During the keynote this morning, Craig took the stage to unveil iOS 9 and one of the iPad specific features which Apple is including this year is true multitasking. Besides also overhauling the multitasking view as a rotating card based interface.

With iOS 9, there will be three different types of multitasking view being implemented. Slide over, split view and picture in picture. Slide over is running an apps as an overlay on the side and you can only interact with the app on the side. This would technically be useful for glancing over at apps.

The more powerful multitasking view called split view enables true multitasking on the iPad with two app placed side by side and each app can be interacted with as a separate application. Finally, it is picture in picture mode which as the name suggests runs a video overlay on top of the current screen. It'll work with the stock video player but support for other services will come.


Apple says that developers don't need to modify their apps to make it work with iOS 9's multitasking view if they are already implementing the Auto layout classes. As for availability of multitasking, Slide over will be made available to the iPad Air, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 2 and iPad mini 3. Whereas the more powerful split view multitasking will only come to the iPad Air 2.

For a little recap on iOS 9, do check out our article on it