as running them on my 10 year old macbook.

vessenes2• 8 months ago

Curious - what do you do on your Linux (or FreeBSD natch) box that your m1 couldn’t?

ahmeneeroe-v22• 8 months ago

I recently sold my 1TB M1 Cellular iPad at a loss and picked up a 2019 Intel MacBook Pro for exactly the same reason.

I don't even need GNU-freedom, regular MacOS is fine. I just can't live with a iPadOS anymore.

edit: you can pry locked down iOS from my cold dead hands. Love it exactly because it's a walled garden.

runjake3• 8 months ago

But really, imagine how much power these things have and if you could actually run a free (as in freedom, in the GNU sense) OS on them and really get access to all that power in a handheld device. Only if.

I sort of don't have to imagine, because somewhat viable options like this exist (eg. GrapheneOS). The issue there is that I'd still rather use a more polished handheld device (iOS) than jump ship and get those extra features.

And wondering what GrapheneOS would be like with all its power, plus the polish of iOS is pointless fantasy, because it likely won't ever happen.

My guess, based on experience, is that eventually, iOS's quality will degrade enough that I'll find Android or GrapheneOS more attractive.

StopDisinfo9102• 8 months ago

That’s pretty much Google current bet. They are slowly enabling first party support for Linux app on Android while connected to a screen in a desktop mode.

It makes a lot of sense considering high end SoC are now more powerful than the M1.

einsteinx2• 8 months ago

I have an M1, which is like N-times faster than the laptop I write this on. Yet it collects dust because I'd rather continue to use this old dinosaur laptop because that M1 macbook is a locked down, very fast, shiny Ferrari, but I just want a Honda Civic I can do whatever I want with.

Your M1 has supported Linux pretty well for years now… Install the Fedora Asahi Remix and give it a try.

Fire-Dragon-DoL• 8 months ago

Missed an opportunity there to say that you can use the Ferrari only on a track, while you can go on any road with the Civic!

jajuuka• 8 months ago

I imagine we might seen some of these features in a iPhone foldable since it will have the space to take advantage of these features.

bossyTeacher• 8 months ago

Apple will probably say that it locked down the features because they could brick the phones

isoprophlex• 8 months ago

They locked it down because this way, it offers a superior experience to their revenue streams

carstenhag• 8 months ago

On Android you can use split screen apps. Either some apps are broken (including some I was part of writing...) or it's really annoying to put in text when both apps are open. It's really just useless almost alway

hagbard_c• 8 months ago

...except when it is really handy to have so why lock it down? I use it quite often on a 6” screen - small by 'modern' standards - and would not want to see our disappear 'to protect me' or for some other bullshit reason. This, b.t.w., is one of the many reasons why I vastly prefer Android-as-it-was over anything from the fruit factory and probably also over Android-as-it-will-become. I don't want my hands to be held by some vendor who thinks I'm too stupid to cope with some complexity to achieve my goals and would rather I buy yet another overpriced trinket from them.

It is my feet and my gun and it is up to me if I want to risk shooting the former with the latter.

makeitdouble• 8 months ago

I end up using it a lot.

I'm always fascinated at the threshold where people will decide something just won't happen ("useless") because it's not comfortable enough.

I'm more in the camp of pushing the limits as far as technically possible if it means I'm neither walking around with a 13" screen at all time nor need to be home to be able to look at two things at the same time.

So I'll be fine with readjusting a bit the window to input text if it means I can do the thing now instead of 6 hours later. At least I don't want Google to kill the feature just because it requires working around some quirks.

jeroenhd2• 8 months ago

Some apps are buggy on iOS without split screen mode enabled, too.

I rarely use split screen mode on my Android phone but I am rather annoyed when I'm on iOS and I can't keep two apps open at the same time.

Some vendors do a much better job than others, though. Google in particular doesn't seem to offer more than the bare basics.

LeoPanthera2• 8 months ago

I have an 11" iPad and the screen still feels too small to use windowed apps. It gets very cramped very quickly.

I can't imagine trying to do that on an iPhone. Surely it's useless.

What this does do is reveal the fiction that "iPadOS" and "iOS" are separate. Clearly not.

rock_artist• 8 months ago

It might not be super practical on the device display. But with external display and keyboard/mouse this becomes much more usable.

650REDHAIR• 8 months ago

Honestly a dex competitor would really help keep me in the Apple ecosystem.

jen729w• 8 months ago

Naked robotic core.

rado• 8 months ago

Yes, on 13" it's just about right

alentred• 8 months ago

Ha, curious how preferences vary from a person to person. Even on my MacBook Air I am using apps in full-screen almost all the time. About the only time I drag windows around is when I need Finder (preview, drop a file, etc.), or when I plug an external 24" display :D

Razengan• 8 months ago

I can't imagine trying to do that on an iPhone. Surely it's useless.

When there's a will you'll be glad there's a way.

