With iOS 9 though, the iPads usefulness is a bit clearer.

Apple even announceda whole new iPadmade specifically for work.

So I spent a week working from mine to see if its actually a pleasant experience or not.

And they do make the iPad a bit better as a laptop replacement…for some people.

Multitasking comes in three flavors on iOS: Slide Over, Split View, and Picture in Picture.

Here, you might quickly jot down a note or look something up while keeping another app in full-screen.

Split View is more of a traditional multitasking feature.

With it, you could have two apps open at once, side-by-side.

It was also handy when comparing notes or browsing online.

I imagine artists working off various source images will also find this handy.

Picture in Picture shrinks down a video and plays it in the bottom of the screen.

I didnt bother with it, but I also dont ever watch videos on my iPad.

Older users are out of luck with most of these features.

Good thing that some of them are actually pretty nice.

Keyboard shortcuts come in a few different varieties: on-screen shortcuts and hardware shortcuts.

The hardware keyboard shortcuts are the real star here.

Each app gets a number of shortcuts and most are similar to their desktop counterparts.

Some of these are new, some of them arent.

You never have to touch the screen, which makes using a hardware keyboard way more useful.

The new on-screen keyboard shortcuts are less useful.

The big new addition to the keyboard is the new Shortcut Bar located directly above the keyboard.

iOS 9 also adds new easy text selection for selecting text and moving the cursor around.

Its nice, but not that much better than the old text selection.

For the first time, I actually enjoy using the iPad to write and work off of.

Now, I dont have to.

Who Really Benefits from iOS 9?

After trying it out, I feel like students are going to get the most out of this update.

That said, when it came towriting about Apples big event yesterday, I returned to my desktop computer.

you’re free to certainly work with the iPad in that capacity, but its not always pleasant.

For the rest of us, the benefits are less obvious.

The iPadsalwaysbeen good as a distraction-free writer, but now its a bit more powerful, too.

If you never figured out what youd even want an iPad for, though, nothings changed.