How to fix the multitasking UI on the iPad
I’ve been frustrated with the progression of the iPad, because it’s moving towards a computing model instead of a tablet model, and I think the form factor and interaction patterns are poorly suited for the kind of work that makes a windowed system on the Mac so successful. The dominant discussion in the Apple blogosphere at the moment is how much the multitasking UI has failed due to awkwardness and sheer unusability.
After having a bunch of discussions about it, and a review of some things I’ve written in the past — it suddenly clicked. Multitasking on the iPad is a peripheral.
I tweeted this mockup image almost a year ago:
The Touch Bar is a failed experiment on the Mac that very few people like, but I think it could add a tremendous amount to the iPad. I didn’t realize it at the time, but you could also stick the dock there, for picking and allocating apps to use for multitasking. There could also be an indicator in the Touch Bar of which app has focus. This makes total sense to me — on days when I need to use the iPad for work, I attach a keyboard cover in the morning, and for everything else, I use a regular smart cover. I’d be completely fine if multitasking mode was only enabled with the keyboard cover attached.
(Update: since I first posted this, I’ve had some discussions with people who primarily use a stylus workflow and also want multitasking. Obviously this wouldn’t work for them, and there are some other considerations to take into account. In addition to whatever affordances are required for that, I’ve also come to believe that there should be a multitasking manager app which can be used to arrange workspaces. The current system of having an app “be” in a multitasking mode or not and having it always present that way is a complete disaster.)
I would love to see much more of this kind of thing, where the base capabilities of the machine are enhanced with additional hardware. The promise of the iPad is that the interface of your task completely takes over the device, and moving multitasking to hardware seems like a natural extension of that.
