I’m thinking way too much about widgets these days, thanks to iOS 14 most prominent new feature. I’m still reflecting on the possible reasons why the full widgets experience is not available on iPadOS 14. That being said, @mattbirchler this week came out with an interesting and informative video showing how Apple could possibly enable the full widgets experience. This morning, still thinking about this concept, I realized something: Apple doesn’t need to keep the today view support on the iPad in order to enable the full widgets experience.

I would argue that, in fact, Apple should get rid of the today view that came from the iPhone. One of the reason for this is how bad scrolling the today view works when you have a few widgets stacks; if you don’t pay attention on where you put your finger to scroll this view, you actually end up scrolling through the stack itself instead of scrolling the whole view. That’s not a good experience. The other reason is the iPad screen canvas makes it easy to rebuild the side view just by using the right widgets. No need to have scrolling.

I think Apple will eventually come up with an iPad-specific version of the widgets experience but not with the iPadOS 14 releases streak. And that’s too bad.

Learned something really cool today. A few weeks ago I published my review of the well known router, the Unify Dream Machine (available here). The context of this review was the fact that this new router was replacing my aging Apple AirPort. One of the reasons why I chose this device was because of its external look and finish as well as its superb management app.

One of the founder of Ubiquiti is an ex-Apple employee according to this 9to5Mac article: “an ex-Apple employee went on to found a company that currently sells enterprise networking gear. Robert Pera, the founder of Ubiquiti, Incworked for Apple in the early 2000s as a Wi-Fi engineer.”. Woah. It does explain a few things. This article is well worth your time.

It’s coming. Two days. Thanks to the soon to be updated Deliveries app. I can “see” where my order is. Can’t wait for version 9.0 launching tomorrow and see how much improved the app is. Can’t wait for my Apple Watch Series 6, coming this Thursday. Still so far from home, yet it feels so close.

Who can remember the Pinball Construction Set? If you do, or you are well documented or you are probably as old as me. Now, consider iOS 14 and the widgets feature: how long before someone comes up with something like a “Widgets Construction Set” for iOS? What I’m seeing now isn’t close enough to my taste.

We have to realize that we are only at the early stage of widgets support for iOS 14. There is a lot of untapped potential and frustrating design choices. Widgetsmith is having a moment right now but looks like a work-in-progress to me. It is a great idea but it can be tricky to configure and is not fully intuitive. There is so many more data sources the developer could add. And tell me how I would pay to get weather data in Widgetsmith while I can get it all for free with other apps. The added value of Widgetsmith lies in its configurability, not the fact that you can add weather as a source.

When iPadOS 14 beta came out, we were all quick to notice how crippled the widgets experience was compared to iOS 14. So we got frustrated. I’m still unable to get over it. Apple is holding back the iPad. Again.

In the last few days, I tried to understand the possible reasons behind this. To my surprise, it’s not easy and there could be many explanations to why the iPad widgets experience is limited to the Today view. More to come in a blog post this week.

Meanwhile, you are more than welcome to share your thoughts! I’m curious.

To get a bird’s eye view of the current Apple’s rumours landscape, check out my daily “Apple’s Upcoming Products” newsletter with all the well known leakers in one place. There is still a lot going on for the rest of 2020 and beyond. Subscribe, it’s free and time saving. You’ll thank me later. It’s the best way to spoil any upcoming Apple events. Trust me.

I wrote about that a long time ago but here it is again: Apple’s iWork suite is probably the best expression of Apple software these days. This week, the venerable suite got updated to take advantage of iOS 14’s latest features (scribble, new import photo library, etc.). Keynote got an outline mode! 😍

Carefully designed and thought out widgets are still scarce. Many developers show a lack of understanding of a widget’s purposes. Every single day, I’m baffled by the lack of flexibility on iPadOS. It’s a crime or a lack of courage, you tell me 🤦🏻‍♂️.

From an end-user perspective, managing widgets can be a frustrating experience. Apple can do better here. For example: in the screenshot below, users should be able to add a widget on an existing stack. Doing so on the home screen can mess your carefully designed arrangement pretty badly which will take careful manipulations to fix. Also, It’s hard to remember when there is a widgets stack instead of a single widget just looking at the home screen. On the iPad, scroll down the widgets will often trigger scrolling within the widgets stack instead which is frustrating.

I don’t miss the interactive version of widgets of pre-iOS 14. I have way too many home screen pages. What is the maximum, by the way? 🤔 I tend to forget about the old iOS Today View. It’s the best place to Four-by-four widgets like news. In general, this is a great version 2.0 of widgets implementation. Looking forward for improved behaviors.

I have found and adopted a few great widgets: Widgetsmith as a lot of potential, Lumy is really nice, Numerico (still in beta testing phase) is really useful Google analytics app, Pedometer is a nice one too, WaterMinder a must for me, Weather Line the best design in this category, Buddywatch a wonderful and useful app for watch face lovers like me, Streaks.