People used to make do with "tiny" screens throughout the 1980s and 1990s: Bigger displays sure but smaller resolutions Han the iPhone. Doom came out in 320x200 ffs

When traveling I've had to do all sorts of tricks to use various services while away from home. Like my bank app which set an OTP to email or SMS, but if you swiped out of the app to go check the message, it would generate a new OTP when you switched back to the bank app. So I had to check my mail/messages on the minuscule Apple Watch screen. And that was the only time I ever used email on the Watch but I was infinitely glad that it had that option.

tecoholic• 8 months ago

Exactly. I remember a post shared here a while ago, someone with just an Android phone developed some really cool Neovim plugin that became popular enough that people were pitching in to buy him a laptop.

tombert• 8 months ago

I did an awful lot with my GPD Win 2, which was running vanilla desktop Ubuntu. The tiny display did require a bit of getting used to, but it was a lot of fun to have a tiny little thing that could fit in my pocket that I could write code while on the train.

Screen isn't much bigger than an iPhone Pro Max, if at all, but I was able to adapt to the desktop GUIs without much trouble.

Someone• 8 months ago

What this does do is reveal the fiction that "iPadOS" and "iOS" are separate. Clearly not.

Technically, I don’t think anybody ever claimed they were 100% distinct. Apple, for instance, says (https://developer.apple.com/ipados/get-started/): “Powered by the iOS SDK, your iPadOS apps”, and they’ve touted the ability to build apps that ru on both iPhone and iPad.

marketing-wise, they clearly are separate, in the same sense as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_platform: “A car platform is a shared set of common design, engineering, and production efforts, as well as major components, over a number of outwardly distinct models and even types of cars, often from different, but somewhat related, marques.”

The only difference is that here, Apple apparently ships all or major parts of the special parts for the iPad on iOS, too. Maybe they also do that vice versa? Can you enable the calculator app on iPad with this method?

eptcyka• 8 months ago

They call it a different name. They want you to think those are two distinct things. They barely are. It's all to ensure that the EU doesn't get it's grabby fingers onto iPads too, as they don't have a big enough market to be forced to open up the app store. Please don't labor for free to improve the PR of a billion dollar company :)

ChocolateGod• 8 months ago

Yet somehow some "tech journalists" are branding this as "how to flash iPadOS onto an iPhone". As you said, it's obvious that both iOS and iPadOS are compiled from the same source tree with different features levels enabled. The difference is purely marketing.

asdff• 8 months ago

I used to use the old old form factor iphones with a jailbroken tweak that would split the screen. It was surprisingly useful even just having those maybe two inches a piece. I could type while referencing something else.

asadm2• 8 months ago

Looking at the video, I can see why this was locked down. I wouldn't hand my mother that kind of complex UI.

crooked-v• 8 months ago

What's really missing here is the mode where you plug the iPhone into a monitor, connect keyboard and mouse, and suddenly it's a functional desktop-lite in the same way that a basic iPad now is.

asadm2• 8 months ago

Android has it and I love it!

nicoburns3• 8 months ago

What's missing is the mode where you plug it in and it's a full desktop running macOS.

amomchilov• 8 months ago

Are you suggesting that the test for whether they should “allow” a feature is whether your mom can figure it out?

Why?

ChrisMarshallNY4• 8 months ago

This is not exactly something that any old schlub will be doing.

I don’t find many of these features useful on my iPad (to be fair, my Mini is my daily iPad), let alone, my iPhone. I can’t see myself doing all that work, for features I don’t want to use.

sroussey• 8 months ago

The Medusa stuff is new and yeah, it’s in iOS as it’s the basis for the foldable.

ichicoro• 8 months ago

Got a link with more info about the Medusa stuff? The OP is down currently...

znpy2• 8 months ago

I wonder if i could di the opposite: make an iPad believe it’s an iPhone. I don’t see no reason why i couldn’t use my iPad’s built-in modem to make and receive calls. I mean, i could just bring my ipad and my airpods around and be done.

halapro• 8 months ago

An iPhone for $399? Preposterous

trvz2• 8 months ago

iPadOS 26 brings the Phone app to iPad, so you can do exactly that now.

znpy2• 8 months ago

That still requires an iPhone to be around though. Basically extra hardware that shouldn't be needed.

So that's still BS.

kotaKat• 8 months ago

Long, long ago there were some jailbreak hacks to pull this off. It was some funky mess with swapping modem firmware and pulling in the iOS dialer, if I recall.

Closest thing you can get now is that they finally brought the dialer app to the iPad... I can sort of make calls now through my cellular iPad using my iPhone's voice account with the "wifi calling on other devices" feature.

badc0ffee• 8 months ago

Assuming you're talking about the cellular modem - wouldn't you need to have a voice plan and a phone number, not just a data plan like you'd typically get for a tablet?

rcarmo2• 8 months ago

This would be a great thing to use with an external display when traveling, but of course it will never happen.

trvz2• 8 months ago

You can already use an iPhone a desktop computer, just not well: keyboards work fine, with AssistiveTouch you can get a pointer for your mouse, and by connecting iPhone to an external display it mirrors its display. Sadly, that includes the orientation and resolution.

