It didn’t come as a total surprise to me, but it was very close. Only five minutes or so before the keynote started I saw a retweet from someone who mentioned the possibility that a dedicated “branch” of iOS existed (named iPadOS) specifically for the iPad.
And then it became a reality. The strange thing about the naming is that iOS originally has been conceived as iPhoneOS and was only later rebranded as iOS when the iPad entered the market.
Maybe it’s just me, but wouldn’t it be ironic to give all sorts of devices their own specific OS-branding and the iPhone, arguably the most important device in the lineup (and the one that started this whole family of OS-variations) stays with the generic iOS branding?
Maybe a further rebranding may happen when final versions of <modifier>OS 13 are released to the world. And maybe the term iOS finally becomes some sort of abstract base marketing term for the entire class of OS.
Feature-wise, I’m delighted about what’s in store for the next major OS release on my iPad. Although I might want to mention that font management and a download manager for Safari would also make excellent features for the iPhone, just sayin’. I keep hoping for a trickle-down of such useful details to the iPhone at some point in time.
Overall, it is a good sign that Apple gives iPadOS such a prominence. At the very least it means that no WWDC will happen from now on where the iPad is not going to get some new OS-features. Neglect has happened way to many times in the past.
As Steve Troughton-Smith observed, they can’t ignore it anymore. Apple put this burden on themselves for good.