Last month, we had given you a sneak peak at OS Experience, a jailbreak tweak that promised to bring true multitasking to the iPad.
If you thought it was too good to be true, then I’ve a surprise for you. OS Experience was released on Cydia few days back.
True Multitasking
One of the main features of OS Experience is it allows you to run multiple apps at once on your iPad.
To run multiple apps at once, you need to swipe down on the app to access the menu bar, which allows you to minimize it. This minimizes the app in a window format, allowing you to either close the app by tapping on the “X” button or resizing the window by just tapping and dragging on the resize button on the top right corner of the window.
When you drag the window to the side of the screen, it switches to portrait mode and snaps into place. You can follow the same process for another app to run two apps side-by-side as you can see below. You can use both the apps at the same time, which is pretty cool. So you could be surfing the web, and also checking emails at the same time.
You can remove the app from the snap mode by tapping and holding on the window title. You can access the Home screen at any time using the five-finger pinch. You can switch back to the app using the same five-finger pinch. You can also access the apps in your iPad’s dock by swiping up from the bottom with four fingers.
You can also switch between portrait and landscape modes in windowed mode by tapping and holding on the resize button, which is quite nifty.
Mission Control
You can also organize apps into desktops like OS X. To access the desktop view, you need to swipe up from the bottom with four fingers twice, the first time it will show the iPad dock, and with the next swipe up, it will display the desktop view. Organizing and trying to keep track of what app or window is where can be a daunting task on the iPad. OS Experience aims to address that with the Mission Control-like Desktop feature.
If you’ve Auxo 2 installed then you will have to remove it as there is some conflict which disables Control Center on the Home screen and in apps.
You can check out our detailed walkthrough of the tweak below via our YouTube channel to get a better idea of how it works:
Final Thoughts
OS Experience will need some getting used to, as it completely changes the way you use the iPad. I was impressed with how well the modified user interface worked, and some of the animations included add a nice touch to the overall experience. OS Experience is an ambitious attempt by the developer to bring desktop-like experience to the iPad. It gives us a glimpse of how Apple can extend the functionality of the iPad in future iOS versions rather than treating it like a bigger version of the iPhone. So kudos to the developer, Evan Swick.
Personally, though I find the concept behind the tweak interesting and respect the developer’s ambitious goals, I don’t see myself using it as I don’t like such drastic changes in the way I do things. I prefer tweaks that offer incremental improvements that enhances the experience on the iPad.
OS Experience is available on Cydia for $9.99, which many of you might find quite expensive. I think it will be worth it if the developer keeps updating the tweak when new versions of iOS are released and offers future upgrades for free. Update: Unfortunately, it is not possible to purchase the tweak currently on Cydia as sales for the app have been halted as number of users are reporting issues installing the tweak.
Let me know what you think of OS Experience in the comments below.
