What is iPadOS?
Prior to iPadOS, iPhones, iPods, and iPads all ran iOS. In the summer of 2019 Apple felt that because of the different form factors and use cases of iPad, a different OS was needed to better accommodate iPad users. Jump forward to today, the iPhone and iPod touch run iOS while the iPad runs a slightly modified version of iOS called iPadOS.
How is iPadOS Different From What iPads Were Running Before?
iPadOS has a few new features such as the ability to place more icons on the homescreen, enhanced multitasking controls, Sidecar and the ability to access external storage. One of the biggest features Apple announced was the new “Desktop-class” browsing experience for iPad. This means that when browsing on any iPad running iPadOS, users will be directed to the desktop version of a website as opposed to a mobile version of a site.
How is Device Detection Impacted?
One of the changes Apple made to deliver this “Desktop-class” browsing experience was to change the User-Agent Safari sends. For example, previously iPads would identify themselves as an iPad like in the following User-Agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 12_4_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/12.1.2 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1
However, with the introduction of iPadOS safari will now send a Desktop UA identical to what you would find on macOS:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0.3 Safari/605.1.15
This means it is now impossible to detect an iPad as an iPad through User-Agent analysis alone.
Does WURFL Device Detection Identify iPads as Tablets?
With the use of WURFL.js Basic, Standard, or Pro it is not only possible to identify the device as an iPad, but it’s also possible to receive enhanced model information such as if the device is an iPad Pro 11 or iPad mini 2019.
How Does WURFL.js Work?
After signing up for one of these WURFL.js plans, all a developer needs to do is insert a single JavaScript snippet into their page’s HTML. The snippet will quickly request the WURFL capabilities from ScientiaMobile’s highly-available cloud-based WURFL DDR. The WURFL results are delivered back to you, resulting in a JSON object.
For example, the following code would use the complete_device_name to target the iPad Pro 11 model.
if (WURFL.complete_device_name === "Apple iPad Pro 11") { // targetAppleiPadPro11(); }
Based on this device intelligence, you can build code to support mobile optimization, more targeted and effective advertising, and collect analytics on device capabilities. All three WURFL.js plans can return up to 24 device capabilities, including form_factor, resolution_width, and advertised_device_os_version.
Learn more about WURFL.js with our Getting Started Guide.
With WURFL.js Basic, Standard, or Pro, users can unlock substantial value for advertising, analytics, and mobile optimization. In addition, you can feed this information into Google Analytics to further improve your web analytics tools.
Do I Need Just WURFL.js For This?
Standard user-agent analysis alone will not provide the level of device differentiation need to distinguish between individual Apple device models. WURFL.js offers an additional level of analysis to provide address Apple devices in particular. And ScientiaMobile offers a level of reliability, accuracy, and support that other alternatives cannot match.
ScientiaMobile customers receive enterprise-level ticketed support. Support specialists in device detection provide fast responses to developers. ScientiaMobile actively moderates and responds to the enterprise-level tickets.
