First of all – ABOUT TIME!
I’m not using an iPhone anymore (although I haven’t ruled out going back to it), so wasn’t able to check out iOS 4 until today. After doing so, I can see clearly that going from the iPhone 4 back to an iPad would have been frustrating. Multitasking and folders really do make a huge difference.
Today at 1PM EST, Apple released iOS 4.2.1. This release means more to iPad users than it does to iPhone users. As an iPad user, I began the upgrade process shortly after released. The download took quite some time, considering that the actual download was over 500 MB plus a good chunk of the Apple world was hammering the servers simultaneously. Eventually, I got the thing upgraded.
Being that I don’t use an iPhone anymore, it took me a quick tweet to ask people how the heck to use multi-tasking. It is a quick double-click of the Home button – cool. It works quite smoothly, and it appears you can quit an app by holding it in the multitask bar, wait for it to wiggle, then tapping the minus sign. Only time will tell how well iOS will manage the memory on the iPad with a lot of apps going on. The iPad famously has only half the RAM of the iPhone 4 (weird, huh?) which makes memory management all the more important.
Some apps seem to work better with multitasking than others. Some apps seem to be programmed so that they refresh when you re-activte the program. It is of limited use when you switch back to an app and still have to wait for it to refresh it’s state before you can use it.
We’ve got folders now, so I can organize apps into folders rather than have an endless parade of screens to scroll through. I have 63 apps on my iPad… not as many as some… but folders are certainly a nice touch to organize those.
Also in this update is AirPlay and the ability to print from the iPad. I have yet to test either of these, so I’ll post back later with something more in-depth. 
All in all, very happy to finally have multitasking and folders on the iPad. Those were the two most important updates as far as I’m concerned.
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