Apple May Soon Admit Most People Use the iPad Like a Laptop
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It’s pretty clear that Steve Jobs envisioned the original iPad as a predominantly portrait tablet. When it launched in 2010, nearly all of the marketing around it pointed to a device designed to be used as a digital notepad and e-reader that would be used at least as much upright as it would be turned sideways.
Its ability to flip into landscape orientation was mostly a concession to games and movies, both of which naturally play better in that orientation. However, the idea that people would want to stick with one or the other was exemplified by the hardware switch on the side, which didn’t initially function as a silent switch but rather an orientation lock. Apple allowed folks to customize that function in later iOS releases, but for the first year or so, you could easily lock your iPad down so the screen never flipped around unexpectedly.
Until recently, Apple’s design has always seen landscape orientation as a secondary use case that goes against the design of the iPad. The Lightning/USB-C port is on the “bottom” edge, and the Apple logo on the rear and the startup screen are oriented in portrait view.
It wasn’t until iPadOS 14.5 that Apple conceded that some folks might use their iPads almost exclusively with a keyboard. With that release, Apple switched up the boot screen so that the logo would appear in landscape orientation if a Magic Keyboard or Smart Keyboard were attached when you restarted. However, that only works with keyboards connected to the Smart Connector — which basically means Apple’s own keyboards, as others like Logitech have long given up on making Smart Connector accessories.
Unfortunately, a far bigger oddity revealed Apple’s passive-aggressive insistence that an iPad should be used predominantly in portrait mode.
For years, the front-facing camera was at the “top” of the iPad only when it was oriented in what Apple considered the “proper” way to hold it. Dock your iPad in a keyboard case or use it in landscape mode to see more participants in a Zoom meeting and you had to stare awkwardly at the side of the screen or risk letting everyone else feel like you weren’t paying attention.
So, it was a massive relief to many folks in late 2022 when Apple released the 10th-generation iPad with the camera (finally) moved to the long edge. While the M2 iPad Pro didn’t follow suit, we had to assume the change wouldn’t be isolated to the most affordable entry-level iPad.
Sure enough, this month’s M4 iPad Pro and M2 iPad Air have both made the switch, leaving the iPad mini as the only outlier. However, it’s not clear whether that smaller tablet will see a change to the camera position in its next update. Apple could make the switch just for consistency, but there’s much more room for debate on the optimal camera placement for the iPad mini.
Regardless, that camera change takes away the biggest pain point for those who use an iPad for video conferencing. Now, only one thing remains, and while it’s a small one, Apple is a company that sweats the details. It may soon eliminate the last vestige of its portrait-first design to fully embrace the iPad as a landscape device: the logo on the back.
In an interview at French website Numerama shared by MacRumors, senior Apple product designer Molly Anderson was asked about the logo and admitted that not only could it change, but it’s something Apple is “thinking about,” acknowledging that more people are using it in landscape mode.
It’s something that Apple designers and executives have probably been tossing around for a few years already. In late 2021, a leaker reported that Apple was working on “horizontal camera placement and a horizontally placed Apple logo on the back.” While that report didn’t offer any solid evidence, their camera change prediction came to pass a year later, suggesting they at least had reliable info on that aspect of Apple’s plans.
However, the flip side of the logo argument may come down to how often people hold the iPad in landscape orientation versus portrait. Even though many folks use their iPads in landscape orientation with an external keyboard, most of those keyboards and cases obscure the logo entirely, making its orientation somewhat irrelevant.
[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]
