The iPad’s iOS 4.2: An unsatisfying upgrade

All month, the blogosphere has been eagerly anticipating the release of iOS 4.2, the version that brings multitasking to the iPad and the ability to print from iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches. Released Monday after a surprise extra golden master round the previous week to deal with a last-minute Wi-Fi bug, iOS 4.2 on my iPad feels not all that different from iOS 3.2 on it. Maybe it’s an inevitable letdown after all the fuss (much of which Apple encouraged — CEO Steve Jobs is in danger of becoming the guy who cried “revolutionary” once too often), but now that iOS 4.2 is real, it feels like not such a big deal.

Yes, the app-based multitasking and support for business-class mobile management tools is critical for business adoption, but the iPhone and iPod Touch got those capabilities in July, while the iPad waited four more months. These changes are welcome but long overdue — ditto on app folders and message threading.

For business, the one new feature announced in iOS 4.2 (versus what the iPhone and iPod Touch already had in iOS 4.1) was the ability to print. When Jobs first announced this capability, he implied it would work with almost any wireless printer. It doesn’t. It works only with AirPrint-enabled printers, of which there are a small handful, including Hewlett-Packard’s ePrint series. You can’t even print using your Mac or PC as a relay to an attached printer — Apple pulled that feature from iOS 4.2 and Mac OS X 10.6.5 late in the game.

If you want to print to (almost) any wireless printer, you still need a third-party app such as the $10 PrintCentral. Such apps work, but they have a burdensome copy-and-paste method they have to use to print anything — a hack, essentially to overcome their lack of access to apps’ innards. iOS 4.2’s print feature provides that direct link in apps that add support for it; if only it could be widely used.

Still, there are a few additions for business users to note in iOS 4.2:

• You can now finally accept calendar invitations (.ics files) in non-Exchange email accounts. Unfortunately, it’s not a great implementation: If you tap an .ics file, the appointment is immediately accepted. (Tapping for more than a split second also shows the details, as well as accepts the invite.) You can’t choose whether to accept, decline, or tentatively accept the appointment. Nor can you choose which calendar to add it to when accepting it; you have to change that in the Calendar app.
• The hard-to-read Marker Felt font is no longer the only option — nor the default — in the Notes app. The more-readable Chalkboard is now the default, and plain-Jane Helvetica is also now an option. It’s a small change, but a good one.

• Safari now shows how many Web pages are open by adding a numeral to its window-switching iconic button.
• Safari also refreshes pages less often, so now if you’re on a forms-based page, you can switch to another browser window or to another app and return to the form with fair confidence it will not refresh and lose the data you entered previously.
• Apple has made its Find My iPad service free, no longer requiring a paid MobileMe account. By registering your iPad with MobileMe, Apple can locate it if it’s detected by a Wi-Fi or 3G network and show you that location on a map (on another computer, of course!), and you can remote-wipe its contents if it’s online.
• An ill-considered alteration was changing the physical Rotation Lock switch to an Alert Sounds switch to match how it works on an iPhone 4. (Only alert sounds are affected; music, videos, and all that remain audible.) Preventing the iPad from rotating its screen when you inadvertently turn it a bit is a very useful feature that is now buried in an unituitive location: in the new running-apps bar. You have to double-press the Home button to open the bar (which shows all running apps), then swipe to the right to reveal a bunch of new on-screen controls, including a rotation lock button. Yikes! Apple should let users decide what they want this physical switch to do.

That’s pretty much it. The iPad is finally at parity with the iPhone, but printing is subpar and Apple has more work to do on calendar invites. It also needs to greatly expand the number of keyboard shortcuts available for Bluetooth keyboards — only copy and paste and a few other shortcuts are now supported, so you end up going back and forth between the keyboard and screen, killing the keyboard’s convenience. Let’s start with Page Up and Page Down shortcuts and shortcuts for formatting such as boldface.

And another thing: Work on greater Web/cloud compatibility.

This article, “The iPad’s iOS 4.2: An unsatisfying upgrade,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Gruman et al.’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com.