I've been hoping Apple will get eventually around to work this out, and the article shows it'd be easier than anticipated. I think it'll happen eventually.

As for travelling specifically, it'd be easier to bring a MacBook than to bring a mouse and keyboard and portable display. The display could be replaced by a TV in your acommodation, but it's rare to be able to use that ergonomically.

It'd be instead quite interesting in general for people who already only use little more than the browser.

rcarmo2• 8 months ago

Actually, I use my iPhone with a Remote Desktop app and a Bluetooth keyboard fairly often (as long as I remember to take my HDMI adapter when traveling). It’s perfectly usable for checking your corporate email in a hotel in a pinch, (it gives me a full widescreen desktop) although that has to be coded into the app (Blink Shell does the same thing).

Gigachad• 8 months ago

Linked site is unusable. Screen is completely covered in ads.

bdcravens• 8 months ago

If your browser supports reader mode, it becomes tolerable.

schappim• 8 months ago

It was completely unusable on an iOS device with slightly increased text size.

AbuAssar• 8 months ago

So iOS and iPadOS are the same thing…

hollow-moe• 8 months ago

There's no way they would blatantly lie to the EU to avoid having the ipad marked as gatekeeper by adding it to the numbers of the iphone

jeroenhd2• 8 months ago

Wasn't that always obvious? Surely nobody actually believed Apple built an entirely separate OS for their slightly-larger iPods?

Philpax2• 8 months ago

I'm sure we all assumed that they came from the same codebase, but I don't think any of us were expecting the features to be shipped to both platforms and disabled at runtime as required. I expected a common codebase with the iPadOS features disabled at compiletime for iOS, and vice versa.

singularity2001• 8 months ago

I wish there was a way to get rid of this new features on the iPad. Getting a split screen now feels incredibly clumsy compared to before

Ezhik3• 8 months ago

Can this be used to enable multiple display support on iPhones/non-pro iPads? Would be pretty damn cool if so.

brookst• 8 months ago

I think the hardware is t there in A-series chips. But not positive.

Ezhik3• 8 months ago

Has to be software, given that the non-Pro iPads can mirror the internal display or play video full screen.

Ezhik3• 8 months ago

Update - YES. Misaka26, enabling Stage Manager through it enables external display support on my non-pro iPad.

bradgessler2• 8 months ago

I want macOS on my iPad Pro so I can plug my Moonlander keyboard into it and have a “laptop” that doesn’t destroy my wrists.

eddieroger• 8 months ago

You can have that today. If you get a USB-C breakout for the dock, it'll treat the Moonlander, or any keyboard, like a normal keyboard. You can not destroy your wrists right now, as I sometimes choose to do.

swores• 8 months ago

I’m pretty sure they are saying they want both that keyboard plugged in and MacOS rather than the limited iPadOS; not that they think MacOS is required to be able to plug a keyboard in.

NaOH• 8 months ago

Actual title: How to Enable iPad Features like MultiTasking & Stage Manager on iPhone via MobileGestalt

throw0101c3• 8 months ago

I wish the iPad went back to being more iOS-like: something like multiple Safari windows, each with their own collection of tabs, is something I wish I could disable (both for myself, and for some of the seniors I'm tech support for).

I have iDevices because I want simplicity and single-task-ness; I have Macs for multi-tasking.

If Apple needs to satisfy both single- and multi-tasking iDevices users, there should be some kind of mode toggle.

gyomu• 8 months ago

Turn off windowed apps on your iPad

https://support.apple.com/en-us/123635

throw0101c3• 8 months ago

https://support.apple.com/en-us/123635

TIL.

runjake3• 8 months ago

You can disable or not use these features.

Like gyomu said below, iPadOS Windows Apps is optional and opt-in. The default is full screen:

https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/work-with-multiple-wind...

Select "Full Screen Apps".

And you do not have to use Tab Groups.

iPad User Guide link: https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/organize-your-tabs-with...

Unsarcastically speaking, I've been using these OSes for 2 decades plus but I still read through each OS's respective User Guides and still learn a ton every release.

iPad User Guide: https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/welcome/ipados

iPhone User Guide: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/welcome/ios

Mac User Guide: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/welcome/mac

mark_l_watson2• 8 months ago

Isn’t your mode toggle just turning StageManager in or off?

timeon3• 8 months ago

This site, among other things, wants to: "Create profiles for personalised advertising ( 644 partners included )".

644? Isn't that creepy?

nottorp• 8 months ago

Sad but unrelated:

There seems to be something wrong with the Cloudflare server that's supposed to serve me (Bucharest, they say).

I was trying to take a break and read something on HN. Clicked on 4 sort of interesting headlines, 3 got me the Cloudflare error (including this one) and one sort of loaded some navigation bar without CSS and content.

Cloudflare offers a great service... until it breaks half the internet.

htk• 8 months ago

I'm on the same boat. Several links on HN are not opening.

People are using iPad OS features on their iPhones

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