Apple's eagerly anticipated iOS 4.2 mobile software upgrade finally reached the iPad Monday. The free upgrade addresses shortcomings in Apple's otherwise prized tablet software and will feel familiar to iPhone 4 owners who can already exploit some of the latest stunts. (Monday's update also brought new capabilities to the iPhone and iPod Touch.)

In a release, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that "iOS 4.2 makes the iPad a completely new product."

As on the iPhone, you can now organize iPad apps into folders to reduce screen clutter and make them a cinch to find. For example, you can put all your music apps in one folder, all your movie programs in another.

The iPad also catches up on multitasking, meaning you can run numerous apps simultaneously and easily switch among them. I listened to the Pandora and Slacker music apps in the background while I surfed, read e-mail and played games.

The upgrade isn't mandatory, and this will be a no-brainer addition. But I do want to raise some caution flags. I hit a few bumps testing the software a few days before its release -- most notably, a newly vaunted wireless print feature, which performed erratically. And after I initially launched the Netflix app on my test iPad, the app got stuck on the same gray screen. Even after relaunching the app, I couldn't get it to go beyond that. But I was able run Netflix on my own iPad after installing the 4.2 upgrade.

More on my experiences:

*AirPrint. If you own a compatible Wi-Fi printer, you can wirelessly print photos, Web pages and e-mail from the iPad, as well as stuff from Apple's own Pages word processor, Keynote presentation program and Numbers spreadsheet. AirPrint also arrived Monday for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

My own Hewlett-Packard Wi-Fi printer isn't compatible with this new AirPrint...

2010-11-25 03:17:13