You’ll know version 4.2 is ready when you connect your iPad to your Mac (or PC) and look at iTunes under the Summary tab. (Of course, we’ll also alert you here at TMO news. But sometimes there’s a lag from the time the earliest customers see their update in iTunes until others see it — in what often seems to be a geographic, distributed roll out.)
Of course, before you do an update like this, you should back up your iPad.
iTunes, Summary Tab
The first thing you’ll notice after the update is that there isn’t much of a visual change to the Home screen. Many of the improvements are under the hood or not obvious until you go exploring or launch some apps. and that’s probably a comforting thing for many users. Here are most of the notable changes you’ll see in iOS 4.2.
General Changes
The first thing you may want to explore is the Home button and the new multitasking capability. Tap the Home button twice, quickly, and you’ll see the multitasking manager. Apps that have been previously launched will be displayed at the bottom and are in a kind of suspended, saved state, not running, but ready to resume at a moment’s notice. Just touch it to bring it back to life. To take advantage of this, apps will have to be written for or updated to iOS 4.2.
iOS 4.2 Multitask Manager
More and more apps will accumulate in this bar over time as you run them, then switch to another app. You can leave these aliases there without much concern. However, if you really want to delete one, press and hold the icon. You’ll see the “minus” badge and you can click there to remove the app from its suspended state, quitting the app.. Don’t worry; this won’t delete the app itself — it just frees up the memory it was using.
In the same multitasking bar, if you swipe to the right, you’ll see some new controls, widgets. From left to right they are: the new software orientation lock, the new universal brightness slider, iTunes controls, and speaker volume. This is a great addition to the iPad iOS.
The new software controls
Speaking of the orientation lock, the slider button on the side of the iPad that used to lock the screen orientation is now a mute button. No one is really sure why Apple didn’t give customers, going forward, a choice for what that button would do. It may have something to do with 1) the fact that muting is something one wants to do right away (click), while locking the screen can be done at a more leisurely pace (click, click, swipe, click) and 2) software and button commonality with the iPhone.
Also new to iOS 4.2 for the iPad is the ability to create folders and then group similar apps in those folders. Just drag one app onto the top of another, and iOS 4.2 will magically create a folder that contains both apps. It’ll also give it an appropriate name, but you can change that in the edit field that comes up in jiggle mode. If you want to later drag the app out of the folder, hold your finger on it, and when it starts to jiggle, drag it out of the folder.
Folders. Note edit field for folder rename.
Under Settings -> General -> Keyboard is a new entry that allows you to turn off spell checking.
AirPlay and AirPrint
Two new, major technologies that are of immediate interest are AirPlay and AirPrint.
AirPlay is a technology that will allow you to stream video and photos on your iPad to a second generation Apple TV and other supported devices from selected vendors such as Marantz, Denon, JBL and Bowers & Wilkins and iHome. Some apps will let you do that right away, but don’t expect every app to implement it. Even though there’s already a setting in the new (2G) Apple TV for AirPlay, (Settings -> General -> AirPlay -> On/Off), an update to its iOS will be required to support video streaming from, say, your iPad.
Why would you want to use AirPlay? A lot of Apple’s customers watch TV with an iPad in their lap to time share. It’s a lot easier to just transmit a movie from the iPad in your lap than to get up, go to another room, log onto a Mac, fire up iTunes, then go back to the Apple TV and select the movie to play (under the Computer tab). Of course, all you couch potatoes should do 100 pushups to make up for the exercise you didn’t get in the process.
Printing from Safari
AirPrint allows you to print from iPad apps to either special new printers that support the ePrint protocol such as the “HP Photosmart, Officejet, Officejet Pro and LaserJet Pro series ePrint enabled printers,” according to Apple. Also, if you have printer sharing turned on, (System Preferences -> Sharing -> Printer Sharing), Apple had previously said you’ll be able to access that printer with the Mac OS X 10.6.5 update. [Subsequently, Apple appears to have dropped that feature. Support for ePrint printers remains. Pending a full resolution, there are some remedies.*] To print, say, a Web page from Safari, click on the share button at the top, just to the left of the URL field. You’ll see a new Print option. If the iPad can see a printer, you can select it with “Select Printer.”